End of Summer Anxieties

September 3rd, 2010 • Academics, Student Life, Thoughts

The fourth day of September- I’d like to echo those around me by saying “I can’t believe summer went so quickly!” but, honestly, it hasn’t seemed unnaturally fast to me. In fact, my previous batch of spring finals seems like a million years ago, and I’m not really relishing the approach of that time of the year again. What a pessimistic thought, huh? The beginning of the school year is always accompanied by such a specific smell in the air. It reminds me of buying school supplies at Staples with my mom when I was in elementary school. That was one of my favourite days of the year.

I was on the B-line the other day going to the gym, and I found myself amongst a gaggle of first years… at least, I would assume that they are new students. Their looks of slight bemusement and thinly veiled excitement at the fact that they had just completed their first trip to Save-On on their own gave them away. (Their plastic bags were replete with laundry detergent, cereal and Brita filters.) Some days, I sort of wish that I had gone through the whole experience of coming to UBC straight out of high school to attend Science One, live in res and go through the typical anxieties and discoveries that come along with being on your own for the first time. (Who knew it was so hard to write a cheque or accomplish a culinary feat greater than Kraft Dinner?) In fact, that was my original plan. I remember quite clearly lying on the living room floor, thumbing through the UBC viewbook and ogling the pictures of light streaming through the stained glass windows in the Harry Potter room.

Despite all this, I still have mixed feelings about school starting in a few days. My courseload is scaring the pants off of me… the fact that I have to take Math 223 (honors linear algebra) alone has been giving me nightmares for real. I keep reading past course outlines that say that Math 223 is “significantly harder, faster and more theoretical” than its non-honors counterpart, 221. Great… Another downside is that only two out of my five classes are computer science classes. To inject at least a modicum of happiness, Cogs 200 should be interesting and I just pray that it’s a little less challenging than my other ones. (I registered in it as my “easy” class for the term, since I simply can’t justify taking Basketweaving 101 or whatever to sandbag.)

Sometimes I seriously wonder why I’m even bothering with honors since all I hear is that it’s too challenging, or there’s no point to it since it doesn’t matter for grad school, or that the only thing you get in return for herculean levels of stress is a meaningless accolade on your resume. But since I’m stuck at UBC for four years in total anyways due to a stupid, bureaucratic hitch that resulted from me being a transfer student, I may as well go the extra mile while I’m here. And I sort of feel like I’d be cheating myself if I didn’t do it, simply because I know I’m capable and to do anything less would be working at a level lower than my full potential. I mean, that’s what I’d like to think. Math 223 could very well prove me differently… haha… ha… sigh.

Anyways. I guess that this is a bit of a morose post and I think that the anticipation surrounding the whole back to school thing is probably worse than getting back into the swing of things. I’m loving the opportunity to read the excitement from my fellow UBC bloggers- especially those who are new to UBC and seeing everything for the first time.

Enjoy your final few days of summer, everyone!

Academic Wrap-Up: Past Classes

August 29th, 2010 • 6 comments Academics, Wrapup

A past Blog Squad blogger, Phoebe Yu, had a great idea (which she got from another Blog Squad-er, Sam) to pass some judgement on the classes she’s taken each term. I loved reading these posts from Phoebe and Sam and, while it’s hardly the end of term, I figured I would take a moment to write a bit on all of the classes I have taken at UBC thus far. (The classes are listed in the order I’ve taken them.)

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System.out.println(“Hello, world!”);

August 27th, 2010 • 5 comments Academics, Student Life

I feel the same way about first blog posts as I do about the first page in a new notebook- it seems to demand some supernatural breed of witticism to set the tone. I’ve been backspacing half-hearted sentences for half an hour now (after postponing it with twenty minutes of choosing a theme which, let’s be honest now, is the best part of creating a blog) to try and come up with something good for my inaugural post but I’m still drawing a blank… makes a compelling case for why I’m not an Arts student!

I suppose that no blog is complete without an introduction for a bit of context- my name is Sara and it is a pleasure to meet you. I am a third year Computer Science student, and my path to UBC hasn’t been the most traditional. After graduating from high school, I worked as an oil painter for two years, shared a studio with some brilliant artists and paid the bills (the Starbucks ones, anyways) by selling my stuff in gallery shows. However, the nerd in me was getting anxious without the structure and constant stress of school and so I applied for and was accepted to both Emily Carr University and Sheridan College (in Ontario). Though not my first choice, I ended up going to Emily Carr on the pretence of staying closer to home for awhile, but my year-long stint there rendered the left side of my brain painfully underused and I applied to UBC to study astrophysics.

After my first semester and a particularly painful bout of Physics 101, I realized that physics was better-suited as a hobby for me (read: I pretty much sucked). To my great fortune, though, I had taken CPSC 111 in the summer as a “fun elective” and enjoyed it so much that I figured I would fill my first year at UBC with a few second-year Computer Science courses (since I had a considerable amount of room in my schedule). Lo and behold, I fell in love with it and am now a full-fledged computer geek.

For the next six minutes, there are officially two weeks left until the beginning of the school year. From past experience, this would be about the time of the year when I start crawling up the walls from utter boredom and yet this year, powering down my synapses and being intellectually sluggish for the past few weeks has been absolutely satisfying. (That is, despite the fact that I’ve managed to go another summer without going camping, which I am kicking myself for.) The first couple of months of summer were full of Calculus III and TAing for a couple of Computer Science courses and my fall term will be anything but sluggish, so perhaps this should just be viewed as the calm before the storm.

I sort of miss that feeling of intense anticipation that I had last year, though. Last August, I was preening in my new UBC sweater and arranging all my books just so. (Don’t you love that new textbook smell?). Maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet that third year is almost upon me- or it could be that my subconscious mind is desperately trying to keep me from mulling on the fact that I am going to have to endure four painful months of honours math. Either way, this new school year is going to be an exciting one and I’m looking forward to sharing it with my fellow Blog Squad writers and readers alike!