The Student Lounge Thread.

[Rakansen]

Started posting here again. It feels good to be back!

I'm really nervous for finals week. My English grade right now is on the verge of dropping to a B, and judging from how I did on my recent assignments, I feel like my grade will further decrease, and I'm afraid I may get my first B in high school.

 

[Marsalevsky]

Finals week is over!! Well for me, it was over Wednesday, but still. Now next semester I can start on my new major - Computer Programming & Analysis. Unfortunately (for me) ended up with a 3.7 GPA because I screwed up and forgot to turn in /one/ assignment that dropped my grade in Computer Concepts dramatically. Sociology was fun though, probably my favorite class. My professor was a nut (in the good way). Overly glad Networking is finished. Absolutely hated that class.

 

[Psynergy]

Can I just say that Vector Calculus is disgusting? Because oh my god that is the most awful thing I've ever done in math. So many people in our class feel so screwed for the final so that makes me feel a lot better since I feel the same way, but it really doesn't help that we had discussion sections cancelled time after time throughout the semester, especially on the last week of lecture. Final is on Monday though which is both good and bad. At least I finish the semester on Tuesday.

 

[Vernikova]

All A's again Except for one class that I intentionally bombed halfway through the semester.

 

[Zora]

Can I just say that Vector Calculus is disgusting? Because oh my god that is the most awful thing I've ever done in math. So many people in our class feel so screwed for the final so that makes me feel a lot better since I feel the same way, but it really doesn't help that we had discussion sections cancelled time after time throughout the semester, especially on the last week of lecture. Final is on Monday though which is both good and bad. At least I finish the semester on Tuesday.

In retrospect, I find the calculus series as a whole to be a mess. Calculus III is particular frustrating because a lot of ideas (e.g. and especially the idea of integral as "area under the curve"--not useful for line/surface integrals) just don't prepare you well for that class.

But after taking a year of E&M which involves vector calculus all the time, the computations and concepts from vector calculus don't bother me. I really do not like either Stewart's or Thomas's treatment of the subject. In particular, the main point of calculus III is to be able to compute integrals in R[sup]3[/sup]. However, you need to start worrying about the type of function (i.e. vector field, parametric, or scalar function) as well as the shape and type of integral you're going (line/surface/volume).

In either case, I felt for the vector calculus half specifically, Schey's book called Div Grad Curl was a much clearer presentation on the subject; that book was specifically written for physicists going on to junior-level electromagnetism. In E&M, divergence theorem and stokes' theorem are extremely important; whereas Thomas and Stewart think of them as a passing thought--they're useful to be sure, but I'm not sure Thomas/Stewart really understand those theorems particularly well nor understand how extremely important they are in applied field theories.

Anyway, I'm rambling here, so I'll just keep it at that. :L

 

[Schade]

So, my home exam is closing in to an end. It is'n the hardest thing to write an essay about reading and learning-difficulties among students in todays society. The hard part is writing 12 pages on the topic!! Luckily, I have a lot of time to finish it, which is good, concidering how busy my upcoming week is going to be!

 

[General Nonsense]

Finals start this week. I feel I am going in for eternal judgment.....

 

[Raxacoricofallapatorius]

I'm flying home from college for a month in three days as of tomorrow!

The downside? I got three tests to do until then.

 

[Lord Scalgon]

Not sure if this belongs here or in the questions thread, but anyone have their perspectives on job agencies? Is it worth it or not worth it? I know there are mixed perspectives on this, but I'd like to hear others' take on this.

Aside from that, I just love take-home finals. Gives me some cushion when it comes to conflicting plans, but better than running into a conflict.

 

[Crimson Penguin]

Just finished my calc 3 final a couple of hours ago. It was pretty straightforward - the questions weren't very hard, just time-consuming (especially Lagrange multipliers... those things are so tedious and annoying). Overall, I'm happy with how I did. Now I just have to study for history and chem for the next four days, and then I can finally enjoy my Christmas holiday.

 

[Kacho]

1 more final tmrw. omg professors update the grade already ROFL

 

[John Madden]

one paper and one final left to submit tomorrow

then there's a group presentation at like 9 PM that i won't need to spend more than 5 minutes on in total

then i play the waiting game to see how close i get to a 4.0

 

[Psynergy]

Well I survived my finals and I'll be going home tomorrow. Not at all pleased with how my math final went but the two I had today went over well despite one being at 8 am. At least I get to enjoy a month without any school work.

 

[V]

Completely freaking out because I don't remember submitting my final project to the Dropbox which I am required to do in order to earn credit for the course, so I emailed my professor and the Dropbox says I submitted it but my iPad can't open the directions to submit it so I'm not sure if it is submitted the right way or not and so I'm freaking out I'm glad I thought of this AFTER I got out of work because I feel like they'd frown upon a complete mental breakdown and I need my job so GAAAAAH I will end up checking my email every five minutes now until my prof replies

 

[Puma Italia]

This semester went faster than most, and I really don't know why. I took my finals already, and I did well on all of them, so that's cool.

 

[John Madden]

Just finished my last final (group presentation on Medicaid expansion) about 25 minutes ago

Just need to email one last thing (peer evaluations for participation for the same class) and revise another (my statement of intent for a different program to pursue a dual degree) and then it's time to start drinking.

 

[Zora]

done with all my loose projects for senior lab.

Just need to study for my GE class and put final touches on my quantum final. Less than 40 hours remain until freedom.

 

[ebevan91]

Ugh... I hate how one bad grade will completely wreck your GPA if you haven't had many classes at a school. Like, I got an F in a finance course and my GPA dropped over a whole point :|

Well at least the school has a forgiveness policy so long as I retake the class the following semester.

 

[Psynergy]

So I'm back home and done for the semester until mid-late January. I also got my final math grade and despite my concerns of potentially having to retake that class (I bombed the second midterm math finals are math finals), I actually got a C in the class so I'm fine there. The fact that I will most likely never touch vector calculus again is good since I still have no idea how to use Stokes' Theorem. That means I can rest easy without fear of my grades since normally I wouldn't find out until like 4 weeks from now.

 

[Zora]

So I'm back home and done for the semester until mid-late January. I also got my final math grade and despite my concerns of potentially having to retake that class (I bombed the second midterm math finals are math finals), I actually got a C in the class so I'm fine there. The fact that I will most likely never touch vector calculus again is good since I still have no idea how to use Stokes' Theorem. That means I can rest easy without fear of my grades since normally I wouldn't find out until like 4 weeks from now.

Stokes' Theorem exists for pretty much justifying and proving lots of nice properties about vector fields whose curl is zero--e.g., such vector fields can be written as a gradient of a scalar and any line integral about such a field is path-independent.

If you're going into anywhere that involves thermodynamics (at least, beyond an upper division introduction), electromagnetism (using Maxwell's Equations), fluid dynamics, and other fields that require studying vector fields, you'll probably see it again. However, there, it'll probably be introduced in the context of showing such-and-such field has zero curl so we'll instead focus on this scalar function instead.