Obviously, for the first lesson, the professors/TAs just basically introduce themselves and give you course syllabus. Grading system here is quite different.. a lot of marks placed on assignments, tests and quizzes, not so much on final exams, and for English, class participation is also counted (ugh!). We have to get 90 to get A, 80 will be B and so on. Kristan and David (the RAs for my dorm floor) have asked the whole floor to get a GPA average of 3.0 (which is apparently not that easy to get.. that means you have to get B for everything), and they said that if the floor average is 3.5, we can ask them to do something crazy haha. I think Americans are quite outspoken in the sense that they dare to ask questions and to speak up. Like whenever a prof asks someone to share his/her opinions, there'll always be someone who raises up his hand and shares his views voluntarily, and sometimes there're so many people who raise up their hands that the prof can't possibly go to every single person. And for classes, I find that Americans like to take the front seats haha.
Anyway, for programming, the professor asked us to address him by his first name, and I'll be using Apple computers to do programming. Don't know if this is good or bad..I haven't used a Mac before, but they don't seem that difficult to use. Only a little bit confusing at first. And at the end of the first lesson, the prof just gave us an assignment to be submitted today (2nd lesson), expecting us to do our own readings. And today, I've another assignment that's due on Friday. I find programming quite interesting and actually understand the stuff the book's talking about, but one big problem I have is that I can't compile the code and if you can't compile, you can't run the program (i.e. cannot do the assignment). Got quite frustrated trying to figure out how to compile. I think I'll just have to ask for help haha.
I think for me, the Interp & Arg class would have to be the hardest (English, or writing, has never been my forte) and my uni requires all freshmen to take that course. The course syllabus for this one is the thickest and looking through it, I realized I'll have homework for every lesson, mostly reading but have to prepare points to discuss for the following lesson and I think every week, there's an assignment. There're 3 major papers for the course, and we have to do 2 drafts (rough & final drafts) for each. After the rough draft, there'll be peer review (there'll be 4 people helping to review your draft) and after peer review, we have to write review statement, which will count toward the final paper. And for the paper, we have to do citations and write bibliography (sounds like PW uugggh!!! The citations look exactly like the ones we did for PW). Doesn't help that on Monday, my teacher was like, "This course is freaking difficult". Yes, she actually said that. Luckily, my section is doing food, so hopefully, lessons won't be that boring since we'll be discussing food. I better speak up on Friday or else I won't have class participation mark. Today, we had a discussion and almost everyone was like raising up their hands to speak up. Have to get used to that pretty soon huh.
Most interesting lesson would probably have to be Econs. It sounds boring and dry because let's face it, I've done it before (and didn't get credit for it), so I'm pretty familiar with much of the material. But my prof has quite a good reputation here. And I actually enjoy his lessons. Anyway, he was like saying that we'll have games a few times during lect, in which there'll be buying and selling. At the end of each game, you have to hand in your earnings. At the end of the sem, your earnings will be totalled up and you'll be given numbers for a lucky draw. So if you earn higher, you'll have more numbers (more chances to win). The top prize is $100 cash haha..not bad huh. Oh apparently we'll have to do our assignments before he discusses the topics, so we're not expected to be accurate. I think assignments are in fact graded based on effort and not accuracy. There're also detailed solutions, so you can also cheat if you want to. But my prof said he has intentionally put a wrong digit in a multitude of numbers so if we make that error, he'll know that we're cheating haha.
The Math courses are so-so. I find Calculus boring..it was like a revision to me (doing vectors now). Doesn't help that prof goes v fast, speaks in a boring tone etc. And I think my TA for recitation is quite inexperienced. He's British so has a British accent (which to me is so hard to understand) and doesn't seem to have confidence in himself. Concepts of Math is very cheem, but I actually find it quite interesting (doing logic now). Unfortunately, prof is also very bad, and this time, my TA is Indian, so it's another accent haha.
Anyway, I realized that I've sort of found people that I know in almost all my classes. I know Brian, this guy on my floor, is in the same calculus and programming class as me. I can actually ask him for help in programming, but me being me, I haven't really spoken with a lot of the guys yet and yup..haven't really spoken with him yet. Gerentt is in the same calculus class as me, Kim is in the same computing skills class as me, Lawrence (another guy on my floor) is in the same English class as me, and I think Kamya is in the same Econs class. I only don't know anyone in my Math Concepts recitation, but I think that's partly cos it's mostly sophomores taking the course.
Also, I'm already sick of the food on campus. Granted, I haven't really eaten at all the places yet, but they all seem to be selling the same thing. I'm usually not that fussy about food, but when you've to eat roughly the same thing everyday, you're definitely gonna get very sick of it. It's the meal plan la.. have so many meals and cash given to spend on. If we don't spend on them, we're gonna be wasting our money cos we've already paid for our meal plan.
The biggest thing I don't like here is the weather. Oh my goodness, the weather just totally sucks! It rains everyday. And it's the kind of rain that's not very heavy, but heavy enough so that you'll have to use umbrella. Actually, I realize that everyone here uses umbrella anyway. And it sort of rains the entire day..seems to me that it doesn't rain at night only..bad timing huh. The rain is also very unpredictable. Like when you go in for one class, it can be not raining but after 50min, it can be raining heavily. Very irritating. And rain means that the floors in the buildings are very slippery. I almost slipped twice on Monday and I saw others almost slipping also. But my "moment" came today when I totally slipped in front of everyone else and it was really in front of a lot of people. How embarrassing! And I didn't even walk fast or anything.
Oh ya, US Open is going on now. Super good timing huh. But very sad la..Andy Roddick lost in the first round! How unbelievable! Oh and I just found out results for the Badminton World Championships that ended last week. Can't believe that US actually won the men's doubles! C'mon, US has never been good in badminton! But yay for Taufik! Oh and MU so far has a 100%record. Yay to them too! It gets harder to follow soccer scores here, but I'm trying my best haha.
Anyway, I better start doing my homework now or else I'll be having another late night. Shoulders are aching so badly from staring at the com and trying to figure out programming homework. I think I'll do the rest of my homework first and do my programming homework tomorrow.