Spring Ahead
The spring semester began last week at UMass Lowell and so far it's been good to finally be back at the university. Last semester I studied elsewhere and the semester before that I vacationed. Having acquired that all important calculus course from the last semester, plans have changed slightly. When I last wrote about education it was unknown whether the school I was at would offer computing courses this spring or if I had to split my course times between two schools. Now it's not even a question - I'm once again a full time student at UMass.
My courses lined up for this semester are:
The first course listed above satisfies both a general education
requirement and my interest in the latter part of U.S. history. Nothing special here but good old US of A history. Cool professor and a really engaging classroom as it is primarily a discussion based course.
The second course is where my distaste is so far with this semester, in that we have not done anything. Three days we met last week for class and I know it's only the first week, but this is the fourth course in a sequence and I expected that it would pick up right where the third course left off with or without a brief refresher. Needless to say, I'm a bit disappointed as I had higher expectations. I expected to be writing programs within the first week, but not just any programs, but applications with substance or real specifications, none of this hello world crap - hello world was the first day in Computing I years ago. In the other three courses we are already into many chapters and had homework handed out on the first day of class. All the professor did this week for Computing IV was talk about how to log into the course's Google group, and explain how to edit the course Wiki. He even mentioned a little about an IDE, but come on - this is stuff that could be learned as the course progresses or stuff that a student should know already or they don't take the course. Can we get started already?
The third and fourth courses are pretty serious math courses with nothing really to speak of that's quite important, other than the fact I am and will be enjoying discrete structures for the near future - I just find it to be a fascinating and relevant area of mathematics, as far as CS is concerned.
So that's the schedule for this semester, and let's not forget Sun on the days I don't have class. Nevertheless, if you need to contact Lozzi Solutions please do so and rest assured you can expect a quick response.
(for more info on schedules and program progress see the About page's listed schedules in the sidebar)
- U.S. History Since 1877 (43.112)
- Computing IV (91.204)
- Calculus III (92.231)
- Discrete Structures I (92.321)
The second course is where my distaste is so far with this semester, in that we have not done anything. Three days we met last week for class and I know it's only the first week, but this is the fourth course in a sequence and I expected that it would pick up right where the third course left off with or without a brief refresher. Needless to say, I'm a bit disappointed as I had higher expectations. I expected to be writing programs within the first week, but not just any programs, but applications with substance or real specifications, none of this hello world crap - hello world was the first day in Computing I years ago. In the other three courses we are already into many chapters and had homework handed out on the first day of class. All the professor did this week for Computing IV was talk about how to log into the course's Google group, and explain how to edit the course Wiki. He even mentioned a little about an IDE, but come on - this is stuff that could be learned as the course progresses or stuff that a student should know already or they don't take the course. Can we get started already?
The third and fourth courses are pretty serious math courses with nothing really to speak of that's quite important, other than the fact I am and will be enjoying discrete structures for the near future - I just find it to be a fascinating and relevant area of mathematics, as far as CS is concerned.
So that's the schedule for this semester, and let's not forget Sun on the days I don't have class. Nevertheless, if you need to contact Lozzi Solutions please do so and rest assured you can expect a quick response.
(for more info on schedules and program progress see the About page's listed schedules in the sidebar)
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