Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Environmental engineering 1st year fall courses

My 1st year engineering courses at UNBC this semester:
  • Introductory Physics I: Mechanics
  • General Chemistry 
  • General Chemistry Lab (apparently this is a separate course -  it's possible to take Chemistry sans lab)
  • Calculus
  • Introduction to Engineering Seminar
  • Geomorphology
I'm amazed at the resources available to students to help us be successful here. For example, you can get free tutoring at the Teaching and Learning Centre. They also try to get more senior students to sit in on first year math and science classes so they can set up separate help sessions later. Wow. Having not done math and science since, oh, high school, this makes me feel a lot better about things.
The one class I feel anxious about now is geomorphology. I thought this was going to be my fun, easy, non-number-crunching class. As it turns out, there are 9 labs, all of which must be handed in twice: once for a quality/completion check, and the second time after they post the answers and you mark up your own lab yourself. I see this is a good idea because I almost never look at assignments once I get them back, so I don't learn from my mistakes... but... I have 5 other classes to do here! Geez! I thought this one would require the least amount of work.
Sometimes, when a wave of cynicsm comes over me, I think they do this on purpose because a class about geology/geography would be just too enjoyable (and maybe easy) otherwise.
But anyways. Now that a wave of optimism has hit, I've decided to embrace this class and do my best to get the most out of it. Right? Right.

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