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Saturday, September 29, 2012

I'm pretty sure you've heard this one before, either from your JC teacher, or from people who have went through both systems.

Seriously, they've been smoking weed.

First, let's talk about the pace that they teach the content. I might be exaggerating, but I doubt that it's too far from the mark. The content that they teach in one semester (13 weeks), is close to the content that a JC would teach in a year. The university lecturers can go through one topic a week, or every two weeks. So we need to keep up, and that's just retarded.

Second, let's talk about the workload. It never ends. Well, that actually isn't the problem, considering that work never ends anywhere. The thing is, the work takes a buttload of time to do. One module's tutorial can take up to 4-5 hours to complete, and the day usually ends at 6. On a few special days it ends at 4.

Third, let's talk about the free time we have. Adding in the long time needed to do our tutorials to the long school hours, work usually ends at 10pm on a weekday. On a weekend, work never seems to stop either. Even though the whole day is free to do work, I somehow manage to fill up the whole day to do work. Either I need to review work that's been done, or I need to complete the next week's tutorials. Again, I manage to work till 10pm.

So a summary:
1. One year's worth of JC material is stuffed into 13 weeks for university
2. Homework takes forever to complete
3. Resulting in whole days burned away, with barely any free time to do anything. Even now I'm up at 1:42am to enjoy some free time typing this out.

Let's compare this to my JC life.

First, pace of study is a lot slower. Comparing this with the university pace, this leaves me a lot of room to breathe, meaning that there are actually times where I do not have any work to do.

Second, homework might not be easy either, but it's definitely easier than university homework, and it definitely takes a lot less time to complete. I remember completing my homework in less than 2 hours on most days. In fact, sometimes I even complete all my homework during the breaks that I have in between lessons. In university, I barely have any breaks at all.

Third, with the lower workload, my weekends are free 90% of the time. The remaining 10% is when I have examinations, or if there's an anomaly and I actually have work to do.

Fourth, school usually ends by 3pm. That said, school starts 3 hours earlier. So this point is moot.

In short:
1. Slower pace, more breathing space
2. Homework is completed at least two times faster, and sometimes it's so easily completed that it's done even before I'm home, giving me the rest of the day off.
3. Weekends are actually weekends. I can rest and play.

Note this:
1. I've never studied or done homework past 10pm before entering University. No, not even during the A-level or O-level periods. I was playing World of Warcraft during my A-levels, and I don't even have time to play for 3 hours in a day for University midterms. This is worse than the bloody army.
2. I've never burned all my weekends since the start of school before entering University. This is worse than the bloody army.
3. I've never gone a single day without doing a bit of work since entering University. Oh guess what? This is worse than the bloody army too.

The army point is moot too anyway, I had a really good life in the army that people would die for. My army life is an exception that shouldn't be the baseline to compare to.

How the hell this is easier than JC, I'll never know. Those who claim as such must have been probably sniffing drugs in University dorms to properly know what's going on.

posted @ 1:09 am
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Friday, September 28, 2012

Yep, I'm having doubts about Computer Science. I've actually had doubts about it a year ago, and I believe I blogged about it:
http://bloodelves88.tumblr.com/post/6722818916/nus-computer-science-vs-ntu-accountancy
http://bloodelves88.tumblr.com/post/6655622135/reconsideration-of-university-courses

The second link made me ditch my idea of reconsidering, passing it off as an irrational fear. Am I having irrational fears again?

Well I previously had the fear that I wouldn't be able to pick up programming easily. Well, after going through the process, I know that that isn't the case now. Programming isn't difficult, and in fact, I can say that it's one of the easier modules that I'm taking now (though 1 out of 5 modules isn't much of a comparison).

Why do I have doubts then? Well, Math. My previous post talked about Math. Programming has Math as well. Currently, the Math isn't too difficult in programming. In the current basic module that I am taking, all we need to do is find algorithms that can work. There's no need to optimize it or make it efficient, and there's no algorithm so far that requires us to think up of overly complex Mathematical formulas.

But what about the future when I take modules that require optimization? I'm already writing inefficient programs that take too long to compute the answer, causing the automatic grader to think that my program has run into an infinite loop. I have absolutely no idea how to optimize it. Apparently, optimizing it requires some sort of Mathematical knowledge with prime numbers. Programming uses a lot of Mathematical knowledge to make things work. Logic, more than, less than, equals, remainders, division, loops, nested loops, etc. Things I hate. Programming is VERY Math heavy.

Being a programmer, a Computer Science degree is rather useless. What is important in this industry is your portfolio. What have you done? What have you made? What can you do? Your portfolio gets you the job, not your degree.

That being said, I have no interest in doing things on my own. I can't be bothered to write programs on my own to build up my portfolio.

The IT industry is one of the most rapidly changing industries out there. That just means that people who work in the industry have to change rapidly as well. New languages, new guidelines, new tips and tricks to learn. Similar to the above, I can't be bothered to learn new stuff. I have no interest, why would I do it?
In fact, you can see from the first link that I have mentioned all this, and it's kind of why I chose accountancy - get your degree and you're all set for life.

Is this another irrational fear? Am I judging this too early? I'm currently learning extremely basic stuff, so it's hard to me to build an interest. I still have an idea of a game that I want to make written down somewhere on a piece of paper that I have no idea where it is. I thought of that idea a year ago, and I can't start on it at all because I don't have the knowledge to do so. Would my interest be ignited once I have learnt more?

Also, I'm taking two Geography modules as well. Every week, I look forward to the Geography modules way more than I do for my Math and programming modules. When I do my tutorials and assignments, I NEVER bitch at my Geography assignments. Whenever I have Geography assignments alongside Math and programming assignments to do, I somehow prefer to do my Geography assignments first. Whenever I do my assignments, Math never fails to make me worried, tired, and pissed off, while Geography actually makes me happy and relaxed. I have NEVER gotten stuck on a Geography assignment before. I get stuck on a Math question everytime I decide to do it.

In fact, if you've read the second link above, the one and only reason why I didn't take Geography is because of its job prospects. Bad move? Sigh.

Also, remember the part where Computer Science requires a good portfolio where I show off my work? Man, look at how much I've typed in this blog for the past 6 years. Video game reviews, rants, stories, life updates, critiques, opinions on world matters, what grinds my gears, My Take. Granted, they are not related to anything academical, but just look at how much I love writing about stuff. Some of my blog posts can easily be essays if you want. I won't admit I write amazing stuff, but it's a start, and I have a heavy science background, meaning that I don't get exposed to writing, literature, or writing critiques a lot.

Simply put, I don't seem to be enjoying what I thought I would enjoy. Maybe I got influenced by the glamour the media has put on IT geeks. Hacking, tweaking, coming up with cool videos and stuff... what's underneath all those is a big giant puddle of blood and sweat that's never seen.

posted @ 1:07 am
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Thursday, September 27, 2012

I'm currently pissed off with Math, and I've been incessantly ranting about it on Twitter for the past few weeks. It's become so bad that I'm having second thoughts about doing Computer Science. But we'll talk about my doubts about Computer Science another time.

So, I've been weak at Math since Secondary 1 or 2 (I think it's 2). I've never really been able to understand what's going on in class, and my homework and tutorials usually end up with me going to the class with more than half the questions undone, because I have no idea how to do them. In Secondary 3 and 4, E-Math was a breeze for me, and thank God for that.

But for A-Math, I got consistent grades of C5 and C6, all the way till my preliminary examinations. A miracle happened during my O-levels and I got an A1, surpassing my other subjects which have consistently performed better than A-Math.

The same thing happened when I was in JC. This time, it wasn't a grade of 50-60%. I failed. I failed consistently. I failed my JC1 end of year, I failed my JC2 mid-year, and I scraped through my JC2 preliminary examination with 50+% score. I failed my common tests, and I still remember getting 0/15 for one of them. Again, a miracle happened during the A-levels, and I got an A, once again surpassing subjects that have been consistently getting better grades than Math.

So I've come up with a theory of why this happens. Basically, I go through my school years with no idea what I'm doing in Math. I happen to take Math tuition during my Secondary and JC days, so I go there weekly to do Math questions non-stop for 2 hours straight. This, on top with additional questions given by the school, gave me a chance to practice a lot. Questions slowly became familiar, and reading answers helped me understand what to do for each question.

See the bolded part? That's how I've been getting my A's for Math at the very end. I go into the exam hall knowing how to answer the question, not because I understand what I'm supposed to do. I've practiced so much that I know how to answer questions because they're familiar. It's like the question is: "Draw a rainbow", and I know that I have to draw it with the 7 colours in a particular order. But I have no idea why.

If you've been reading my blog regularly, I'm pretty sure you remember that I've always been bitching about Math since the beginning of time. But this time, I'm truly worried. I don't have enough questions to practice on, and even if I do, I don't have the answers to these questions. Even if I have enough questions to practice on, I don't have enough time to practice. I have 13 weeks to go through the workload equivalent to 1 year in JC, and examinations in university are 1 week right after the last topic has been taught. 1 week.

1 week. Even a dumbass can tell that that is not enough time for me to ace Math the way I've been doing it in Secondary and JC. I had 1-2 months after the last topic then.

I'm screwed.

Oh and there's one more thing: the Math that I'm learning now is totally different from the Math in Secondary school and JC. It's "axiomatic Math", compared to what the lecturers call "engineering Math" before university. Engineering Math can be practiced more easily than axiomatic Math. Also, there's a lot of questions that says "prove abc is blah blah".

I'm screwed.

I'll be happy with a pass, a.k.a C grade, a.k.a CAP of 2.0. I can go ace other non-math modules, though this will forever remain a scar upon my grade sheet.

posted @ 1:06 am
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