I’m technically writing this post on December 20th, 2020, because I only made this blog at the end of this past summer. Understandably, I’ve forgotten a lot of my personal introspection and thoughts from the actual time (I’m also too lazy to write more), so this post will pretty much be restricted to a brief course review. If you’re interested, I’ve written actual semester reflections starting sophomore year.
Overview
This semester (Fall 2019), my schedule ended up consisting of:
- CHEM 101 (General Chemistry I)
- CHEM 053 (General Chemistry Lab I)
- BE 100 (Introduction to Bioengineering)
- MATH 240 (Calculus III)
- PHYS 150 (Principles of Physics I: Mechanics and Wave Motion)
- WRIT 050 (Writing Seminar in HSOC: Biomedicine and the New Science of Alternative Medicine)
CHEM 101 (General Chemistry I)
I truly despised everything about CHEM 101. I took this class with Dr. Neil Tomson, whom I found to be rather condescending whenever students asked any questions. I happened to be in the SAIL (Structure Active In-Class Learning) section, which meant that Dr. Tomson did not actually teach us anything whatsoever. Instead, we were expected to read the textbook beforehand and complete worksheets during class time, which consisted of mandatory 2 hour sessions every Tuesday and Thursday from 1:30-3:30PM. Frankly, it was complete torture - I can’t even begin to describe the joy I felt each week once the clock hit 3:30PM on those days. The course started out easy with reviews of basic stoichiometry and ideal gases, but then progressed to really confusing topics like quantum mechanics and molecular orbital theory (I still honestly have no idea what MO theory is). I only learned from the textbook and my OWL homework assignments. Our class had one positive in that while the other CHEM 101 sections had 3 midterms and a final, we only had 2 midterms and a final. I experienced some highs and lows in this course, from doing not so well on my first midterm to getting the high score on the second midterm. But I must say that the CHEM 101 final was arguably the most difficult test I have ever taken for school. I’m legitimately traumatized from that test, and I remember coming out of it strongly believing that at least half the class had failed. It also didn’t help that the final took place on December 19th from 6-8PM, which was the last possible time slot for Fall 2019 finals, so I was both mentally and emotionally drained. Unfortunately, I never found out what I received as a grade on the final, but I don’t think it was too good.
CHEM 053 (General Chemistry Lab I)
Although I hate lab courses, CHEM 053 honestly wasn’t that bad. Some labs were quite painstaking, like literally watching paint dry, but most were fairly simple so I was able to leave class early a lot of the times. My TA Mary was actually the GOAT and so helpful in completing the in-lab and post-lab assignments - I definitely would hate this course a lot more if it weren’t for her. Here’s a picture of my lab section:
CHEM 053 also featured a written final exam as well as a practical midterm exam. The written exam was rather difficult, but the practical exam was possibly one of my clutchest finesses ever (along with the CIM conveyor belt project from freshman year of high school). For the practical exam, the instructors had released a set of 4 possible lab prompts beforehand and told us that they would randomly give us 2 to complete during a 75 minute period. Like a good student, I read over the prompts several times and studied exactly how I wanted to go about approaching the labs. Come exam time, I successfully completed the first lab (although my percent yield was horrible, but that’s okay). However, as I was reading the second lab prompt, I realized that there was an extra paragraph I hadn’t seen before in the documents they distributed beforehand. Consequently, all chaos broke loose inside me because I really did not know how to incorporate this new information. The lab involved identifying an unknown metal in a metal carbonate, but after I ran my experiments for the first time, I saw that my numbers did not align with any metal on the periodic table. Unfortunately, I only had about 15 minutes left in the exam period, so I knew I couldn’t conduct the lab again because I hadn’t written anything down to submit yet. Therefore, I put all my chips on the metal being magnesium, because I was fairly certain that the metal had to be from Group II, which left only magnesium and calcium. By assuming that my final atomic mass was roughly close to magnesium’s, I essentially back-solved all of my required calculations to the very first step. I’m serious when I say that I’ve never written or punched numbers into my calculator that quickly before. I was so stressed during the test that I even experienced a sore throat. Anyways, it turns out that the unknown metal was actually calcium, but most of the points were in the observations and the process of identifying that it was a Group II metal, so I actually did not get that terrible of a grade. Clutch.
BE 100 (Introduction to Bioengineering)
BE 100 was a useless course. It featured several lectures introducing students to various BE fields, but honestly no one paid any attention because we had no clue what the professors were talking about. Instead, BE 100 was a surprisingly productive time to work on writing seminar! There were also a few labs, but they weren’t even very hands-on so I got nothing out of them. Oh, the homework assignments were extremely dumb as well. I’m still salty that one of the homeworks involved using Adobe Illustrator to recreate a literal picture of a baseball bat. We BE students have never even used Adobe Illustrator before, and they ask to replicate an actual real-life picture? Fortunately, I had my friend Jonathan, who is a design major and very skilled at Adobe Illustrator, to assist me. Still, the bat assignment will go down in infamy for me.
MATH 240 (Calculus III)
MATH 240 was somewhat of a traumatic experience. I believe that it was actually my first college lecture one fateful Tuesday morning when Dr. Ted C. K. Chinburg began my explaining the Google PageRank algorithm with all its Markov matrices and whatnot. For reference, Markov matrices aren’t even taught until the end of MATH 312, which is the official linear algebra course, and we hadn’t even talked about what a matrix was yet. There’s a reason that the Google PageRank algorithm was worth hundreds of billions of dollars - it’s complex and definitely not something that first-year students would understand. Afterward, I walked out of the lecture room thinking, “What have I just gotten myself into?” Being in the Engineering section, I literally had no idea what Dr. Chinburg was saying for any of his lectures on the applications of linear algebra and differential equations. However, I was too stubborn to skip lectures until after the second midterm, when I realized that the tests did not even concern the lecture content. I essentially self-studied the entirety of MATH 240 off of the textbook and Ivan Li’s videos (bless his soul). My TA Flora (bless her soul) also helped immensely with completing the homework assignments, which were based off of real-life applications that no one understood. I basically went to every one of Flora’s office hours and worked through the problems with her and a few other students - I really couldn’t have gotten through this course otherwise.
PHYS 150 (Principles of Physics I: Mechanics and Wave Motion)
Having taken Martino’s AP Physics class, PHYS 150 was comparatively very straightforward. Similar to CHEM 101, I was also in a SAIL section featuring 2 hour problem solving sessions. However, my group always finished rather quickly, which allowed me to head out early. My professor, Dr. Bob Johnson, was a bit of an awkward dude, but he taught the material very well. The problem sets were fairly time-consuming but nothing too terrible. The two midterms and final were okay as well, although I still don’t understand how the frictional force was zero for the second midterm. I was actually quite impressed by the final exam’s questions because they integrated so many concepts together while maintaining coherent problems. Overall, PHYS 150 was one of my least stressful courses this semester, and solving mechanics problems was sometimes even therapeutic.
WRIT 050 (Writing Seminar in HSOC: Biomedicine and the New Science of Alternative Medicine)
I think enough people have complained about writing seminar, so there’s not much else for me to add. It definitely required the most amount of time out of all my classes this semester, and the assignments were the epitome of busy work without any real value. I hated everything about the book outline, literature review, and justificatory article. Honestly, the most helpful part of writing seminar was putting together a resume and a cover letter. I know the course is basically graded for effort, but I just could not find any motivation in me to write whatsoever. My professor, Dr. Michael Chiappini, was actually very understanding and greatly helped me revise my documents. However, I was still so annoyed when putting together my midterm and final portfolios because I’m too much of a perfectionist. Anyways, I’m just very glad to be done with this course now.
Conclusions
I do have a lot more to say about this semester being that it was my introduction to college, but I simply don’t feel like writing more as of now. It was definitely a significant adjustment in going from tiny High Tech to a huge city school in Penn. The semester featured its highs and lows, but mostly importantly, I experienced many new things and formed friendships and memories which I will cherish forever.