So I’ve just finished my first two days of classes and have taken a look at all of the classes I’m going to take this quarter. My classes are:
- Porter College Writing (Required for first year Porter College students)
- Intro to Computer Science (Not required by anything, but just for my experience as I’ve never officially taken a “real” computer science class before)
- Classical Music (Getting my elective requirement done)
As I’m a Computer Science: Game Design major, it might be a bit weird that I don’t have a math class. The reason why I don’t have a math class when I really should is because I missed the math placement exams at summer orientation. How could I miss something so crucial? Well, I didn’t go to summer orientation at all.
The reason why I missed orientation was because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to go to UCSC. As I failed AP Calculus my 2nd semester of senior year, UCSC had every right to cancel my enrollment. This just made me feel like if I went to orientation, I would be wasting my time driving to NorCal just throwing away money and getting info on a school I was going to get kicked out of. Luckily they showed mercy and let me in anyway. Even though I wasn’t sure if I was really going to enroll or not, I should have just went to orientation… I’m hoping this will be my only big mistake at UCSC, but something tells me there’s a lot worse to come.
Now the plan is to self-study Algebra 2/Precalculus/Trigonometry so I can get into Calculus I next quarter. Originally I was going to take a Precalculus class to build a foundation, but if I do that now I think I would be setting myself too far behind as I’m aiming to graduate in 4 years.
Anyway, onto my first impressions for my actual classes this quarter:
- Porter College Writing: I have a feeling I’m going to hate this class. I’m just not great at writing essays. Yes, writing instructions, tutorials, articles, and other material of that sort I can do. But school essays were never really my forte. What’s worse is that the class also involves public presentations like sharing your essays, reading in front of the class, etc. I absolutely suck at doing things under pressure… Other than that, the class seems to be much better than any high school english class I’ve had though.
- Intro to Computer Science: At first I was uncertain about this class, but now I have a feeling it was a good choice to choose it. Most Computer Science: Game Design majors probably have taken computer science classes in high school. Unfortunately, my high school didn’t offer these classes, so everything I’ve learned with the computer is pretty much self-taught. It’s nice to finally have a real life, experienced person teaching me something that I enjoy. What’s great is that the professor is a mathematician, so I’m guessing I will be seeing the math side of things for computer science which is great since I’ve honestly never really linked the two. Yeah I can see the similarities with the operations, functions, physics equations, and stuff, but I’ve never actually done a mathematical algorithm like the one we did in the first lecture. I was also never expecting to go over pseudocode or UNIX either. I’m really looking forward to this class.
- Classical Music: This seems like a pretty cool class. I recognized a lot of the songs that were played on the first day, but I never knew who composed them or really analyzed them before. The class seems to be pretty chill, it’s just that you have to really make the effort to go to every class and pay attention in it if you’re going to pass. In other words it seems like it’s an easy class, but it does require a reasonable level of dedication too.
Regardless of my opinion, there is one thing I can say for sure regarding all of my classes so far. All of my professors seem to be very passionate about what they teach. This is great and definitely something I didn’t see very often back in high school! Before it seemed like most teachers were just teaching to get their paycheck while explaining something they kinda knew. Now the professors here are actually experienced and on top of that they actually reflect their enjoyment on the subject as they lecture. I can definitely tell this will help me focus and respect the professor/class more.
Tags: class, classes, classical, college, compsci, computers, core, days, first, intro, music, porter, science, ucsc, writing