academics

Second Year Round-Up (Term 1)

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In a lot of ways, my second year at UBC was better than my first one. This was mainly because I was able to force myself to focus more on my academics this past year, which resulted to more effective time management on my side, and of course, less stressful days! It also definitely helped that I enjoyed almost every single course that I took this year.

In this post, I will review each class that I took in the first term of my second year. Let’s get to it!

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ECON 221 – Introduction to Strategic Thinking (Instructor: Michael Vaney)

This course is all about Game Theory, the study of developing and using strategies in making decisions. If you’re planning to take this class, be prepared to study a lot of different economic models (Cournot, Bertland, etc.). Getting an A in this class is definitely possible if you: 1) make sure you have complete lecture notes (Vaney doesn’t post his lecture notes online, so your notes will be your main study tool), 2) do your assignments at least 3 days before the due date (they’re quite long; last thing you want to do is copy off someone else’s work and miss your chance at answering problems that may appear again in your midterm or final), and 3) go to your tutorial/discussion class! Before I took this course, the only economic models I had been familiar with were the ones taught in ECON 101 and 102. So lectures during the first few weeks were a bit hard to follow, but thankfully we had a very helpful TA for our discussion group; she was patient in answering all of our questions and was very generous of her time outside her office hours! I wasn’t very happy with my midterm mark. Thankfully, the midterm and the final had almost exactly the same format! So after thoroughly reviewing the midterm questions and going through the practice final exams, I was able to pull off an A!

Best thing I learned from taking this course: Take advantage of econ tutorials/discussions! Even if attendance is not mandatory, attending discussion groups will surely help you understand the class better.

 

ECON 325 – Introduction to Empirical Economics (Instructor: Hiro Kasahara)

I  guess I’ll start by saying that I didn’t enjoy this course as much as I wanted to. ECON 325 is a required course for the Economics Major program, so I thought it would be a good decision if I took it early and got it out of the way as soon as possible (most econ majors take it in their third year). Boy, was I wrong!! In simple terms, this course shows students how basic statistical techniques could be used in economic research. Although I liked most of the things that we learned, there was one thing that I struggled with: proving formulae manually. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed statistical (null and alternative) hypothesis testing, getting confidence levels, figuring out probability distributions, and many other statistical techniques taught in the course. But there was something about manually proving statistical formulae that I just couldn’t grasp (I get it now though, thanks to ECON 226 and Prof. Adshade! More on that in my next post). I do not mean to disrespect Mr. Kasahara–who is one of the most respected professors by post-grads and his colleagues–but I just don’t think that his teaching style matched the way I learn. I wish class time were spent more on solving practice problems and less on reading off PowerPoint slides. My classmates seemed to have no problem with that though, since the class average was 77, which is quite high for an econ course. Midterm was okay, assignments were easy but tedious, and final exam was difficult.

*Pro-tip: If you’re taking ECON 325 or 326, download Stata on your laptop as early as possible so you can experiment with it in your spare time. Having it on your laptop will also save you lots of time and effort in assignments!

Best thing I learned from taking this course: If you want to do well in a course, ask your questions RIGHT AWAY–ideally in class–when you get confused.

 

STAT 200 – Elementary Statistics for Applications (Instructor: Eugenia Yu)

If you have been paying attention to what I’ve been writing, you *might* wonder: is taking ECON 325 and STAT 200 at the same time recommended since they’re both statistics courses? My answer: NO. In fact, if you’re planning to be an econ major, you can just use STAT 200 to fulfill the ECON 325 course requirement. Why did I take both? That’s a question I ask myself until today hehehe….. Thankfully, STAT 200 was a great course. It wasn’t an easy class, but Eugenia found a way to clearly explain complicated concepts to students who were not expected to have any background in statistics. She managed class time wisely: spent no to very short time going over self-explanatory concepts, and spent ample amount of time explaining more difficult ones. She promptly answered my questions after class, during office hours, and even through e-mail. The midterms and the final were quite difficult and long; thankfully Eugenia allowed us to have a one-page back-to-back exam cheat sheet! You’ll do well in this class if you regularly do the suggested textbook exercises and the weekly WeBWork assignments.

Best thing I learned from taking this course: Do WeBWork assignments with classmates. Aside from being able to ask one another about things you’re struggling to understand, it’s also an easy way of gaining more friends!

 

PHIL 150 – Minds and Machines (Instructor: Gerardo Viera)

Hands down the best class I took that term! First of all, I love philosophy. I love the fact that it teaches you how to think and that it forces you to think about important issues that you’ve never thought about before. I love that there are there are good and bad answers, but never right or wrong ones. PHIL 150 poses questions like: Do machines have a mind? Are their minds different from human minds? What allows us to claim that something has or is a mind? Gerardo’s lectures might have gotten a bit repetitive and monotonous in terms of format, but the content never failed to interest me. Because most of the stuff we talked about piqued my interest, I was able to go over the readings effortlessly. If you don’t read the assigned readings before class, there’s a big chance that the topics you’ll talk about in class will bore you to sleep (some of my classmates would fall asleep AT LEAST once a week in front of our instructor. Not even kidding). There was no midterm exam for this course; we had three papers and a final exam. Gerardo is a very generous marker. He cares more about the logic of arguments than about flowery language and wide vocabulary. As long as you show that you understand the readings and make a logically sound and valid argument on your paper, you will get a high mark.

Best thing I learned from taking this course: Start writing your papers early, but never be satisfied with your first draft. Sometimes you want to start writing a paper but are hesitant because you don’t exactly have your argument fully formed yet. That’s okay–just start writing and you will gradually figure out what it is exactly that you want to say in your paper.

 

Those are all the courses that I took in term one. In my next blog post, I will review all the courses that I took in term two. If you want to check out the other courses that I’ve reviewed so far, click the Course Reviews menu in the sidebar of my blog. If you have any questions about a professor, a class, or anything UBC-related, don’t hesitate to comment below or tweet me @seanceli!

Don’t Let Exam Results Decide Your Fate

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…and just like that, it’s finals season again! Yup, the term’s almost over.  If you’re like me, your motivation curve for this term probably looks like this:

Also, if you’re like me, you are probably mad at yourself for not giving much effort on your midterms because now you really have to ace your final exams. Finals season is probably making you feel worried, pressured, or even stressed. You probably need someone (or something) to quickly remind you that there’s no need to feel any of those. Let me (or the following videos) be that quick reminder.

In all honesty, I believe that finals season is actually an ideal time for studying and learning. No need to wake up early to go to lectures, or to sleep late to finish a paper. You have sufficient time to study and learn. So seize this opportunity to consume useful information, fall in love with interesting concepts, and immerse yourself in a world of exciting ideas.

Study for the sake of learning, not for the sake of grades. Besides, you should not let exam results determine your fate.

Sometimes it may get extremely stressful that you just want to say this:

But trust me, with hope and hard work, everything gets better in time.

Best of luck on your final exams! Don’t be silly and go study; your future self will thank you for that.

Term 1 Roundup (Part 2)

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ASTU 100B – FIRST YEAR CAP SEMINAR (Instructor: Dr. Laila Ferreira); PPE

I loved this course. Not only did I receive my highest mark in term one from this course, but it was also the only course where I enjoyed doing each and every assignment. This course is a part of the Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics (PPE) stream of the Coordinated Arts Program. ASTU’s main focus is academic research and writing. Each ASTU class is assigned a particular topic, and students analyze the academic discourse regarding this topic. Disability was the assigned topic to our class. Hence each of our reading and writing assignment revolved around the topic of disability. I definitely did not expect I would enjoy reading research papers about disability. Because I found the topic to be so interesting, I had an exhilarating time doing my research paper. Although our prof had the tendency to give out very confusing instructions, she was very helpful during her office hours. She did not have any problem with proofreading my drafts, so that definitely strengthened my research writing techniques.

One thing I learned from this course: Assigned readings are not as horrible as most students make them out to be.

 

POLI 100 – INTRODUCTION TO POLITICS (Instructor: Dr. Christopher Erickson); PPE

Poli 100 is another course in the PPE stream. Dr. Erickson always had interesting and hilarious lectures. He never failed to perfectly connect critical political concepts to celebrities (for instance, he mentioned Miley Cyrus when discussing the concept of globalization). That made waking up early to attend his 9 A.M. class a lot easier. Also, his lecture slides were very easy to follow and were sufficient to do well in the course. I only used the textbook whenever I felt like the lecture slides weren’t enough to understand a concept. The midterm and the final are fairly easy if you study the lecture slides. One thing I didn’t like, though, is that the five-page essay was worth as much as the final exam. I did not like this mainly because the essay that I turned in was crappy. And by crappy, I mean I-wish-I-don’t-ever-remember-that-I-wrote-such-paper-ever-again type of crappiness.

One thing I learned from this course: TRY TO DO YOUR PAPERS AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. AVOID STARTING YOUR PAPER THE NIGHT BEFORE IT IS DUE. Hate that I had to learn this the hard way.

ECON 101 – PRINCIPLES OF MICROECONOMICS (Instructor: Dr. Clive Chapple); PPE

Another course in the PPE stream. Even though the exams in this course were the longest and trickiest exams I’ve ever written in my life, it was hands down my most favourite course of the term! Dr. Chapple always had the most effective analogies and examples which made understanding the course more comprehensible. Every course-related work that he assigned to us–from his Clicker questions to our weekly Aplia online assignments–greatly helped in understanding the course better. I also liked that he posted lecture notes on Connect ahead of time. That way, all I had to do was print them out and annotate them in class. The midterm and final exam were very tricky and time-consuming in my opinion, but you can pull off a decent mark if you put a lot of time and effort in mastering the concepts.

One thing I learned from this course: If you are genuinely interested in a certain course, you won’t care about how difficult it is; you’ll always enjoy studying it.

 

That was how my term one went. Tomorrow, term two begins! I’m ready to see what it has to offer.

Term 1 Roundup (Part 1)

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So….. it’s 2014. Which is crazy. So crazy. I mean, I can’t even wrap my head around the fact that I’m not living in the 2000’s anymore! And now we’re about to start the fourth year of 2010’s? WHAT?!

Tomorrow, second term will commence. I would like to prepare for its commencement by looking back at my first term as a university student (because maybe by writing this I will be reminded that term one did not turn out the way I wanted it to, which might eventually inspire me to do better in the second term). Let’s dissect the term according to the five courses that I took:

SPANISH 101 – BEGINNER’S SPANISH I (Instructor: Bruno Nassi)

This course is probably the easiest course I took last term. Since I had already taken Spanish (Beginner’s 11) in high school, I started the course being instantly familiar with 1/3 of its content. Every class, we would always do three to four sets of practice activities from the textbook, which allowed us to be comfortable in pronouncing Spanish words and speaking basic Spanish phrases. I personally didn’t think that the online assignments for this course were very helpful, since most activities were essentially the same with those in the textbook. But overall, I think the marking was fair. Exams are quite easy if you do the workbook exercises.

One thing I learned from this course: When learning a language, it is important to regularly use the new words that you learn every day so you don’t forget them and so that you get a good grip on how they are used. I know it’s common sense to do this, but I know someone who thought he was too cool to do such a routine so he only memorized the vocabulary whenever exams were coming. (If it wasn’t that obvious, that someone is me)

 

MATH 184 – DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE AND COMMERCE (Instructor: Gonzalo Davila)

This class covers the same exact same content as Math 104. The final exam and midterm exams are also the same as those of Math 104. The only difference between the two courses is that Math 184 is intended for students who have never taken a Calculus course before. The 1.5-hour workshop every week is designed to improve the students’ Calculus techniques, ideally up to the skill level of those who have already taken Calculus. Personally, I loved going to the weekly workshops because it gave me the chance to practice exam-type problems on my own without being afraid of being stuck on a problem. Here’s the thing: math is not my greatest strength. I mean, I used to like it. But somehow, sometime in high school, math scared me. That’s why when I took this course, I was afraid that I would fail it. The weekly workshops were heaven sent. The TAs were very approachable and helpful. It also helped that we were put into learning groups; whenever I could not answer the problem, my group mates were very kind to go through the problem with me. Although I personally believe that my learning style did not suit our instructor’s lecturing style, I liked the fact that he always took the time after class to answer ALL individual questions even when there were twenty students trying to ask him. He also seemed to hate the idea of failing anyone — he even set up a two-hour midterm review session outside of class hours in order to make sure we were prepared for our midterm!

One thing I learned from the course: I love and hate WeBWork at the same time.

 

To be continued..