#berkeleyx

The homework for the Academic and Business Writing course offered by Berkeley is some sort of journal with a series of prompts to practice writing, so this is where I will be posting them!

The amount of writing I’m required to do now has decreased significantly from my high school days, and even maybe my first year university days. I haven’t taken a course that requires heavy writing in approximately two years now, so the writing I usually do is creative writing, or journalling. These are very low commitment and for my personal enjoyment, and thus I feel the standards I set for myself are also practically nonexistent. 

When I write for personal purposes, it’s a form of sorting out my thoughts for myself. Even if I’m trying to write something creative, it is usually writing about a situation I am familiar with, in a different perspective, so I can feel more liberated to explore my opinions with the guise that it doesn’t actually involve me. When I journal, it’s a form of therapy. Honestly, I’m not quite sure if I enjoy it because I write longhand and so it feels tedious, and sometimes my attention span feels too short to fully write down all the thoughts I have. However, I think it’s a good method to get me to slow down and really evaluate my thoughts on my current state of mind, or a situation. 

Thinking of writing otherwise, however, is not an enjoyable experience. I think my academic/professional writing skills are not quite up to par, since I spend most of my time communicating in a rather colloquial manner. I think I also compare myself very quickly to peers who seem to have an easier and more elegant way with words, thus making me feel stunted and left behind, immediately. Hopefully this perception has faded in the past couple years, and I can work more on self-improvement on this skill I wish to have. 

This has been some real adventure in learning data-science, in past one and half months or so.

The first couple of weeks were easy and since they were kind of introductory. I had been taking all the lab exams, except the lab05 on the last day and at the fag end of hour.

Sometimes I was stuck with lack on internet connectivity and some times other distractions. Made some silly mistakes on lab02 and lab03.

lab04 was conducted in multiple sittings and at first I thought that I might be actually not being able to pass this lab, but in the end, after revising the problems again, I managed to solve a few more.

Lab05 was the toughest of all, since that encompassed the entire course, and also the level of problems presented were greater in difficulty level, compared to other four labs.

Thankfully, I started working on lab05, almost 24 hours in advance, else my performance would have been far less presentable.

I reviewed the questions once again, after a bit of break and I was able to solve, few more questions. That break was when I slept at night.

This has been a recurring pattern in this case, if there are problems on which I am stuck, I do not keep sticking at them, but move to next ones, ie those who are not related to previous ones. Usually, there are string of problems, and unless you have been able to solve the previous one, you cannot solve the next one, because input required is carried through the previous solution.

I solve the different set of problem and then come back, and I have found that, I am able to connect and solve the problems.

Just managed to finish and pass LAB 04 of the course, with many disruptions during the test(allocated just about 100 mins for lab, old habits of engineering college, die hard!), in the nick of time.