The School Thread

Started classes this week: Advanced Management Account is my first one. The instructor is great, he really knows his material and is able to present it in a manner that is easily understandable. It's just unfortunate he's so goddamned hard to understand. He's from India, and speaks with a very thick accent which makes paying attention to a not very interesting course that much harder. But I had him for one of my three cost accounting courses, so I know it'll all turn out okay.

Second class is Critical Reading and Writing. Not sure about this one. Instructor seems okayish. Course content seems a little light. We'll be talking about Rhetoric and all the liberal arts stuff that goes along with it (logos, pathos, and ethos) and applying it to newspapers, blog articles, and movies. Could be interesting. Could be terrible. All depends on how the teacher ends up working out.

My class just got moved to another building because we were too loud for the professor who has her office next door to the classroom. I close the doors, and it's a cinder block room. She came over to tell me to be less boisterous, I told her we were early in the term and, based on previous years, things were going to get louder.

The scheduling office moved me within the hour.

Too boisterous for physicists. That's me.

In a brutal turn of events, after spending most of my semesters going "Yay, Latin!" and "OH DEAR GOD THE GREEK THE GREEK," it turns out that this semester I'm going to be crushed under the horrible crushing weight of Latin, and probably cope okay with the Greek.

It's messing with my head something fierce. The Latin class is a split senior level/graduate student class that's given me a first assignment of more lines than I was translating in two weeks for the last Latin class, all of it in somewhat archaic Latin. The grammar is dead simple, but I'm sometimes looking up every word in a line (hello, agricultural vocabulary!), and some of these words aren't in my dictionary--an eight-pound monstrosity--at all, or only defined in ways that clearly don't fit the way they're being used. I am confronting, for the first time in my rather long academic career, the prospect of being quite literally UNABLE to have my homework done in time for class tomorrow. I am appalled and somewhat distraught.

...over in Greek, it's going to be tough, because Greek is always tough, but the professor is a lot less brutal than (if equally friendly to) last semester's. We aren't getting any pop quizzes for a few weeks yet! Yay!

Okay. Enough posting on forums. Must get back to translating What A Noob Farmer Should Do from the Latin.

I keep being tempted to do a double major in mathematics, mostly cuz math is so neat. Today I was reading about the Poincare Conjecture, which got me reading wikipedia about topology, which is sort of derived from abstract algebra. Topology is a grad-level class, but Rutgers offers abstract algebra at the undergrad level... If you're in the mathematics honors program. Which I'm not cuz I'm only a math minor.

Why wouldn't I do this: I'd have to basically take two math classes per semester for the rest of my time at Rutgers, and I'm already taking two ec classes per semester. Not the end of the world, but that leaves precious little time for the other random things I'm interested in!

You should do it. It will make you a better person. Also, try and get a class with Doron Zeilberger.

On the sort of like school front, I started a 10 week short course in Bayesian stuff that is being hosted at Google. It's nice to have a full day each week doing nothing but learning.

WAY TO DISCOURAGE ME.

At this point I'm like 90% certain I'm going to do a double major in math and ec. I'll do the honors track in both; for ec that means a thesis, but as far as I can tell for math that just means taking classes I want to take anyway (abstract algebra). Also seriously math is neat and there's the small but nonzero chance I say fuckit with regards to a career and go for a math PhD.

My 9:50AM writing class was canceled. Email went out at 8:50, which sucks because I leave at around 8:20. Goddammit!

A math major is less work than you'd think for a lot of disciplines where you have to do it all anyway, yeah; go for it. Looks good on your resume too. The very high level classes are way more fun.

ABORT ABORT

Classes start next week. Blergh. I hope the one writing class I am taking doesn't completely suck. I've heard mixed things. The class I'm TAing for this semester is writing intensive and there are 25 students. Not one of which is non credit, god dammit.

I really really wish I could disagree with Jason here but I think he's right in this case. I have a (pure) math PhD and I left for industry after a couple postdocs because the academic market is terrible right now. For industry it was difficult to get my foot in the door at many places, I would have been much better off with an applied math, stats, CS or even physics PhD coming in. It all worked out in the end but it probably wasn't the easiest path you could take.

Heh the math PhD thing was a joke; I'm planning on getting an ec PhD. Job market is much better!

I'm just adding the math major because math is neat.

Stupid differential equations! It is not fair, I have not computed an integral in months!

Had my three classes this week--two that I'm taking, one that I'm teaching. The teaching one is GREAT--absolutely awesome group of students and there's enough of them I'm going to get an extra half-stipend so HOORAY!

The classes I'm taking...ugh. They'll be easy, so that's fine, but the one I took last night? It's a "digital communication" class, which means the guy puts up ads and a bunch of pretentious assholes offer their Really Important Opinions on what they mean. The kicker was when he said "okay everyone look to one of your neighbors and discuss this image" and both people on either side of me looked to the OTHER PERSON so I was the ONLY ONE that didn't have anyone to talk to. This class also requires a group video project and I haaaaaaaate group projects like crazy.

So fuck that class! They had a survey where they asked what you wanted to achieve by the end of the semester. I said "An A."

Try learning integrals in first year then not doing them for over two years, only to have them pop back up in fluid dynamic derivations in fourth year. I'm in physics/mechanics so I've been integrating for 4 years, but some of my pure mechanics classmates have been reading tables for 3 years and were mystified when asked to solve ax'' = bx' recently.

Yeah pretty much with the exception of the basic integration techniques, if you're not doing it regularly it's going right out of your head. If someone throws a trig substitution integral at me I'll be DOOMED.

So apparently I did well enough in Princeton's Algorithms 1 class on the Coursera platform last year that I'm being invited back for the new run that is just starting about right now as a Community TA. That means awesome new mod powers that I can exercise tyrannically.

Meanwhile I'm also doing the University of Washington's Programming Languages course on Coursera, which should arguably be called Functional Programming instead. Lots of cool stuff to learn but boy is everything abstract.

Scott Sumner likes to say that there's probably only a handful of people in the world who truly understand monetary economics. Based on five class sessions, my Money and Banking teacher is not one of them.

More relevant to this thread: she's Indian and - at the risk of descending into all sorts of cultural ignorance - her teaching style parallels what I know about the Indian educational system, which I understand places a high premium on rote memorization and very little value on deeper understanding. E.g., often when she presents information it's in the format: "When I ask you ______, you need to say _______" or something like that. Likewise, when presenting the first simple models we've worked with (bond market, liquidity preference, money market) her emphasis was on us memorizing "movement along the curve means _______," rather than trying to present some of the deeper dynamics and implications of these models. Contrast with e.g., my macroeconomics professor last semester who did heavily focus on exploring such dynamics.

Sick burn bro

What level is the class? I swear sub-3000s were just a wasteland in anything I took.

301, but frankly that's being generous to it. Most of the good stuff at Rutgers is upper level 300s and 400s.

Two and a half months until my undergrad is over. I'd say I can see the light at the end of the tunnel but it's going to be a two month spurt in daylight followed by another 2 years in a more complicated tunnel.

Lucky! I've got two years of undergrad to go. :(

Are you going for a Masters?

Yeah, MSc in mechanical/biomedical engineering, doing fluid dynamics research. I'm excited to be actually doing interesting/relevant courses and self-directed projects, the style of undergrad classes and projects is getting old.

1 day to write 1000 words on Tradition and Dissent in English Christianity. And go to work and hopefully get to Zumba. So yeah, I've signed up for an extra course on top of this one as well.

My name is Nyima and I am addicted to qualifications.

Yeah, uh, this kind of thing is never a good kind of thing to say.

Yeah, you're right. Mea culpa!

My Management Accounting teacher is also Indian. And he's pretty much exactly the opposite of that. "If I ask you how to increase profit what will your answer be? By the way, if you tell me reduce costs I'm going to give you a zero. What will you do? How will you implement it? And what is the full reaching effect of your actions?" He then went into a rather detailed example on cutting payroll, post-downsizing stress on a workforce, implications of being understaffed, etc. Really tries to drive home a deeper critical thinking about managerial actions. I have had more than a few supervisors in my day who would do well to take his course. And when we get into the numbers part (funny how high level accounting classes have little to no number crunching) he doesn't just give us a formula and expects us to memorize it. He shows us how it works and why it should (or shouldn't) be used.

My parents are Indian (went through the entire school system, including colleges), and my cousins still live there. You're right, it's very much focused on memorization. They don't care at all if you understand. Studying for tests, they give you the questions and the answers, and you simply have to regurgitate all of it later.

Man I miss school. This working for a living crap needs to end...

Who is using TeX for the first time? That's right, this guy!

You poor motherfucker.

Great, my Money and Banking professor is giving us a homework assignment. The trick is we're required to do it in groups of three and four. That works so well for the guy who lives 35 miles from campus and actually cares about his grade!

Group assignments are one of the worst things ever in undergraduate classes, especially those with 50+ people.

They're no picnic for graduates either, especially when the class is a motherfucking distance class. And they want you to make a video.

What the fuck?

Yah that sucks. A video???

I'm going to play my non-traditional student card today and ask if I can do mine solo.

At least with graduate students you have better odds that the other group members are actually interested in learning, have some desire to do well, and so forth. Sure it still isn't 100% but it isn't Billy's First College pop-up books either.

Agreed on the whole group projects thing. Usually there's one or two members of the group who end up doing the majority of the organization and work. And there wasn't a single one where gained I anything useful - from either my own group or listening to the presentations of the other groups. A big waste of time.

Hopefully the instructor will grant your request.

Nope! She's dedicated to minimizing the grading she has to do. :(

I'm so glad I chose an undergraduate degree that is punishingly difficult. I've had exactly one group project where 2 members were useless, and it's a small class so I just avoided those 2 like the plague from then on. I have yet to have a group project since then where I wasn't satisfied with the work put forth by every member. There is still imbalance, but no-one has been dead weight.

fwiw I'm still mostly in lower to mid level ec courses; I'm guessing that next year when I'm in the upper level stuff this shit will be a lot less annoying.

Another annoyance: my creative writing assignment is to transcribe a conversation I eavesdrop on, preferably one not school related. Because I guess the local student lounge / cafeteria is too convenient or something? I duno.

Also unless people are shouters it's really hard to eavesdrop! mostly I can get half a conversation, but not the whole thing.

I get group projects all the time. And I'm in a part time studies program designe for people who work 40-50 hours/week. Try doing group work with people who have full time jobs and families to take care of in addition to the standard group member archetypes!

Public transport is the best for this as you can be sat near some very weird conversations for extended periods.