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 (Spring 2020), my schedule ended up consisting of:
- CHEM 102 (General Chemistry II)
- CHEM 054 (General Chemistry Lab II)
- BE 101 (Introduction to Bioengineering II)
- MATH 241 (Calculus IV)
- PHYS 151 (Principles of Physics II: Electromagnetism and Radiation)
CHEM 102 (General Chemistry II)
Unlike CHEM 101 last semester, I found CHEM 102 to be rather straightforward. Honestly, the course functioned more like a math class with such formulaic topics like thermodynamics, equilibrium, chemical kinetics, and some electrochemistry. My professor, Dr. Donald Berry, was okay and generally taught us what we needed to know for exams. Actually hearing chemistry lectures was quite refreshing compared to last semester where I essentially taught myself everything, and 1 hour lectures are infinitely more bearable than 2 hour group problem solving sessions. Still, I learned best from reading the textbook and completing the OWL homework assignments, which aligned quite closely with the exam problems. We had 3 midterms and a final which were all very manageable even after we transitioned to remote learning. Not much changed besides lectures being delivered over Canvas, so I wasn’t too bothered by anything about this course.
CHEM 054 (General Chemistry Lab II)
CHEM 054 was probably the course that was affected the most by COVID and the transition to remote learning for me this semester. When I actually conducted labs in-person during the first half of the semester, I found it rather tiring to attend my section on Thursdays from 9-12PM (3 hour chemistry labs in the morning are not the move). Also, the first few labs were on thermodynamics and titrations, which I found to be really annoying to complete. There were numerous times where I was rushing until the very end of the period to finish my lab assignment. Fortunately, my TA Alistair was the GOAT (like Mary last semester) and greatly helped out with answering the in-lab and post-lab questions. Once we transitioned to remote learning, the instructors essentially just gave us data to analyze based on the results the TA’s had obtained when completing the labs on their own. I definitely enjoyed this much easier task, as chemistry lab is one of the banes of my existence and some of the labs we were scheduled to conduct after spring break were supposed to be particularly painstaking. Conceptually, I’d say that CHEM 054 was more difficult than CHEM 053, primarily because the course discussed transition metals, which weren’t covered in either CHEM 101 or 102. Thankfully, I was bailed out again by COVID because it meant that we didn’t have to complete a practical or written exam for this course.
BE 101 (Introduction to Bioengineering II)
Like BE 100, I found BE 101 to be a useless course, though not as much. I learned some helpful skills pertaining to Arduino and SolidWorks, but nothing too in-depth. The transition to remote learning was a bit annoying for this course, because we had to complete our Arduino assignments via a very jank software in TinkerCAD. Nonetheless, I do respect my professor, Dr. Michael Hast, for trying his best. There was also a final project for this course which had us design a device to aid the COVID pandemic in some way using TinkerCAD and SolidWorks. My project was extremely minimal effort because I knew it wouldn’t be graded very harshly, so I didn’t really care (I’m clearly a great student).
MATH 241 (Calculus IV)
Ah, MATH 241. This course consumed most of my time this semester, as the homeworks took very long to complete despite only consisting of a few questions. I spent numerous weekends (and often longer) just trying to finish that week’s problem set, and my solutions typically took up several pages of paper. I sort of lucked out because my professor, Dr. Michael Carchidi, did not follow the standard material from the textbook. Instead, he just provided his own written notes (very impressive and comprehensive) that somewhat related to what we were supposed to be learning. This was very beneficial because Dr. Carchidi’s approach was rather formulaic, and his exams directly correlated with the approach to solving the homework problems. Dr. Carchidi also went significantly slower with his pace compared to the other MATH 241 section. For example, our first midterm didn’t even cover all of the first two chapters, while the other section’s first midterm covered chapters 1-3. Conceptually, I didn’t really understand what MATH 241 was about. Partial differential equations are quite Chinese, and everything seriously boiled down to guessing and checking solutions. I sincerely hope I don’t need to know the content covered in this class for the future, since we didn’t even get to many of the later topics.
PHYS 151 (Principles of Physics II: Electromagnetism and Radiation)
Having taken Martino’s AP Physics class, PHYS 151 wasn’t too bad. However, I still don’t really understand some of the more abstract concepts like magnetic fields/flux, RL/LC circuits, etc. My professor, Dr. Evelyn Thomson, was actually very good at explaining the material. Once we transitioned to remote learning, she also posted her written notes on Canvas, which were very comprehensive and greatly aided me in studying for exams. The homeworks were somewhat time-consuming and difficult, but at least the weekly quizzes were okay. The 2 midterms and final were admittedly quite challenging, and I still can’t believe we had to use a double integral on the final despite MATH 114 not even being a prerequisite for this course.
Conclusions
Overall, this semester was quite unique with the COVID pandemic striking halfway through and prompting our transition to remote learning. It was difficult trying to stay motivated at home and engaging with the course material through online lectures. Still, I’m very thankful for the memories I did manage to make with friends during the first half of the semester, especially at RCF retreat. There’s definitely plenty more I could say, but I simply don’t feel like writing it all down as of now.