Thus it begins again...
Mar. 30th, 2005 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elwenYesterday I learned how a 3 unit pass-fail class can be more terrible (and terrifying) than any 9 or 12 unit graded class I've taken. Ch/ChE91 is the CORE-replacement for the department, and it sounds like a mess. I'm sure everyone in the class either has a SURF paper they're going to copy or they're floundering as much as I am. I'm also sure that the chemistry majors will have a much easier time with it than ChemEs. Starting with the fact that they want the paper to be in the format you'd find in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
It's kind of bizarre how opposite Ch91 is to E11, the scientific writing class most engineering majors have to take. In E11, you're not allowed to copy a SURF paper, and you're absolutely not allowed to make anything up. If you don't have any research, you should write a review paper. In Ch91, you absolutely have to write a research paper, and if you don't have the data for it, you either make up the rest, or you get unpublished data from somewhere [some magical source that they wouldn't tell us how to find, naturally].
So I'm dropping that. I could probably scrounge something together if I took it now, and assuming it's actually pass-fail [about which the prof isn't certain] I'd probably pass. But it's just not worth the amount of stress it would create. If I take it next year, I'll have plenty of topics to choose from, but right now I'd have to rush my understanding of something I'm just starting to get into.
I'm replacing the evilest 3 units ever with the easiest 3 units ever, namely Glee Club. Which leaves me with a pretty wussy 36 unit schedule, but I want to see what it's like to, you know, actually read for my humanities and stuff.
So I'm taking Glee Club, 6 units of research, Hum/Pl8, ChE103c, and ESE171. I'm also auditing H112 because the Registrar are nazis who won't let me take it because I haven't completed both of my freshman humanities and they won't let me co-enroll.
ESE171 is the introductory atmospheric chemistry class, which shouldn't be too bad. Hopefully it will remind me how much I enjoy free radical kinetics, which is what got me into atmospheric chemistry to begin with.
ChE103c is, well, ChE103. Should be easier than the previous two terms if only because the prof is not as much of a slave driver. [The previous prof was definitely of the Flores mold, for those to whom that means something.] And at some point this term, we should get to the two phase mass transport that I should have known for my research in Japan last summer. Hurrah.
Hum/Pl8 is the frosh hum on ethics. I'd previously sworn that I'd never touch the philosophy hums, but none of this histories this term appealed to me, and I really do need to finish off this requirement now. My choices were ethics or "Knowledge and Reality", and I was actually leaning towards the latter, but they didn't post the reading list while I was deciding, and for Hum/Pl8 I get to read Kant's Metaphysics of Morals. I'd been meaning to read some Kant since some internet selector thing said his philosophy most closely matched my own, so I figure this is a good way to get myself to do it. We're also reading Leviathan, another book that's been on my reading list, so that's good as well. And now that I think about it, it'll probably be more fun toargue discuss ethics than reality.
H112 is a history class on Vikings. Once I saw the reading list, there was no way I wasn't going to take the class. The required books are six sagas including the Volsungs and Beowulf. I'd always been meaning to follow up on my Norse thing, and I actually have etexts of a bunch of sagas and random bits of the Eddas that I could find. So this class will be lots of fun. I was going to say that the reading list would have been perfect if it included the Eddas, and then on the first day we got a handout that's an excerpt.
I hadn't been exactly certain what it means to audit a class, but I just used that term when asking the prof. Apparently to him it means I read the books and participate in class, but I don't have to write the papers. I still have half a mind to do all the stuff and get a grade from him and then petition UASH to give me credit, though. [I have no idea if that actually works; I just heard it from someone once.] But with no existing pressure to write papers, I probably won't. Especially since both H112 and Hum/Pl8 require three papers over the course of the term, which probably means they're on very similar schedules. I'm fine with just auditing, I just start feeling weird because I'm only taking 36 units but then I realize I actually have closer to 45. At least it explains why my schedule isn't as free as I feel like it should be.
So that's this term. I'm starting to see the aftermath of last term, too. For one thing, Ch21b gave me a lower grade than I've gotten since first term sophomore year, which grieves me to no end. And I thought I was doing okay, too. I guess my understanding was just barely enough to do it all, and I ended up being swallowed by the standard deviation. Other classes were okay, although I had an interesting discussion today with the 103 prof about my solution to one of the questions on the final. I was basically penalized for knowing too much math, and thus being too dependent on the math instead of the physics of the problem. [Or rather, for starting with the math because I knew how to start it, rather than sit there and think about the physics for a bit, since I was under time pressure. And then by the time the math pointed out the blindingly obvious physical simplifications, I couldn't go back and change it, even if I had thought it would give me more points.] I'm not going to argue about it, but I do think it's just slightly unreasonable because back when we did Navier-Stokes, he said there were multiple approaches, and one was thinking about the physics first and using that to figure out what was important, but the other was just doing the math, and letting that tell you which terms were negligible. Mneh.
Anyhow, time to go read more of the Leviathan now, I guess. Antiquated Modern English spellings are kind of charming, but the punctuation is so bizarre.
It's kind of bizarre how opposite Ch91 is to E11, the scientific writing class most engineering majors have to take. In E11, you're not allowed to copy a SURF paper, and you're absolutely not allowed to make anything up. If you don't have any research, you should write a review paper. In Ch91, you absolutely have to write a research paper, and if you don't have the data for it, you either make up the rest, or you get unpublished data from somewhere [some magical source that they wouldn't tell us how to find, naturally].
So I'm dropping that. I could probably scrounge something together if I took it now, and assuming it's actually pass-fail [about which the prof isn't certain] I'd probably pass. But it's just not worth the amount of stress it would create. If I take it next year, I'll have plenty of topics to choose from, but right now I'd have to rush my understanding of something I'm just starting to get into.
I'm replacing the evilest 3 units ever with the easiest 3 units ever, namely Glee Club. Which leaves me with a pretty wussy 36 unit schedule, but I want to see what it's like to, you know, actually read for my humanities and stuff.
So I'm taking Glee Club, 6 units of research, Hum/Pl8, ChE103c, and ESE171. I'm also auditing H112 because the Registrar are nazis who won't let me take it because I haven't completed both of my freshman humanities and they won't let me co-enroll.
ESE171 is the introductory atmospheric chemistry class, which shouldn't be too bad. Hopefully it will remind me how much I enjoy free radical kinetics, which is what got me into atmospheric chemistry to begin with.
ChE103c is, well, ChE103. Should be easier than the previous two terms if only because the prof is not as much of a slave driver. [The previous prof was definitely of the Flores mold, for those to whom that means something.] And at some point this term, we should get to the two phase mass transport that I should have known for my research in Japan last summer. Hurrah.
Hum/Pl8 is the frosh hum on ethics. I'd previously sworn that I'd never touch the philosophy hums, but none of this histories this term appealed to me, and I really do need to finish off this requirement now. My choices were ethics or "Knowledge and Reality", and I was actually leaning towards the latter, but they didn't post the reading list while I was deciding, and for Hum/Pl8 I get to read Kant's Metaphysics of Morals. I'd been meaning to read some Kant since some internet selector thing said his philosophy most closely matched my own, so I figure this is a good way to get myself to do it. We're also reading Leviathan, another book that's been on my reading list, so that's good as well. And now that I think about it, it'll probably be more fun to
H112 is a history class on Vikings. Once I saw the reading list, there was no way I wasn't going to take the class. The required books are six sagas including the Volsungs and Beowulf. I'd always been meaning to follow up on my Norse thing, and I actually have etexts of a bunch of sagas and random bits of the Eddas that I could find. So this class will be lots of fun. I was going to say that the reading list would have been perfect if it included the Eddas, and then on the first day we got a handout that's an excerpt.
I hadn't been exactly certain what it means to audit a class, but I just used that term when asking the prof. Apparently to him it means I read the books and participate in class, but I don't have to write the papers. I still have half a mind to do all the stuff and get a grade from him and then petition UASH to give me credit, though. [I have no idea if that actually works; I just heard it from someone once.] But with no existing pressure to write papers, I probably won't. Especially since both H112 and Hum/Pl8 require three papers over the course of the term, which probably means they're on very similar schedules. I'm fine with just auditing, I just start feeling weird because I'm only taking 36 units but then I realize I actually have closer to 45. At least it explains why my schedule isn't as free as I feel like it should be.
So that's this term. I'm starting to see the aftermath of last term, too. For one thing, Ch21b gave me a lower grade than I've gotten since first term sophomore year, which grieves me to no end. And I thought I was doing okay, too. I guess my understanding was just barely enough to do it all, and I ended up being swallowed by the standard deviation. Other classes were okay, although I had an interesting discussion today with the 103 prof about my solution to one of the questions on the final. I was basically penalized for knowing too much math, and thus being too dependent on the math instead of the physics of the problem. [Or rather, for starting with the math because I knew how to start it, rather than sit there and think about the physics for a bit, since I was under time pressure. And then by the time the math pointed out the blindingly obvious physical simplifications, I couldn't go back and change it, even if I had thought it would give me more points.] I'm not going to argue about it, but I do think it's just slightly unreasonable because back when we did Navier-Stokes, he said there were multiple approaches, and one was thinking about the physics first and using that to figure out what was important, but the other was just doing the math, and letting that tell you which terms were negligible. Mneh.
Anyhow, time to go read more of the Leviathan now, I guess. Antiquated Modern English spellings are kind of charming, but the punctuation is so bizarre.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-31 10:34 am (UTC)to go screw itselfto just accept your add card. Since when are they paying attention to prereqs?? I know Meredith is done with her advanced humanities and she still has a frosh hum to take. Luigi has taken several of Warren Brown's advanced classes and just took his second frosh hum last term. I don't know what's up with them, but they seem unusually annoying this term. But the Viking class does look fun. ^^Anyway, there's nothing wrong with taking 36 units. You seem like you're always taking a lot more than that, and it's nice to have light terms. (I sort of do the same 42-45 units every term because I hate going above that; I already get pretty stressed with that number of units, and I also never take my activities for credit. Stupid me.)
no subject
Date: 2005-03-31 05:42 pm (UTC)It was funny because we had a sub in Hum/Pl8 today, and at first there were only two people, and we were both juniors. The prof couldn't believe we hadn't gotten around to finishing our frosh hums yet, and so the other person started telling her how she had already taken a few advanced hums. And the prof got this really scandalized look on her face and was like, "That is so not allowed!" ^o^;;
According to the Registrar's website, you're supposed to always register for activities like music and sports. But they probably just say that so they can say they try to keep us from killing ourselves by taking a heavy courseload as well as having a ton of extracurriculars *cough*Ewen*cough*.