First Week!!! (Spring 2018)

Hello!!! And welcome to the first Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron post for the 2018 spring semester! I hope you all had great breaks!

My break was divided in half. First, I went back home and saw all my family and friends. I stayed there until January first. Then I went to Florida with my family. While there, I ran a half marathon with my father and sister, and visited some of the theme parks. Overall it was a good time to relax and really get a break from college life. But it was only preparation for the tough semester I would have ahead of me, now that I’ve been admitted to the College of Engineering.

This semester I don’t have as many semester hours as I’ve had previously. However, my impression after the first week is that they are going to be as hard as the classes I’ve had before, and require a lot of hard work. Starting with introductory physics, (because it’s the easiest one so far), my professor seemed very good and he really takes his time to explain things. The hard part about this course is the labs I will have on Wednesdays from 7-9:50 p.m. I hope I will really be alright doing experiments by the end of a busy day, because I have four classes before the lab this day.

Now we go to Static. The things being taught in this course are very interesting, but my professor said he will be giving surprise quizzes in both the lectures and discussions, so I will really have to keep my studies up-to-date with what is being taught in the course if I want to do well. Then I have two mathematics classes. One is calculus II, and the other is a class all about matrices. I feel like these courses should go OK if I focus the right amount of time on them. What is a little funny about both these courses and statics, is that I have to turn in my homework by hand, and that’s something I haven’t done since high school. I guess my professors really want to start focusing on how I’m solving the problems, now that I’m done with general education courses.

Finally, my hardest course is Intro to Computing. I’ve been afraid to take this class because it’s all about programming and I don’t know anything about programming. Things got worse after the first class, because everyone else seemed to have some experience with programming in the past. I’m fine with being the student with the least experience in the class, but my worry is that the professor is just going to assume we all knew a little bit about it. In addition, we all have classroom laptops that can only (and have to) be used in the class. That was an additional challenge for me because I’m not used to using laptops during classes at all. I always use only my notebook and the textbook at most. So, because I was very worried, I went to my professor’s office hours to express my worries about the course. I’ve learned that this was a very useful thing to do, as he helped me calm down and told me that I didn’t need any previous experience with programming. I left his office much more calm and more happy to be taking his course. So I’ve learned that office hours are not only for students to ask things about what is being taught or help with homework, you can always go there to express your feelings toward the course to the professor and he will clarify all you uncertainties for you and most certainly put you in the right way.

So, that is all I’ve learned about my classes this week. I really hope we all can keep up  the good work this semester. See you soon!!!

 

Oh, I almost forgot, that’s a picture of downtown’s Christmas decorations:

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