Week 08 Journal 07

Happy Halloween! October is finally ended, and the school is only about one month left. The assignment is due next week and the second term test is also coming next week. I am nervous and worried about both of them. I start thinking that if I still have enough time to catch up all the material that I haven't fully understand.

In the tutorial this week, we learned and practiced how to prove and disprove statements. During the past lectures, I did not fully understand how to disprove a statement. However, our TA showed several questions and explained every steps and the reasons. I felt I understand more how to do this type of question. I attend the tutorial of this course is not only there is a weekly quiz, but also I always learned something new or become more clear about some material every tutorial. The tutorial is helpful and interesting.

Moreover, I have not started my assignment two yet because I was too busy from other midterms. I only looked at it when professor talked about it during the lecture, and scan through the entire assignment once. There is only one page for this assignment, but I don't feel it will be short and simple. I expect that it will take me couple hours to finish the assignment. I should start soon after this weekly journal.

Everything goes faster and crazier when the finals are closer. November should go really fast and the deadly finals are coming. Although it is still too early to think about the final since we still have one more term test to go, I believe start review earlier would be better. I have six courses this semester, and hope all of my grades, of course include csc165, will have great final grades at the very end. Good luck to me and to everyone in both November and December!

Week 07 Journal 06

October is almost end which means the busiest month of this semester is almost end, too. The second assignment is posted online this week. There are many proofs questions, looks kind of scary. I probably need to decide soon if I want to do the assignment with other students as a group or not. Most of the time I like to work on assignment alone to avoid different opinions. However, in this assignment it is probably a good idea to find a partner to check if we have the same answer, so that we can discuss and submit the correct one.

I had a midterm for other course this Monday, so I did not study for the quiz this week. When I went to the tutorial, I was quite nervous. When the class started, TA started solving the problem, and I took the note and learned a lot from it. The quiz was not as hard as I expected because TA taught about it clearly. I really appreciated. Our TA always explain questions clearly, and this week I learned a lot from him.

Something special this week in Friday lecture. We have an activity sheet called ''Penny Piles''. It is a problem solving activity. We separate even coins to left side and right side by diving them to half. and then pick one side to divided the half and add the the other side. It is really cool that at the end will always get both side odd number coins. We did not finish the activity before the lecture end. I guess there is a pattern that can be showed to this kind of exercise. I probably will work on it later and find the pattern of it.

Although CSC165 is one of the less pressure course I have, I still felt a bit lost in this course. I attend all of the lectures and take note on the slides I printed out before the class. However, while I was taking the note, I pay less attention on what professor is saying, so sometimes I still get lost in the lecture. I know this feeling was there since the beginning of the semester. The only way to solve this problem is practice more questions, ask for helps and pay attention during lecture. I should catch up as soon as possible before the final comes.

Week 06 Journal 05

This week is an up-and-down kind of week for me. Since I wrote my test last week, my mind has never stopped panicking. As it turned out on Wednesday,  it was not all that bad. Moreover, I did better than most of my fellow classmates. The result is obviously much better than what I expected, yet I find myself a lucky person. I am fortunate enough that some partial credits are generously given. As a result, I received a very good solid grade on this test.

On the other hand, as the course proceeds forward, I now encounter more and more difficulties. This week, we look at more proof in depth and I find this week's lectures are much harder to follow than previous ones. Although every course has progressively getting harder, I find this course particularly harder. As I am spending more time on this course, I find myself always catching up the course instead of studying the course material. Perhaps it is time to seek help from office hours.

We are going to have our weekly quiz in tutorials as usual, but this coming quiz is uncertain. Honestly, I am able to guess what kind of questions may appear on the quiz so far. However, I have no idea what may show up. I hope my TA could explain more explicitly and clearly on some examples because tutorial is where I actually learn all the course materials, and hopefully he can provide some hints one the quiz in class.

All in all, this week is like a roller coaster to me, nervous, scary, and exhausted after all. I expect the rest of the year is going to be the same, or more intense. I wish I could have 30 hours a day since I find my time is very condensed and not enough. Hopefully, I can find a new balance soon and work more efficiently in the future.

Week 05 Journal 04

It is the second week of October.  In the beginning of the course, I had a feeling that CSC165 is one of those course that require a tremendous amount efforts. However, I find this course a nightmare.The course seems to be getting harder as we went through the solutions for our assignment 1 because most of my them are different from mine. This was a enormous shock to me.

The nightmare continued with the test on Wednesday. I felt fully prepared for this test because I did a lot of readings and practice questions as well as the past tests. I had only little trouble when I was doing my review. However, the test was a different story. Although the questions on the test were similar to past tests, I could not figure out the right was to approach the questions. I am not sure why this happened to me; perhaps, I was too nervous.Nonetheless, the test was not all that bad. I really appreciate that we were allowed a double-sided cheat sheet. It guided me through the first two questions on the test, yet my brain reflected uncertainty. The 'real' nightmare began with question 3 where it asked to provide an example. I felt hopeless since my brain was empty at the moment. I almost passed out! I have never had such miserable experience in my life. All I am hoping is that I can successfully pass this test, fingers crossed.

Even though the course is getting harder, it is not all negative. The course materials that we went through in lecture this week was quite beneficial to me, especially to my critical thinking skill. The skills we learned to prove with the combination of the materials we have already learned in previous weeks has significantly impacted the way I look at things. More importantly, it enables me to tackle many problems from various aspects.
 
All in all, I will try to work a little bit harder whenever I can, and hopefully things will turn out differently in the next two months. This has been a very busy week as many assignment and tests from other classes are all packed together. I am glad it is over now.

Week 04 Journal 03

A month has passed since the semester started. Almost all the students have settled down what courses they want to take in this semester. And I have decided that I would really like to take CSC165 this semester. The material we learned from the lecture seems getting harder. Sometimes I did not understand right away during the lecture. However, it is still possible to learn by myself, and try to understand it outside of class. That's how I find the interesting part of this course. 

There is a good resource that I just found out this week. Piazza is really helpful and useful. People who are taking this course can ask or answer questions online. If you don't want to show your name, you can write as an anonymous. All the questions will be kindly answer by instructors and students. Besides that, I also saw people looking for partner for the assignments on Piazza. It is a great chance to find other students to study with and be friends. When I got questions or not sure the meaning of assignment 1, I looked up online and see if other people had the same questions. Most of the time my questions will be solved. It is a great website for us to use.

Moreover, as I mentioned above, the due date of our first assignment is coming. Actually, it is due today October 3rd, 10pm. When I first scan the assignment, I thought it was quiet simple. However, after read carefully through the entire assignment, I found out that was not quite simple. It request some deeper thinking. I spent more than three days working on this assignment. It was fun to think about all the questions, and I hope my answers are correct, and most importantly, my grade for first assignment will be fine. 

There is a thing that was kind of bothers me. I don't know if it is better to work individually or with other partners when doing the assignment. At then end, I chose to work individually this time, and probably will find partner and work with other people for next assignment. To see what kind of person am I when doing the project. The midterm is coming next. It is my first midterm of this semester, and I felt nervous and worried about it. 

Week 03 Journal 02

Another week is over! It has been three weeks since school started. I miss my summer a lot, especially because work is starting to pile up with my courses and I am starting to get very busy. There are lots of students on campus now, and the classrooms are always full. It can be difficult for me to concentrate in some other courses, but I find CSC165 to be getting more and more interesting. This week we learned something new.

We continued learning about symbols this week, and the new topic of the week was conjunction, disjunction, and negation. Conjunction corresponds to ''and'', and is symbolized by "^"; disjunction corresponds to ''or'', and is symbolized by "v"; negation corresponds to "not", and is symbolized by "┐". I have never seen or learned about these symbols before, so they seem really cool to me. I have never thought that symbols can be like language and be used to form sentences.

In the tutorial this week, we tried to change sentences to symbols. Different people came up with different ideas. Although some of them were not correct, they let me realize that just little difference would change the entire meaning of the "sentence". I found it is not easy to translate a sentence into symbols in a short time. I believe that to become more familiar with all the concepts, I need to do more practice.

Another week has passed again, and I'm still really enjoying this course. Hopefully it will be even more interesting in the future. It is kind of fun writing a journal every week talking about CSC165. All the journals throughout the semester will show how much I have learned, and how I feel about this course. I'm looking forward to the next week!

Week 02 Journal 01

This week was my first week taking the CSC165 class and I really enjoyed the lecture and tutorial. Although it was not as easy as I expected, the first few classes showed that the course material is interesting. I liked that the professor was well prepared and provided clear notes before the lecture, so that I could print the slides out and take notes with it. Compared to CSC108, which I took last semester, CSC165 covers a different area of computer science. While CSC108 introduced coding, the first few classes of CSC165 were more logic and math based. I am excited about this course.

Even though I had some difficulties while previewing the slides, I managed to understand the material after going to class and reviewing the notes. The professor gave a clear and detailed explanation of the material. I was initially confused about some of the symbols which were new to me, so I struggled to understand the meaning of sentences composed entirely of symbols. I tried to figure things out by searching online before lecture. During class, I listened carefully to the professor as he gave a clear and detailed explanation of the material. Now, I am finally understand these symbols.

Something else that frustrated me was finding the tutorial room. I am not familiar with Bahen Centre, and was late for the tutorial. I felt sorry for interrupting. During the tutorial, we did some practice problems and had a quiz. Our TA went through the practice problems clearly, and made sure that everyone understood the questions. I really appreciate tutorials like this, which help me to understand the material more thoroughly by doing problems.

People told me that CSC165 is really hard. Having previewed the notes for this course, I was a little nervous and worried about it at first. Although I still believe it is a challenging course, the professor and TAs are great resources for me to use. To do well in this course, I will try to study by myself and also ask for help when I need it. I am looking forward to learning more about mathematical expressions and reasoning in computer science.