A Final Review

As the term approaches its end, I figured I might as well follow up my initial impressions with how all of my classes actually turned out.

CPSC 101: Connecting with Computer Science
Status: Bored
Difficulty: 1/5 Interest: 4/5
This class moved up in the interest ranking not because it’s more interesting than I expected, but rather, the others are more boring than I expected. Still quite easy, it has become pretty boring to sit in class, which doesn’t exactly motivate me to get out of bed in the morning and walk 20 minutes across campus to get there. But our course project is a website about Pokemon, which has to count for something, right?

PSYC 308A: Social Psychology
Status: Interested
Difficulty: 4/5 Interest: 5/5
Secret: When I made the original list of ratings, I wanted to put this one’s interest as 5/5, but I figured I couldn’t do that since I am majoring in EOSC, so that should be what I like the most, right? Anyways, I am quite enjoying this class, but it is quite difficult. I did terrible on the midterm, probably partially because I am not a psych student, so I’m not used to how their tests are formatted and they seem to go over the same material in multiple classes, which also gives them an advantage.

EOSC 211: Computer Methods in EOSC
Status: Frustrated
Difficulty: 2/5 Interest: 2/5
Aye. This class isn’t hard. Midterm was super easy, worksheets are easy. But when it comes to the labs and assignments? Nothing but frustrating. The labs are 2 hours long and you are not expected to finish the lab in that time, the average time is more like 4 hours. No problem if you have resources or know what you’re doing. But when you get stuck in this class, you can’t Google your code and have the internet tell you what’s wrong with it. The TAs and profs are not around enough to answer questions and they sometimes answer questions with other questions or when you ask “What does ‘plot’ do?” they answer, “There’s something called ‘help plot’, use it,” despite you already doing that and being confused as to what it means. Not to mention overlaps in assignments (given every 2 weeks starting the middle of the term and expected to take ~15 hours) and labs (every week, takes ~4 hours), which make it pretty much impossible to do both of them well.

EOSC 220: Introductory Mineralogy
Status: Confused
Difficulty: 3/5 Interest: 3/5
This class started out with me being bored to death by the simplicity of the material. And then we switched profs. Immediately, everything is SO much more complicated, and she puts things on slides that she never explains. She expects you to understand things immediately and the number of people in class seems to have decreased since the switch. Anyways, this class is a lot of memorization, which is what I’m terrible at, so it’s been pretty hard as far as tests and such goes. The worst part about this class though is that there’s one lab in the middle of the term (which equals rainy season) where you go outside for 3 hours and look at rocks on campus. Raining. Cold. Windy. Miserable. I don’t understand how that ever seemed like a good idea.

EOSC 329: Groundwater Hydrology
Status: Dropped
Difficulty: 5/5 Interest: 1/5
The prof is what really tripped me up in rating this class. He’s quite interesting and comical, but when it comes down to the material, it’s hard, confusing, and boring. There’s a high percentage of engineers in this class (aka people way smarter and more experienced than EOS students), which leaves the EOS students behind in the material and there are no tutors or any kind of extra help besides the lab TAs.