#wtf is this pset

[icarusgf]

i love school .......

#wtf is this pset

[gender-trash]

so, i went to pick up my 2.151 final and last two psets just now —

i DID get an A in the class, which i knew when the grades were posted last year. and im not sure if i mentioned this, but i kinda bombed the midterm and struggled a lot with the psets. so i figured i’d just done pretty well on the final or something (two of the four problems were super easy, but two of them i was working on basically until the end of the exam).

TURNS OUT, i got 98% and 100% respectively on the last two psets and fuckin’ 100% on the final. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN WTF!! reblog the rare Good Grades @gender-trash to get good grades in all your controls classes i GUESS

#the trashcan speaks #finest hell on earth #2.151blogging #ANTHYDING CAN HADPLEN

[macbethvsromeo]

random thoughts while doing my psets, part 1:

‘twas thinking about how often Chat tries to get a kiss from Ladybug and remembered that mans is inexperienced as hell

like what would he do if pre-relationship, he’s doing his usual antics and leans in a little for a kiss while yknow poking fun, and Ladybug (with her Newly Found feelings for Chat) just,,,,does it

and he’s just so shocked that he abruptly pulls away and lands on his ass because why did she just kiss me wtf just happened what is e = mc^2 huh

there’s a scene in The Kane Chronicles (third book) where the male protagonist is talking with his crush and they’re talking potential dates and he’s getting flustered and she just kisses him out of nowhere and

he’s 100% not prepared, she pulls away before his brain could piece together what’s happening, he’s “gaping like a fish” when its over, and all he can say afterwards is “...um”

I’m very happy to think that Chat Noir is the same

#not only is he shocked #hes inexperienced #hes internally screaming like omg what does a kiss feel like godfuckingdamnit the animes dont tELL YOU #u guys think he practices? #mans wants to be prepared aint nothing wrong with that #but if he does I think thats a huge source of amusement for Plagg #miraculous ladybug #oh look I also referenced my other fixation what a ride

[fallingfromdepression]

2/28/2021

took an L and submitted this pset late bc half of the pset answers weren’t complete at the actual deadline time. this is also the course i am legit on the lower end of the grade spectrum on for all submitted assignments and exams so far. and also the syllabus didn’t say anything about late assignment grading so I have the great risk of them being like ‘sorry you submitted it late so you get an automatic 0′. bro doesn’t me submitting it within 2 hours after the deadline count for anything ...

anyway i had most of yesterday (friday) and all of today (saturday) to work on it. i didn’t do any work on friday but yet i couldn’t get my brain in gear to spend the entire day today grinding it out. i worked on it on and off most of the day, and most of my time was me trying to figure out wtf the concepts needed were. my submission in the end is pretty shitty too anyway so ... man i need to get my ass in fear for the final assigment, report, and exam for this course. god bless my soul fr

#school 2021 #diary

[realtalk-princeton]

Question for Clover: any advice for sophomore-fall MAE classes? I'm enrolled in 305, 221 and 223 and scared for thermo/diff eqs. Do you recommend any strategies? I'm also taking intro to neuro for the Robotics certificate, and a Politics class on the presidency, should I consider PDFing that depending on how it goes?

Response from Clover:

Those are the same 3 MAEs I took in the fall! I took them along with a STEM certificate class as well, and then a PDFO distrubution. I think sophomore fall MAE can be challenging because you’re really thrust into it all. I’m going to write about each one individually below, and then follow up with other stuff.

Thermo has a “reputation” of sorts because lab makes it “1.5” classes with problem sets, quizzes, and lab reports, lab grading can be harsh, and the subject matter can be generally difficult. The class starts off weirdly easy with sort of just “in = out” stuff... but around midterm season, things escalate fast. Be sure to be ready for this jump, and stay on top of it. Everything builds in the class, so (for example) if you don’t understand the process in a Rankine cycle when you first learn it, fix that right away. Go to office hours, go back through the notes, etc. until you learn that weeks content, because otherwise that confusion will compound and leave you confused the rest of the semester and scrambling to learn from the ground up come finals period (speaking from experience 😔). I think one of the most important things is to make sure all the terms that get thrown around in lecture mean something to you. For me, a big issue was I’d sit down for a given weeks homework all about “X cycle problems”, and could do them just fine— but I didn’t understand what I was doing, just going through the motions of that week. When an exam rolled around and everything was mushed together, I couldn’t parse how to solve the problem because I didn’t know what was what. So really staying on top of new terms is good too. Exams were hard but dw the curve is your friend. As for labs, they were graded pretty harshly our year— this is dependent on the AIs you get. I recommend trying to finish your reports early and go to TA office hours to get feedback on your reports before turning them in— this will help you to not lose silly points and play to the graders preference (some graders care a lot about decimal places, for example).

305 is some tough math and has an equally tough weekly workload. Howard Stone’s lectures were great for me at the beginning because I could follow along step-by-step with him. Towards the end of the semester when things got into PDEs, I shifted my attention more to his gigantic 400 page notes, which are super detailed and helpful. Most important of all though are precepts. A lot of 305 preceptors are awesome and post great weekly notes (one even posted awesome study guides for the exams). I think 305 is mostly about being sure to give yourself enough time to really work through the problem sets— they’re extremely valuable to your understanding, so you don’t want to rush. Exams in 305 didn’t really throw curveballs like MAT 201/202 did imo— very comparable to the problem sets. Finally: don’t get spooked by the 1st HW. It is very long, but dw they don’t all take that long (except towards the very end of the course).

Finally... 223. Amazing. Spectacular. Andrej is amazing. His lectures are engaging even for 1.5 hrs, as he gives breaks and also doesn’t just read off slides. The slides supplement what he’s saying with the big formulas/theorems, and then he does problems off to the side, which is awesome!!! Usually lecture is just content, but he shows you how to set up problems which is helpful if you like seeing steps being worked out. Now this might be because I’m more of a “physical object” MAE person, but I think the content made sense throughout the whole course, and on top of that... was very interesting and cool!! Problem sets can be tricky but office hours are useful for getting the set-up. Exams are very comparable to homeworks, nothing where you’re like “wtf is this”. Only qualm was I didn’t find precepts very helpful and fully stopped going after the first few. It was mostly specific to the AIs teaching it didn’t help me in terms of my personal learning style, so gauge for yourself! I will say that not attending didn’t have an impact on my performance in the course, but if I’d attended and been engaged, I bet it would’ve helped me “get” the homework problems faster.

For every class above, what I recommend more than ANYTHING is to make PSET groups! I cannot stress this enough. Have weekly PSET checking sessions, even if it’s different groups for each class— you’ll really need it. Helps so much for working through problems, checking your answers, etc.. can also be (imo) more productive than office hours because it’s a small group so you all move at about the same pace and you’re not waiting around for help. Also a convenient and wonderful way to make MAE friends who will be with you in coming semesters :’)

I know this was hella long but yeah just wanted to give a gist of my personal advice/suggestions. It can be hard for sure, and take up a lot of time, but staying on top week to week will help prevent “world collapsing” moments. That sort of brings me to the final point, which is definitely be open to PDFing if you need. Fall semester taught me the value of taking it easy where I can. I got over the hump of “ohhh but I always wanna give 101%” and dropped some commitments and prioritized my work in certain ways such that I could get sleep, do clubs, etc.. If you think a PDF will help you focus more on your MAE classes, I would encourage you to consider it, because your MAE classes will be most important at the end of the day.

[realtalk-princeton]

Any advice for POL 345? I've heard mixed things about it—some people say it's super hard and some people say it's not bad at all, so I'm just really confused. I'm scared because I don't have any experience with R, either!

Response from Aspen:

(Disclaimer: I took it Fall 2019)

I’ve written quite a bit about POL 345 in a few asks, but the short of it is that is totally manageable. I had no coding experience, and the course is designed for that. It is SUPER overwhelming at first, but if you sit with your preceptor and ask for help in like... how to set your working directory... or wtf latex is, you should catch on very quickly. To be fair, I definitely like slacked on the coding side near the end of the semester, but I went into the partnered final with an A- just from doing decent on the p-sets and well on my quizzes (which are all in class but based on stats, no code, so AP stats knowledge taught me almost everything). Overall, don’t sweat it. I didn’t find it awful, but the p-sets and shit would be rough if they weren’t partnered, so just be prepared to spend time working on them and learning. 

I went to lecture like twice and precept a few times, and precept was infinitely more helpful. Never did the precept assignments either, just was frank with my preceptor and had her walk me through a lot of my mistakes on handouts, quizzes, and psets.