The High School/College Thread (1 Viewer)

[Rob Lutter]

I'm currently a Computer Science major.

I have decided I am gonna change my major... but I am not sure to what. I am still throwing around Film (if I can get in ), Anthropology, English, and History. I am still completing my general ed courses mostly (I still have another semester's worth before I REALLY need to decide)

I just REALLY hate CS... no offense to all the CS people around here but coding just bores me half to death. I'm not terrible, but I seriously just realized one day that I don't want to be inside my introverted work space my entire life. Plus it would REALLY piss me off if I worked my ass of for 4/5 years only to NOT be able to get a job. One of my coworkers at my former summer workplace (Target) was a graduated CS major and had been working there for a year.

Sigh... throw on top of that girl problems that I have been having lately and my life is a relative cluterfuck

Meh, I'll figure something out! Life's too short to live in regret! Thanks for letting me vent.

BTW Nick,
800-1000 words? BAH! In my Composition 102 class last year I had to write a 20 page paper That was a research paper and I had to bust my ass for an entire week on the computer for HOURS a day to get that sucker finished. I can churn out 800 words in about 20 minutes nowadays if I know what I am talking about

PS: I had... FOUR exams last Wednesday. So no complaining

 

[Dome Vongvises]

I hate having allergies and colds at the same damn time. How did everybody's exams go? Get your results back yet? I'll find out Tuesday for Physiology and Wednesday for Physics.

I have a damn Immuno test this Monday. This will be a pain in the ass.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

I have an immuno test tomorrow. Wish me luck fellers. Can't believe I'm having it on my birthday. Does anybody else have exams on birthdays?

 

[NickSo]

I CANT CONCENTRATE ON ALL THIS FRICKIN READING!!!

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Theres some steam blown off

 

[Andrew 'Ange Hamm' Hamm]

NickSo,

For some reason, I always find that I can concentrate better on an assignment or project if I take a shower first. Call me weird, but the solitude and activity of the shower focuses me and gets my brain going on the problem first. However, if you don't have a shower right next to your office/studio, you can simply do a couple of breathing and/or stretching exercises before you start. And take breaks in your work to get up, move around, and stretch.

It's been my experience that the best friends you make in class are the ones where you work together to get grades. Competition blows.

WORD.

I'm in the unusual situation of studying for an MFA in Theatre Pedagogy, which is a fancy way to say I'm studying education. In looking at studies about pedagogy, it seems an almost universal truth that students who work together learn more and score higher as a group than students who compete with one another.

Theatre VCU's Pedagogy program is way cool. In addition to studying advanced Theatre topics, we look at the way college classes are taught in order to design and implement our own classes. Also, we get the chance from the very start to teach; I'm teaching Effective Speech and have assisted in a couple Acting classes. But it's freaking HARD work. Yes, even more reading and writing than poor, valiant NickSo.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

The problem is, sometimes the kids I get stuck in groups with are idiots. When I'm with friends or people I like, yes, groups do work better.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

I just failed my immuno test. I can't write or think fast enough. I guess a profession in emergency medicine is out of the question at this point. :frowning:

 

[Seth--L]

My wallet just felt the pinch of Avid Xpress Pro, though I have spent more money on books for a single class.

 

[Adam_S]

Nick, you'll develop your own little quirks for forcing yourself to concentrate on reading as you go. It may seem nice that you only have class a few hours a day compared to 7-8 of highschool, but in reality you should have about 1-2 hours of homework/reading/assignments/projects every week for every hour of class, my average four hour class my freshman year had about 9 hours of weekly reading and writing and I had 16 hours of courses. I had to write 18 papers my first semester, 14 of them were 5-6 pages (or about 1500-2000 words), and one was a 10 page research paper. Under pressure like that you have to develop some ways of focusing your mind on the reading.

Here are some things I've developed:
1 - extremely dense, laborious material like german philosophers (marx/hagel, weber, nietzshe) write a one sentance summary of each paragraph, becomes invaluable aid for writing and studying for exams later. Not REcommended however because it is EXTREMELY time consuming, but you'll know the material really freaking well.
2 - do stretching, physical activity from time to time to break the monotony. Hop up from your desk and do ten pushups and twenty-five situps, go back to your reading.
3 - develop good posture. if you slouch your head gets closer to what you're reading, you get in a more and more sedentary position, your body begins relaxing and before you know it your head is either in your reading material or you're staring off into space wondering if anyone has replied to that email or if you really should buy that new dvd, the review on htf sounded really good... etc. If you're sitting up straight, and forcing yourself to do that you're going to stay more alert and focused, and this brings us to the next tip
4 - bring your reading material up to eye level, most people don't have a lot of trouble reading a computer monitor, but they're not bending their head over looking at some reading material, and most people don't read fiction that way either. if you hold it up in front of you (bent arm length away) it helps you stay more alert (in my experience). Plus if it's a nice heavy work you get the added benefit of supporting the weight for an extended period of time, burning calories, and also increasing your stamina for muscle fatigue. seriously, holding hte material up in front of you helps me A LOT.
5. Un plug that goddamn ethernet jack. It is an evil procrastinatory device developed by satan himself.
6. Read it aloud (ignore any odd looks), this really helps get you in the feel of shakespeare and other classical texts (I really developed this strategy reading The Orlando Furioso last year).
7. uhhh shit, nevermind my girlfriend requests my presence (a very good distraction from the reading I SHOULD be doing right now)

in fact you'll probably develop more ways to distract your attention than to focus it, so don't despair...

Adam

 

[Dome Vongvises]

I hate immunology.

 

[Rob Lutter]

Hey Dome, can you explain Immunology for the layman? I have no clue what that is.

In other news, I basically just decided to switch from my computer science major to a theatre degree. I have found out that after Trigonometry, I cannot do math... no matter how much I study/attend lab... it's just beyond me. I was a halfway-decent actor in high school and know a few people in the program. I am also going to be submitting a portfolio to the film dept here at UCF (although, man, it looks TOUGH to get in ). In all truth, I am tired of being cramped up in my room studying all day long for my degree that I really have learned to hate... it's been racking my brain for quite a while. I'm also getting an itching to be on stage... I can't explain it... but it seems like ever since I stepped off, I have wanted to jump back on again.

Meh, setbacks come to all people. It's just a part of life.

 

[LDfan]

Rob, Immuniology in a nutshell is the study of and how the immune system works. It's an ever changing field of science and in my opinion is probably the most complex as far as biology goes.
Dome, Hang in there. When I took immunology the material gradually got easier for me to understand and cope with as the semester went by. In my class we ended the semester with the broad topics of disease and treatment options. That was the easiest stuff for me and essentially saved my butt in that class.

Good Luck,
Jeff

 

[Holadem]

I took immuno in high school, and usually back home, HS senior classes are roughly at the level of college sophomore here.

It was fascinating.

At the end of high school, we have this one big exam which is the sole requirement for graduation. The biology exam is 3 1/2 hours. 3 questions: the first 2 are designed to test your analytical thinking (analyse results of an experiment, stuff like that). The third one is an essay, often counting for a little more than half of the grade. That year, we got immunology for the essay. IIRC, the question was to explain explain T-Lymphocytes' role in the immune system. You had to know your stuff, no amount of BSing works for a science paper.

I completely killed it. Go the highest grade of that class. I could have written about that forever, I had absolute mastery of the subject. Even after seven years, although that exam was the very last biology anything I have done, I feel that it wouldn't take me more than browsing through a textbook to bring it all back. It was just fascinating stuff.

Just trying to make you feel better Dome.

--
H

 

[Garrett Lundy]

With the exception of occupation-specific schooling (Immunology for a doctor, Eastern Philosophy for an unemployed person), have any of the HTF college graduates ever used any of the "required" classes in their careers?

ie: Is my study of trig really going to help my business career?

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Just out of curiosity, anyone here go to or know someone attending University of Rochester? I'm aiming to go there for college (something involving math and/or physics, possibly go into Optics). My brother's friend went there and that's where I learned about it and got interested.

Here, at my crappy little high school, I recently aced a 100 on an AP Calc test (limits are easy as hell) and have an AP Physics test tomorrow (I'm missing it for a funeral, but I'm going to have to make it up). I hate AP Phys; the teacher is pretty good at getting us to understand the material, but very little ends up on the test and I'm not sure what I have to know for it. Oh well.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Just trying to make you feel better Dome.

The problem with my test-taking is a little thing called doubt. Evidently, I'm not the only one with this problem. More on that later.

The principles and concepts in immunology aren't that hard.

It's just that there are two things that go against me when I took this exam.

1. The content is simply voluminous. I'm learning so much material. The material itself isn't hard; there's just a lot of it. And there's so much similarity in terminology at certain points it gets sick. I nearly got my pre-B cells and pro-B cells mixed up at one point. Damn pre-BCR complex.

2. Time constraints. I'm the most godawful slowest test-taker on the planet. I think too much on problems to the point I overthink. This is where the doubt comes in. It's hard for me to just spit out information. I'm always thinking, "is this the correct answer" or "am I providing sufficient information". You think that the simple principle of just answering what the question asks is enough, but I've learned that professors always find a detail you're missing.

My immuno test was 24 questions, no mulitple choice, and three of them were fill-in-the-blank. That's two minutes an essay. And you're given fifty minutes. And I can't fucking draw to save my life (there were two questions that involved drawing: 1. draw the white pulp of the spleen and label major components and 2. draw an immunoglobulin and laber the following structures of light chain, heavy chain, constant region, variable region, and inter/intra molecular disulfide bonds). I know I forgot a fucking disulfide bond somewhere...

The complement questions were interesting. They involved theoretical experiments. Evidently, the professors expected you to answer on a whim. Life lesson to undergraduates: professors don't value critical thinking. They value quick/fast critical thinking. Trust me on this one: when you ask for help during office hours, they get pissed when they ask you a question and you sit there and try to compose an answer.

Holadem, it's funny you mention T cells right now. That's our current topic of study as we just got tested on general immuno and B-cell development.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Here, at my crappy little high school, I recently aced a 100 on an AP Calc test (limits are easy as hell) and have an AP Physics test tomorrow (I'm missing it for a funeral, but I'm going to have to make it up). I hate AP Phys; the teacher is pretty good at getting us to understand the material, but very little ends up on the test and I'm not sure what I have to know for it. Oh well.

Hmm... I didn't take it, but I can guess what could be on it.

basic kinematics
linear motion
rotational motion
circuits
fluids
vibrations/waves
sound
work/energy
momentum
heat
temperature/kinetic theory
thermodynamics
electric field/charge
capacitance
currents (ac/dc)
magnetism
light/optics
electromagnetics
basic nuclear
quantum mechanics

I think that may cover it.

 

[Mike Voigt]

Ever taken an unlimited-time, open-book, open-notes, closed-cohorts test? Take it home - no problem. Spend 24 hours on it, no problem. Want to use any software on it? Go for it - as long as it is on college systems or on your home PC. No fair using a supercomputer (assuming you could pay for the time).

4 problems on the test.

Oh, yeah, little thing known as an honor code. Violate it and at minimum you lose credit for the course (F). At worst - two steps up - you're out of school, permanently.

Took me 13.5 hours. Got an A.

Gotta love thermo.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Ever taken an unlimited-time, open-book, open-notes, closed-cohorts test?

I always hear about it, but I've never come across one. It's a lot like chasing down that Jersey Devil.

 

[Mark Dubbelboer]

wrote my first midterm in my graduate career and got absolutely annihilated.
it was a 50min test that should have had about a 2hr time limit.
i was pissed because i didn't have anytime to go over it, turns out no one else in the class even finished it.

it sucks getting used to a professors exam style when everyone else in the class is already familiar with it.

just a vent from someone who took their undergrad at a different place than all of my classmates.