cap

5 Reasons Why You Should Consider Signing Up For CAP

Standard

The Coordinated Arts Program (CAP) is a multidisciplinary program designed to help first-year Arts students have a smooth transition to university. Being a CAP student in my first year, I can honestly say that the program was an enormous help in finding my community at UBC. If you are in the Faculty of Arts and are still undecided about what courses you want to register for, here are five reasons why you should definitely consider signing up for CAP:

1. Cohort Program

CAP is a cohort-based program. That means your CAP stream-mates are also your classmates in all your CAP courses. This makes making and meeting friends a lot easier. It’s always helpful to have a group of people who can answer your questions about class assignments, whom you can rant to about your professors, and who would be willing to form study groups with you.

2. Stream Choices

If you have an area of interest in mind, but are still not sure whether you should pursue an academic career in that area or not, CAP offers different stream choices (Media Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics (PPE), Law & Society, Individual & Society, and Global Citizens) that can help you figure out what you really want.

Being in the PPE stream definitely strengthened my interest to pursue a career in Economics.

3. Coordinated

Professors consult each other so that they can “coordinate” your assignments. They try to avoid giving out quizzes/midterms/final exams on the same day to give CAP students sufficient time to study for each course. Most importantly, professors try to make the content of each course related to one another. For instance, since I was in the PPE stream,  our ASTU research paper required us to use what we had learned from ECON 101 and POLI 100 to write a research paper on a topic given to us by our ASTU professor. Additionally, each term, CAP professors conduct an inspiring joint lecture to demonstrate how to interconnect different courses or interests to study an issue or concept.

4. CAP-only events

Signing up for CAP gives you access to CAP-only events like pizza parties, seminars, Meet Your Professors Day, and CAP conference.

5. Gateway Space

gatewayIf you are going to spend a lot of time on campus to study and do some work, you are going to need a good study spot. Gateway Space is a study space in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre exclusive to ArtsOne and CAP students. Gateway Space was my favourite study spot in my first year because a) there were always seats available b) it’s a quiet study space and c) students can bring food inside, so whenever I was hungry, I would always eat while working to make the most out of my breaks!

CAP played an important role in my first year. I am so glad that I signed up for it as it paved way for many different opportunities that I wouldn’t have accessed without being a CAP student. If you have any questions about CAP, don’t hesitate to ask me! I will try to respond as soon as possible. Have fun registering for courses!

Term 1 Roundup (Part 2)

Standard

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)

Standard

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..