Category: Academics

My brain is not on, so if this post flows poorly, blame term two. Before I begin though, I must ask, Does anyone know of a website that shows what’s going on in each room at a given time? I know that in the EOSC building, every room has a sheet outside of it that shows what class is in that room for each day of the week. I have two classes with a one hour gap between them, both in BUCH A101, and I want a good place to read (and I entirely suck at reading, so I can’t read anywhere loud/distracting), but I don’t want to go around opening every door I see and looking if someone’s in there or not. Any suggestions?

Anyways, it’s term two. Again. Last year, this term was terrible. This year, it’s terrible for different reasons. Last year, I was feeling awesome, like I could do anything and pass my classes no problem…and then the opposite happened. This year, I am feeling like a confused first year (I would say again, but I honestly wasn’t too confused or scared first year – pneumonia can be distracting like that). I have unofficially switched to psychology and I only have three classes. Previously, I put all of my arts classes in the backseat. There were no real deadlines or assignments like in science, so I did what I wanted to when I wanted to (and when I had time/motivation).

This term, I’m a bit lost. So I have all of this reading to do…but how important is it? Should I be taking careful notes or should I be skimming? Are there some things that are assigned that are less important? In science, it’s read enough so that you can do this assignment well/pretty easily. In arts, it feels more like a gamble. I read enough so that I can pass the midterm or write an essay. But how much is that?! I feel like the good students are the ones who read the correct stuff and remembered the correct stuff, but how do they know what that is? Do they just get lucky or do they read everything and memorize everything?

Such is the life of a psychology student with a science brain ._.

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.

Warning: Philosophical post to follow

I was thinking the other day, if we’re so young and this is so difficult, what am I going to do for the rest of my life?

I imagined that life gets more difficult as you go on – at the beginning, you do nothing for yourself except breathe and look cute. Then you keep increasing the amount of things you can do…eat, walk, talk, read, drive, etc. until what point? When do you stop learning?

Of course, the answer is never, you learn something new every day they say, but at some point, there will be a line that you cross when what you’re learning is not essential to your life. But before that line is the gray area where you think what you are learning is not essential, important, relevant, etc. and this is where people lose momentum. For some, this gray area can start in middle school or high school. For me, it was university.

For my entire grade 1-12 education, I went to college preparatory schools. Everything led to college. College was the goal, the end, and if you don’t get there, you are nothing in life. So of course, motivation to be someone and not be useless led me to taking honours and AP classes, trying in all of my classes, and despite all of the frustrations that I had, I was still able to move on and conquer because the end was near. I was almost done.

They were right, I was done. But not in the sense that I had imagined. In my dream world, university was a place where you were free. Free to take whatever classes you wanted, free to come and go as you please, free to dye your hair blue, free to wear your pajamas to class, etc. Which of course, in my real world, you can do, but for a price. Done means that and also being done with guidance, structure, people helping you learn, and people helping you in general (clean, cook, laundry).

You’re at the bottom of the food chain again, like a new-born baby you’re a new-born adult. You move from a dorm to a quad to an apartment to a house. You cook for yourself, do your own laundry, take care of yourself.  You live in a state of constant confusion from overloading yourself with new material every single day. You fear what will happen if you don’t learn it or fall behind. And you’re learning more than you did in high school, with added responsibilities and without support.

But luckily, things get better from here (or so my crystal ball tells me). You still learn, you still move up and on in life, but you have your basics. You have a degree. You can live by yourself. You know how to do your job. But that’s not to say that life after university is easy – it has its own challenges, yet you’ll be better equipped when problems arise.

With midterms season upon us, I have switched from “Alright! Let’s go to class and do homework so I don’t get behind!” mode to “Blaaaahhhhhhh, I think Halo sounds like a better idea” and generally more complainy mode. Anyways, being the complainer that I am, there have been a few things that have been bothering me.

People who walk into classrooms before everyone else leaves

Alright, so if there’s one or two people left from the remaining class (at max 10), you can go inside. But when the class hasn’t even finished?! This is ridiculous. Besides the general principle of you’re already where you need to be and the people inside need to run to another part of campus so be nice and let them out, there’s absolutely no reason why people need to get into class 5-10 minutes early. Sure, you can get more comfy and get out your notes and stuff, but you can do that in 2 minutes just fine. Maybe if you have a midterm you’ll want to push and shove your way in so you can have as much time as possible for the test (and to cram/panic beforehand). But really, please explain to me why every time my EOSC 220 class is finishing up (around 1:47) the next class comes in like a hurricane, pushing to get through and sit down. I’m really quite curious.

People who don’t wear pants

At first glance, probably only a select few people know what I’m talking about and the others are either confused or think I’m talking about shorts and skirts. I’m talking about wearing leggings/tights as pants. I would add a picture for demonstration, but I’d feel like it would be NSFW, so I’ll link to it. That’s one of the better pictures of wearing them as pants. The best one I found to attest to why I hate it so much happens to be of Paris Hilton, so I’m not sure that actually counts. Anyways, aren’t leggings designed to keep your legs warm or be somehow fashionable and be under another piece of clothing? I have seen this way too much around campus and today I saw someone wearing some that were not opaque enough…and it was not pretty. No sir. That’s the kind of stuff you can only wear in your house. So if someone knows why this is a good idea and how these people do not know that they are revealing way too much, please enlighten me.

Majors

This has nothing to do with things that people do that bother me, but rather, with trying to understand what I like and what my major should be. I’m a science person. End of story. Well, kind of. I’m good at science, I liked it in high school because it was easier than history and English. I always thought what you’re good at you like because you can easily get a sense of accomplishment and such. You can like other things too of course, but for myself, someone who likes doing easy things that produce a bigger result, I stuck with what I was good at.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been EOSCing myself out and guess what? I don’t like it. For various reasons and compounded experiences from my classes and discussions with others, I’ve determined that I won’t be a geoscientist. But what about other sciences? I suppose I could, but that would add some time onto my degree and I still wouldn’t be very interested in it. So what should the science minded and bored Em do? Dual degree, at least until further notice. I like psychology, but I’m terrible at arts in general (which contradicts my previous thought of liking what I’m good at), so dual degree in Earth and Ocean Sciences and Psychology, here I come.

Hey everyone! Now that I’m officially back in the UBC mode, I can officially start blogging again.

I don’t know how you people blog so often, I have to be in the mood and have a good idea (or at least a rambling stream of ideas). So finally, I have adequately cleaned up the horrendous mess in my room, moved in, started classes, and gotten through any major events (PAX!, Halo: Reach event, my birthday). Therefore, blogging can resume.

If you’re interested in a PAX or Halo: Reach event blog, please comment and let me know. I’m not sure that there are enough geeks on here to appreciate it :P

Anyways, hooray for finishing the first half-week of classes and getting adequately frightened for this term. I feel that a quick review of classes so far are in order. (Ratings are between my five classes, not in general)

CPSC 101: Connecting with Computer Science
Difficulty: 1/5 Interest: 2/5
This is by far my easiest class (it’s a super 100 level class, which means that I believe it was created because people didn’t know enough about the next class, so they needed somewhere to begin, like PHYS 100 for PHYS 101). It’s also similar to EOSC 114 in that a lot of arts students take it for their science requirement. I’m taking it because it fulfills part of my APEGBC elective requirement, but I have surprisingly found it interesting so far (I thought I would be bored out of my mind originally). This class was actually created to draw in people from other disciplines and show how computer science is not about super nerds having all night pizza parties talking about semicolons.

PSYC 308A: Social Psychology
Difficulty: 2/5 Interest: 4/5
This class I took as a pure elective (and 300 level requirement fulfiller), since I really do enjoy psychology, but not enough to major in it/switch to arts for it/have a career in it. So far, there has been a lot of reading and the prof has been a bit difficult to understand (due to his accent), but other than that, it has been quite interesting.

EOSC 211: Computer Methods in EOSC
Difficulty: 5/5 Interest: 1/5
*shiver* This class is going to be the most difficult one. It’s required in many places (APEGBC, math requirement, prereq), so there’s no way of getting out of it. It looks like more of a programming class than a math class (but those two are also pretty similar) and it honestly seems pretty dull. Difficulty + lack of interest = disaster. (It also doesn’t help any that he pulls sticks with people’s names on them to determine who answers the questions that I have no idea how to answer.)

EOSC 220: Introductory Mineralogy
Difficulty: 4/5 Interest: 3/5
Looking through the textbook for this class is what really freaked me out. There’s a bunch of diagrams that look like I need to remember a bunch of stuff from last year (that I barely even understood) in order to understand them. Another super required class (see above), but at least it looks interesting (minerals are pretty and I like pretty things) and able to be understood.

EOSC 329: Groundwater Hydrology
Difficulty: 3/5 Interest: 5/5
Water. I hate water. Get me wet and I’ll kill you. But this class? Way more interesting than I expected. Originally I thought, “Okay, water in the ground. Umm…it’s dirty. And it’s wet. The end.” But from the first two classes, I can see how there is way more to groundwater than that (and the prof is super awesome, which makes it much more interesting). But it’s a bit difficult in that there’s a bunch of fancy engineers in the class who know a lot and I’m probably the only second year in it, but at the same time, I’m surrounded by smart people who can help me.

In both a good and a bad way.

2 weeks left until the end of the term. That’s also 2 weeks that I have to learn all of physics, some of math, and all of organic chemistry.

I used to feel smart. I used to be that kid who didn’t have much difficulty in classes. I used to be the person who was tutoring people, never the one being tutored.

I heard before I came to university that my average would drop 10-20%. Sure, that’s fine, as long as it’s consistent across everyone and expected. First term, I was super excited to be here and thoroughly motivated to do my work (I was the one in the commonsblock on a Friday night studying physics, chemistry, and EOSC). And then that started to die off. We started learning new things in CHEM, the reading for EOSC was getting more tedious, the reading for ENGL was getting longer, and PHYS continued to be about things I already knew. So my motivation went down, but it didn’t affect too much. Until term 2.

Given my way better than expected for a university course grade in PHYS and my quite happily passing mark in CHEM despite my being convinced that I failed the final, I wasn’t too stressed. Then came PHYS 101. I had never learned any of this before, but by his explanations in class, it seemed like I understood it. Oh how I was wrong.

CHEM was fine until organic chemistry and you ask me to draw 3,4-oewifjaoiwefjaofj and name a bunch of lines. That’s pretty much how it looks to me and I’m pretty scared. I don’t understand anything in class, I can’t tell what’s relevant and what’s useful, and I have no motivation to figure out how to understand any of it.

MATH is better, given my taking Calc AB last year. It’s the same thing as PHYS, I feel like I understand it, but when any problem comes I just stare at it like someone vomited letters and numbers on the page and I’m supposed to figure out what it means. Given that I used to be a consistently above average student, realizing I’m now below average doesn’t help my confidence any.

So what do I do? Complain. Feel terrible. Attempt to study. Fail at said studying due to lack of motivation. And finally, I’m doing what I never thought I’d ever have to do. I’m getting a tutor.

You could say I’m a procrastinator for getting a tutor this late, but I’m not a fortune teller. At the beginning of the term, there is no way that I could have told you that I am as close to failing as I am right now. In the middle of the term, I would have told you that I don’t understand some things, but it’s alright because I’m capable of learning this and by doing more advanced in class, I’ll fully learn the more basic things.

No matter how smart you are or how good you are at something, there’s always people better than you. And for me, these people are concentrated at UBC.

But change is.

For all of you not knowing what to do “From here,” listen to Rush and remember that there’s always change.

It’s well established that I want to be a pastry chef. No question about that (except maybe a little nagging part of me that says “Oh no! You might not like it!” and the other 99% of me telling it to shut up and that it’s just being paranoid). But before that was to come a new and shiny … (no, not a Mustang, well, maybe) bachelor of science. But really, I’m not finding this interesting. While everyone was amazed by the Rubens’ tube in physics today, I was more interested in trying to figure out where the imaginary smell of bread was coming from and why from a tab I had on my phone (https://blogs.ubc.ca/kelvinchoi, I was reading about renting games in Canada) the first word I get out of the URL is not “blog” or “ubc” or “kelvinchoi,” but instead, “cake” (.ca/ke). A sign? Maybe. I’m going crazy? More likely.

So it got me thinking, what am I going to do “From here”? Do I continue taking science courses here? Maybe. Do I go through another 2 years in culinary school after university to never do anything related to science again? Quite likely. Am I wasting my time? Some (my mother) insist no, others (myself) insist yes.

And since nobody likes to talk about their problems, I figured I’m the only one in this terrible dilemma. I don’t even like to do anything. What do I do after class? Wait for dinner time to arrive. What do I do after dinner? Wait for my bed time to arrive. So where in the world do I start finding what I might like to do? I googled various career interest tests and they all included the same result: pastry chef. Seems that I do like something, just nothing I have evidence for. But the last time that happened (love for Canada), it worked out quite well for me.

And then I found a few people. “So, what are you going to do after university?” “I um…well…I don’t know…?” “What faculty are you in?” “*names faculty* but I don’t like any of the courses I’m taking” “What do you enjoy doing?” “Nothing.” “What do you do with your free time?” “Nothing.” Given what I said previously, this most certainly sounds like a conversation with myself, but I assure you that there was someone else answering my questions. A few minutes prior to that I found someone who was absolutely set on going into science and was in the faculty of science last year, yet switched to music. She has no idea what she’s going to do with it, but she enjoys it and that’s all that matters.

To end on a slightly random note, whenever I think about the purpose of anything, this lovely Red vs Blue episode always pops into my mind: (Some strong language)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BAM9fgV-ts[/youtube]

It’s pretty much agreed that one of the hardest topics to write on is yourself.

There’s so much I can say about myself, I mean, nobody knows you better than yourself, but the hard part is, what do people actually care about? I wear a watch. I have green eyes. I enjoy people-watching. I am a grammar nut. I couldn’t write a poem if my life depended on it. I like to look through the window at Gage and try to wave at people in other towers to see if they see me. All of these are true, some a bit creepy, but none of which anyone who is reading a paragraph about me cares about.

Even with all of these trivial facts eliminated, there’s still the question of what you want the reader to know. I could add that I’m on the blog squad, but do I want them to read all of my blogs? What if they come across something I don’t want them to? Such is the consequence of writing a blog, but I’m not going to volunteer possibly risky information to someone I’m trying to impress.

And then there’s the question about if you should add some of the negative things/quirks about yourself to show authenticity and that you aren’t leaving anything out. I always feel like I should tell the whole truth, yet only including my positive qualities would make that incomplete.

But if I’m going the safe route, I only have boring facts: faculty, “interests,” etc. Is there really a way to make that interesting? My typical approach doesn’t work here – a formal “about me” can’t be comedic or satirical. Also, I say interests in quotation marks because that’s another fuzzy area. I have a lot of interests! But many of which nobody cares about, which leads back to picking through all of them, coming up with the relevant ones, and trying to put them all in a nice, neat, and interesting paragraph.

Tell me about yourself. I dare you to try.