Did anyone go through this in College...

[Gamingphreek]

I am a CS Major and I am discovering all the crap that goes on through college.

Has anyone experienced these situations? If so, what did you do?
My entry level programming courses are all using software and coding schemes we will never ever use again. They do not build off of each other, nor do they have any meaning later in programming (We are using BlueJ and we are having another computer grade our code WebCat (Like theCurator)).

I took REL 2424 (New Testament) because I needed to fill a core area and wanted to learn more about my religion. Well I got more than I bargained for. This class is harder than any Engineering, Math, or CS class I have ever taken. I studied until 3AM last night for the test, and I get my results and I got a 55. We are asked to look at a passage (Yes including something from the Gospels) and simply know who said it, who it was addressed to, and which book of the Bible it was in.
On the test today, I had this quote "This is my son, with whom I am well please, listen to him". And I had to say whether that was in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Absolutely ridiculous.
Instead of getting the 'A' that I thought I was I am looking at the possibility that I may not be able to get a C in this course. If I get a C on the Final Exam, then I get a C- for an elective course. (Class average on the test is a 73-- She does not under any circumstances curve either)

Anyone experienced a bunch of this stuff in college who can offer some encouragement or advice. I absolutely hate it when I study and study and then the test is so hard that I essentially just wasted all of that time.

-Kevin

 

[Modeps]

Base level programming classes are meant to teach you theory more than actual useful programming techniques. Hell, when I was in CS, my first class was in Turbo Pascal. While I thought it was lame at first, it does get you thinking about things differently.

 

[Anubis]

yes art and music history are not easy and we harder then my senior lvl physics classes

 

[TallBill]

Not a chance in hell that I'd take a religion class.

 

[destrekor]

Thats when you drop a course. After discovering how hard it likely will be after the first couple assignments or first test.

+

 

[ViviTheMage]

Originally posted by: Modeps
Base level programming classes are meant to teach you theory more than actual useful programming techniques. Hell, when I was in CS, my first class was in Turbo Pascal. While I thought it was lame at first, it does get you thinking about things differently.

yup, they are meant to teach you the concepts of how it works....seems like 2 years of concepts is a waste of money!!

 

[dquan97]

Had one of those classes too...VEN 2 (Viticulture - Grape Growing) class at UC Davis, one of the best colleges to study agriculture. I figured it's a lower division class w/ 3 units...shouldn't be that hard. Man, we learned all types of ways to growing and maintaining grape plants, including different ways to build a trellis, predators, and even specific concentration of chemicals in the soil! I was praying for a C in the final!!!

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: TallBill
Not a chance in hell that I'd take a religion class.

i took "religion and modern culture" at my college and it was great, the prof loved me because im an atheist and would always argue the other side of the issue with all the religious nutjobs in the class, got an A

 

[effowe]

I've gotten myself into some classes I thought were going to be throw away and they ended up being extremely hard. In situations like this you just need to talk to people in your other classes about which ones are easy, and which professors are lenient.

 

[Bibble]

Drop the class! I got a 62 on my first Calc II (I was taking it to fill a math/science requirement, didn't have to take it) test, but refused to drop a class in my first semester of college. Despite how hard I worked to bring my grade up (I got a 92 on the next test), I wound up with a C+ in the class, which my GPA will only recover from at the end of this semester (4th). I should have just dropped the damn class. Do not make the same mistake I did!

 

[Gooberlx2]

I always found late night study/cram sessions to be ultimately of no use. Nothing gets retained. I also found study groups to be particularly good time investment. Meet regularly and quiz each other the same way the professor tests. Doing that will allow you figure out which material is important and be better prepared for the exams.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage

Originally posted by: Modeps
Base level programming classes are meant to teach you theory more than actual useful programming techniques. Hell, when I was in CS, my first class was in Turbo Pascal. While I thought it was lame at first, it does get you thinking about things differently.

yup, they are meant to teach you the concepts of how it works....seems like 2 years of concepts is a waste of money!!

Well for instance, I have taken 3 years of programming prior to this.

Last year I took an Entry Level C++ class as a prerequisite and it was awesome. We used Visual C++ 2005 and I went to 1 lecture all semester and I got a 96 in the class.

This class is Java and suddenly they decided to teach us zhtml (Yes Zhtml). Not only that, we moved from simple I/O operations to HashMaps and GUI Interfaces. The concepts are easy enough, but BlueJ is ridiculous-- it attempts to do everything for you or something. Basically, it is impossible to trace the code and see how it works (No main method).

As for the Religion course-- biggest mistake ever. By the time I am finished reading and studying for the class, I am tired of reading the Bible for a while... its just burning me out.

As for dropping the course-- well, I have only 3 withdraw credits left. We start with 6 and I had to drop MultiVariable Calculus (3 Credits) to take it during the summer (I had an absolutely horrid teacher.... I got consecutive 10%'s on tests for missing one number at the beginning). I don't want to use the last 3 Withdraw credits with 2 more years to go in College.

-Kevin

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
they decided to teach us zhtml (Yes Zhtml).

Alright, I give up, what the fuck is zhtml?

 

[Aikouka]

Hah, most CS classes end up being a complete and utter waste depending on what you do for a living. I got more out of my internship than 3 years of my collegiate studies. usually those specialty classes end up being the good ones to take or the really high level ones. Although something like data structures, albeit low level, is good to grasp and is probably the only good foundation class that you really need.

I took a religion class, but it was Ancient History of the Middle East or something like that and it was so easy I slept through it... literally. Once that projector went on, I was out .

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Modeps

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
they decided to teach us zhtml (Yes Zhtml).

Alright, I give up, what the fuck is zhtml?

I don't know how to describe it. It is some Virginia Tech CS Dept modified version of html which tries to do everything for you... I have no idea.

-Kevin

 

[DaveSimmons]

You need to remember that you're hopefully in CS because you're interested in it and have some talent for it. If so, it will be eaiser for you than a class at the same difficulty level n another field. So when you take a physics or English literature class, you might have to work a lot harder just to get a B.

I tried to take non-CS classes that interested me instead of the easy ones, but I probably should have had more of a life instead .

Also, as mentioned above the languages in your first few programming classes don't matter since you're supposed to be learning the concepts. Once you've learned one language adding more is easy and helps prepare you for work after college.


Edit, study advice: don't fall behind and then try to catch up with cramming. Understand the material class by class, then summarize and review before the test.

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

Originally posted by: Modeps

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
they decided to teach us zhtml (Yes Zhtml).

Alright, I give up, what the fuck is zhtml?

I don't know how to describe it. It is some Virginia Tech CS Dept modified version of html which tries to do everything for you... I have no idea.

-Kevin

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You searched for zhtml [Index]
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There is no page titled "zhtml".

Closest I could find was "Zipped HTML" which is retarded, because you can zip HTML with Gzip using a simple web server configuration.

 

[nakedfrog]

Wow, I would be disappointed at HTML (or ZHTML) being taught in a programming class.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Wow, I would be disappointed at HTML (or ZHTML) being taught in a programming class.

Its not that I'm disappointed in that being taught-- the class is advertised as a Java class. We blitzed through the first couple topics and then we are now learning, simultaneously, how to embed Java script into Web Pages with this weird version of html.

Not only that this is our course load for a 3 credit class:
3x HW assignments a week (Est 1.5 hours for each)

Final Project Deliverables (about 13-15 hours of programming for each one) there are 3 total

Regular Deliverables (about 13-15 hours of programming for each one) there are 3 total

Labs (Completely different than anything we learn in class-- TA's don't even understand why our instructor is doing what he is doing and openly question him to us as he doesn't show up to Labs)

Tests (Who knows what these are on- we have so many different things they are trying to jam in our brains at once I have no way of knowing which stuff to attempt to spit back out) - 3x for the year including Final.

Im all for a hard class to get me learning more programming- I love to program, but this just seems absurd.

Link to ZK server on VT site

-Kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
You need to remember that you're hopefully in CS because you're interested in it and have some talent for it. If so, it will be eaiser for you than a class at the same difficulty level n another field. So when you take a physics or English literature class, you might have to work a lot harder just to get a B.

I tried to take non-CS classes that interested me instead of the easy ones, but I probably should have had more of a life instead .

Also, as mentioned above the languages in your first few programming classes don't matter since you're supposed to be learning the concepts. Once you've learned one language adding more is easy and helps prepare you for work after college.


Edit, study advice: don't fall behind and then try to catch up with cramming. Understand the material class by class, then summarize and review before the test.

I wasn't trying to cram-- but I was doing too much of catch up.. so that is definitely something I can work on.

In the case of New Testament though, over the course of 1 week we had to have read through 30 definitions (She expects word by word recitation of these on the test) as well as the entire Gospel of Matthew. This past test covered the 3 Gospels (Apparently by her standards John doesn't count -_-)

-Kevin

 

[lyssword]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Wow, I would be disappointed at HTML (or ZHTML) being taught in a programming class.

ZOMGHTML!

 

[ColdFusion718]

Originally posted by: dquan97
Had one of those classes too...VEN 2 (Viticulture - Grape Growing) class at UC Davis, one of the best colleges to study agriculture. I figured it's a lower division class w/ 3 units...shouldn't be that hard. Man, we learned all types of ways to growing and maintaining grape plants, including different ways to build a trellis, predators, and even specific concentration of chemicals in the soil! I was praying for a C in the final!!!

Haha who taught the class when you took it? Mine was taught by some history guy who owned a vineyard. My class was made unnecessarily hard by all the snobs who asked advanced questions and the prof. used them on his exams because they thought that they were "good ideas."

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

Link to ZK server on VT site

-Kevin

ZK is an AJAX framework, is that what you were referring to as ZHTML?

 

[Rio Rebel]

You will take some classes that are harder than they should be, or poorly designed, or both. That's the reality of it.

In some cases, it will be good to broaden your mind and your experiences. In others, it will be a waste of time and/or feeding the ego of a crappy professor. In either case, you learn that not everything in life will be fair, at least from your point of view, and that's not a bad lesson to learn either.

And if you look for things to suddenly be fair and equitable once you leave college and enter the workplace, well...

 

[maziwanka]

Originally posted by: Modeps
Base level programming classes are meant to teach you theory more than actual useful programming techniques. Hell, when I was in CS, my first class was in Turbo Pascal. While I thought it was lame at first, it does get you thinking about things differently.

my first programming class in HS was in qbasic, then turbo pascal and then i took data structures in java in college.

for me, humanities classes were always way harder than my science/engineering classes.