It is already that time of the year again. Summer is coming up and everyone is having a good time, or looking forward to a good time. For some, graduation is right around the quarter and the rest of their lives are about to begin. For others, it is just another year that has gone by, with everything seemingly the same. However, things have changed over the course of the year, and this would be a good time to go back and reflect.
For me, this would be the end of my first year at UCI. It has been a long three quarters here, with each quarter being harder and harder. So far, I was able to get though them with relative ease, but these are beginner classes. One of my objectives was to get the hard math courses out of the way, and I did manage to do that if I end up passing Calculus 2 this quarter. I’m en route to success, but with that final coming up, I sure do hope I can pass. Another goal I had at the beginning of the school year was to get into a club or organization of some sort. I technically did that with joining the Zot Blog program, so that was nice. I might try harder to join another club, like the animation club or the CS-GO club next year, but that is best left for later. Lastly, I had a goal to build a computer for personal use here at UCI. That was actually accomplished pretty early, near the end of first quarter. However, that computer has went through many revisions and ended up better than the one I have at home. It is my power house and was built from scratch with parts from Micro Center. It keeps me company and updated, and I can even get homework done on it. This might be the best goal I have accomplished this school year. Overall, I got my goals for the year completed, although some of them could be better.
Over the course of this school year. I have met many professors. Some can be described as outstanding, while others are just doing their jobs. One teacher that I saw was outstanding was my math 2A assistant professor, Xiaolong Li. Although he was hard to understand at first, his explanations got more and more in depth. He would also answer any question, no matter how dumb it sounded. For a Calculus class, this kind of help was quite welcoming. I was able to pass with a B thanks to his review question and answer sessions. Another instructor that felt really nice to work with was
Mustafa Hussain who taught ICS 10. This was one of the classes that I was forced to take in first quarter since all the classes I needed were full or locked. My expectations for the class was quite low, and I knew most of the content in the class. However, he found students like me and challenged us, giving us different coding assignments. He also made the class lecture’s interesting, and for an afternoon class, it was difficult to do. A class that was super hard for me, but had a decent professor was physics 3A with Thorsten Ritz. The class overall was difficult to me since this is the first time I took physics. He did make it bearable by curving the midterm and final, and if he didn’t, I wouldn’t have passed. Over the first year, I had ran into many great professors, and I hope to continue this trend.
If I had to teach a class on being undeclared, the main point that I would want my students to leave with is that undeclared life is not impossibly hard. It would include units on time management, unit management, and lastly tips and tricks on how to get major classes. Undeclared life is hard, but with the right alarms and emails made, getting into the major you want can be done.
My major undeclared specific goal that I accomplished was getting into ICS 31, the introductory programming class. It is one of the classes that is required to enter the computer science major, and it is a really hard class to get into if you are not already in computer science. I was able to snag a spot in spring quarter by camping website when restrictions drop, and I am currently passing the class. I still need to get into ICS 32 to officially have a chance to declare as computer science but it is still a big step forward.