It was doable but I did not do really well in it.

It was “easy” but I did not manage to get everything.

I really have to buck up in this course.

Results later.

I finished the paper in time. I thought it was pretty OK.

And I was delightedly surprised when I scored 99/115! I felt great.

Until I saw this:

Alright maybe the exam was easy to MANY people. (My roommate remarked that the exam was “painless.” What sheer audacity!) I thought it was kinda challenging. =.=

But I still feel great about my scores.

Oh my, I know all that I blog about recently is academics. But that’s all I have in my mind these days. No time to think about too many things.

Subject: Listen up!

From: Babak AYAZIFAR

Date: Sep 23, 2008 2:54 am

Message:

If you are receiving this shortly after my sending it (near 3am Tuesday), then I have doctor’s orders for you:

Hit the sack and get some rest.

You’ll need a clear head for exams in EE20.

And anyone who misses the exam because of sleeping through it will be roasted, toasted, and offered as a sacrificial delicacy to the hyenas.

Cheers,

Babak.

Hahaha… Such a cool prof!

I feel like I am walking on the very thin line between giving up and moving forward in my computer science class.

Sometimes it feels as if studying all these stuff is like banging my head on the wall.

I think I am getting used to it, but that might not be the case too. Sigh. But I want to master all these stuff due to the potential that lies with the mastery of the knowledge within it.

—–

Math quiz was exceptionally easy today. I walked out of class before time.

And I scored 30/45 in that EE20N quiz. Decent but nothing to shout about.

Pop Quiz

Today was a long day… started class at eight and came back at nine at night…

And, to my surprise, there was a POP Quiz for my EE20N class today.

I concluded that the only way to survive here is to be extremely consistent and up to date with the material. Then whatever pop quiz would just be a natural thing.

So here was how it went. We were given 30 minutes for the quiz. I was really panicky at the start and brain was stuck. Then I hear pencils scribbling everywhere and I was just staring at the first question.

But I remembered what my CS61A Professor Brian Harvey said, something to the tune of “Don’t think that your pencils always have to be moving in university exams. Students don’t read the question properly enough, and those who spend more time reading and thinking about the question end up doing better.”

Somehow I kept my cool and went ahead and finished the paper which seemed intractable at first.

Oh and just writing my name on the paper amounted to  5 points out of the total of 45. You cannot get 0 marks here.

—

The sole question in my previous Physics 7B Lecture: Estimate the number of moles and water molucules in the world’s oceans. (So fun!!! I wish all quizzes were like that.)

In my previous Math quiz I forgot to square r while finding the area of under the parametric curve and only realized it right before time was over. (I was thinking how come this quiz so easy wan.) I dunno what I did somehow I scribbled stuff that amounted to a 7 out of 10 points.

I think if I were in the more rigid UK my scores would have been lower. In programming exams, they wouldn’t care much if you ended up with additional parentheses at the end of the lines of code. Upon hearing that, I jokingly said that if I were in the UK I would have lost marks due to the missing parentheses because the marking scheme said so and so and therefore minus marks. Things are more holistic here.

—

It came across my mind to drop a course since I barely had time to do anything much but study, eat, hang out with friends, and go online. People think I am crazy for taking 20 units. I guess it’s the norm for the internationals.

But anyway, if I were to consider dropping a class, EE20N would have been the one to go. BUT I enjoy the class and Professor so much that I would never want to drop it. Hence, no dropping of classes but to go ahead and do it until the end. This is one technical class where I actually feel entertained by attending it.

—

Ern Sheong was like that in Secondary School:

Prefect, Scout, Badminton, Green House, Math and Science Club, etc etc.

In Junior College in Singapore:

Council, Guitar, Cross Country, Gavel Club, Olympiads, Research, etc. etc.

In UC Berkeley this semester:

Study, study, study.

Never joined anything yet, unless you count the Christian group I am in. But I actually don’t mind it. I realized that doing all kinds of stuff just to make your CV look good is not worth it. I just wanna chill and enjoy the academics. And not to mention that I don’t really have so much time left over after school this semester. Is there something wrong with that? In any case, I never found anything interesting which I feel that I have to join here. Maybe next semester.

—

Hmmm I am still speaking like a Malaysian. As in, pure Malaysian English, which I modify the second time I say something if people cannot understand my Malaysian English lingo. I can’t speak the American accent. Might sound a bit like it for a while but it quickly reverses to Malaysian English with the lahs and the ones.

Sigh, no mood to study tonight. But I’ll have to get back to it I guess, or I would drown. Cheers.

I find the introductory course to Computer Science, CS61A very frustrating. I don’t always get what’s going on in discussions and end up browsing the web while everyone is coding their lab assignments (not graded). I sleep in the CS lectures. I have never coded in my life and it is too time consuming. (This is a required course for the Berkeley Electrical and Computer Engineering major)

I spent my entire Saturday afternoon and night beginning 1 pm in a computer lab until 6 am Sunday morning before I finished my Programming Project. (Slept from 6am -11.45am and headed to church after that.) And then there’s this roommate of mine who plays computer games but took only a fraction of the time I needed to complete the project and he has also finished his assignment, which is also due Monday. I am now typing this blog post in frustration because I hit a wall in my assignment. Nonetheless, assignments are graded on effort and not correctness, and as long as I type something I get 1.0 out of the maximum 2.0 points, which is awarded when I attempt each question in the assignment.

I can’t simply look at people’s code because they have a way of detecting cheats, and I am not a cheater. All I can do is ask general concepts and strategies, but it is in the programming syntax where I am having the most trouble anyway.

I am now sitting in a computer lab all by myself wondering why some guy told me that the homework took him only 1.5 hours to complete.

Ok, I’m gonna give it another try. I did complete that Project worth 15.0 points, and it felt exceptionally good since I wrote the code all by myself. AND IT WORKS. (I am very thankful to the people who pointed out to me some key things that I did not see, these people were the ones camping in the lab with me as well). But, really, no life la EECS major. Btw, “EECS” is pronounced as in “Geeks” without the G. That’s my major. There’s some kind of impression to it here.

…Me: I am doing “EECS”
…Other person: Wah didn’t know you are that type of person.

Hello, what do you mean by that type? Geeky? Super-smart ass? Tech-genius?

Just look at me, a counter-example who is struggling hard.

So the last week was pretty intense in the sense that I was getting used to the high workload which I subjected myself to.

There’s a CS programming project due Monday and I haven’t really started on it yet. Whoops there goes my weekend.

There are many interesting things which I went through and thought about blogging them out but every time I return back in my dorm the urge to get my assignments and homework done surpasses the will to blog.

Nevertheless, remember that high school Physics question?

You are a vet trying to shoot a tranquilizer dart into a monkey hanging from a branch in a distant tree. You know that the monkey is very nervous, and will let go of the branch and start to fall as soon as your gun goes off. On the other hand, you also know that the dart will not travel in a straight line, but rather in a parabolic path like any other projectile. In order to hit the monkey with the dart, where should you point the gun before shooting?

A) Right at the monkey
B) Below the monkey
C) Above the monkey

Yeah, you think. High school Physics only mar. So the answer after some calculation on the blackboards (yes, we all use chalk and blackboards here unlike in Singapore) is to aim directly at the monkey. But the astounding thing was that Professor Speliotopoulos conducted a demo with a pressure gun and a soft-toy monkey during the next lecture! sorry about the bad quality picture :( 

The pressure gun even had a laser pointer to aim at the monkey, but after 3 tries the ball still did not hit at the monkey due to some alignment problem. Nonetheless it was amusing

Cool stuff happens here.

Ahhhhhhh there are things I would like to blog and cry out about but then again it would not make any difference.

Later.

Haven’t been updating for a while.

I pulled off my first all-nighter last monday, finishing a Computer Science programming homework which should have been easy but was not because I did not have any prior programming experience. Slept at 6.40 am and woke up at 7.40 am for my 8.10 am lecture. (Berkeley time is such that things start 10 minutes after the time indicated.

The professors here are really interesting. My Physics 7B Professor talks a lot about the history of Physics and the year of discoveries and who discovered what (someone said he won the Nobel Prize but dunno why I can’t find his name on the net.) My Math 53 Professor talks really funnily and is a bit eccentric. People are skipping his lectures cause he is a bit hard to understand… Then Physics 7A is taught by a Greek Professor who is quite alright. So different and diverse teaching styles. But, well, staying awake is sometimes a challenge…

OK, that’s it. I pretty much am enjoying it now