sean's place

Winter Quarter Reflections

As a 200th post (on the MoveableType backend, anyway), I feel it’s appropriate to offer a digression reflecting on Winter Quarter 2004.

I have to say it was most likely my most trying quarter ever.

Things I’m Proud Of:

• Working 18 hours per week while studying
• Pulling an A in Technical Writing
• Finishing CSC 349 – and passing, no less.
• Finding time to work with David (although I admit, he did most of the work) on my DGM AP-55.

Things I’m Not Proud Of:

• Falling apart mid-quarter.
• Over-stressing about nothing.
• Lack of creative energy, especially when it came to algorithm analysis.

School had a different feel. This was my first official quarter in the upper division (technically), but more than that, it was my first quarter of this academic year where I actually took classes. I transitioned from my LLNL co-op to school by working part time for them remotely, and while this brought in the mega-uber-bucks, it left me in a strange state of transition.

The first part of the quarter started off well. I easily managed my classes up until about the 6th week (except Philosophy, which was my designated write-off class in the event of overload. Should have taken it CR/NC.) At about the 6th week, I started getting burned out. I had no social life to speak of while up in the Bay Area and then compounded it further by being nearly unavailable for the entire span of Winter quarter.

I started working out in Winter quarter. A lot. I felt GREAT and even lost 20 pounds. About the time things started falling apart, I stopped working out. I ended up putting back on 10 pounds with daily doses of pizza and burgers. Nearly no soda though. That’s good.

About the 6th week, stress from Clint became overpowering. I’m not going to blame it on work. I’m not going to blame it on my classes. I am going to put the blame squarely on my inability to adjust to Clint’s class style this quarter. In fact, I am almost ready to write a paper for him explaining why his method of homework and testing in Algorithms is the wrong way to do it. I don’t feel I learned all that I could have, and in fact, am quite disappointed with the experience overall. In a theory course like this, mandatory excellence is not worthwhile. I understand Clint’s desire for automagic grading, but partial credit would have unfucked a lot of students over – including myself. There comes a point where stressing over a minor imperfection is counter-productive and doesn’t offer any tangible educational benefits.

This is what Clint should do in ETP 2.0:

• Support sub-assignments. If a problem has more than 1 part, put each part individually into a sub-assignment grouped into the existing assignment. Set the pass percentage at 80% or something. Allow for partial credit.
• Don’t insist on mandatory excellence. Cover more on the homeworks at the expense of perfection.
• Don’t regurgitate problems. The super-Pi rehash on the final was unfair. It was unfair to have us remember a such a small (and worthless) recurrence. You should have provided it – at the very least.

Crap. I’m floating here on the edge of all-out bitching, so I’m gonna step back a bit.

That’s it. Enough.

I’m done. Winter quarter is over. I learned more about myself than I did about any of the material. I learned that I am capable of handling load. I even got 349 done. Yay.