#math61

It’s officially Week 5, which means I’ve been at UCLA for a month now. This is a rundown of what has gone through my life since then:

- I got a B- on my first college midterm, Math 61 (Discrete Structures), and then promptly dropped the class that very day. So far, I have no regrets about that decision. I assume Math 61 requires prior knowledge of proofs since my professor didn’t go over how to do them in lecture. Since I have no experience writing proofs, I was a bit clueless.

- I got an A on my second midterm, Math 32a, the very same one I almost had a breakdown over because I thought I screwed up majorly. Math 32a is now my favorite class, and I love Professor May’s lectures.

- I went to Santa Monica twice. The first time was Week 1 with a friend, and the second Week 4 with my parents, who came for parents’ weekend. It’s nice to walk by the beach and listen to buskers, but I’d imagine I’ll be over it by some point.

- I joined clubs... and then dropped most of them. I think I went to the first couple of meetings of Bruin Space, ACM, FPS, and more, and then never showed up again. I am, however, still in two clubs...

- I got into two computer science-related clubs! That was really exciting for me because I want to learn new technologies and work on computer science projects. On the other hand, I think I got rejected from 5 others.

- I found my favorite dining hall (bplate), my favorite comfort food hall (feast), and my favorite take-out place (rende, and the study if it wasn’t so far).

- I’ve met some really awesome people that have made my transition to college seamless, yet I am still searching for some close friends/a friend group.

- I’ve had some classes that I really enjoyed (Math 32a comes to mind), and classes that had me bored out of my mind (CS 31).

- I’ve started skipping CS 31 as a result of my boredom, and accidentally missed the one CS 1 lecture I really wanted to go to because I accidentally slept in.

- I got into a rhythm with going to BFit, and now I can’t stop going (which is good).

- My meal schedule is more whack than my sleep schedule, which I’m guessing is far different than most people here.

- I signed up for practically every Bruin Film Society movie, but have yet to go to a single one. One of my roommates saw Quentin Tarantino in Westwood and Jonah Hill at the Mid 90s screening, and I am so jealous.

Cheatsheet, MATH61, classmate.

I just couldn’t do it.

I was taking MATH61 and ECON11 during the summer session, thought I would just “bang those out” and make my summer “productive”, and I couldn’t do it. I found the pace of the summer session impossible for a class like MATH61. I was dedicating every waking hour to the material, but there was so much of it that I barely had time to finish the homework from the last lecture (and take the corresponding quiz) before the next lecture revealed even more new principles and the next batch of homework. Forget understanding it all.

In addition to fitting 10 weeks of material into 6 weeks, there are far less opportunities to get tutoring on anything you don’t understand or even just the time to absorb the info. The TA and professor were very willing to help, but there was hardly any time to work on things you needed to practice.

But I’d thought maybe I could pull it off. I took the midterm, and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. After I got my score back, I realized that I’d thought that only because I didn’t grasp the complexity of many of the questions.

Anyway, you see where I’m going with this. I failed the midterm. The median was only a 62%, but still I was more than a third below that. The professor has a grading scheme where he’ll throw out the midterm grade if you kill it on the final, but I just didn’t feel like I could pull it off. I’d needed to look at the book solutions too many times. I really did not have a handle on the material.

So, I decided to drop the class. It was an expensive decision, as I get no refund on my summer session fee for the class, but It was that or possibly have a D or something in there. I’m going to keep going to lecture and discussion, so it won’t be a total loss, but I’m really, really, really disappointed that I couldn’t do it. It made me tear up to drop the class.

I took the ECON11 midterm in the midst of all that and, of course, didn’t study thoroughly enough for it because of the time I was putting into the math class. So, naturally, I made a lot of mistakes that shouldn’t have happened (and it’s 2:45am and I can’t sleep right now, thinking about them). I don’t have that exam back yet, but I’m sure it will be a grade or two lower than it should have been. The difference with this class, though, is that the material is easy for me to ramp up on, so I feel I can make up for the midterm score with a high final score.

I had hoped that meant that they skip at least 2 weeks' worth of material, but now it just seems like it's all in there, all 10 weeks' worth. We get a lot more lectures during the week than normal, but there's no time to absorb the concepts between lectures. Some new concept is introduced (or multiple new concepts all at once) and then before you've had a chance to digest any of that, another batch of new concepts is poured on your lap. 

You've got to be working at the pace of someone who leaves everything to the last minute, every single day. Bad.

Just took my MATH61 exam. It wasn't as devastating as I thought it would be, but, damn, I either did OK or I did horribly. I just hope I didn't fail it.

Another midterm tomorrow in ECON11.

I'm ready to have a summer.