The feeling of sitting in a lecture hall and not understanding a thing your professor is saying is horrible. The next lecture, you try to concentrate even more to understand him or her. After a few lectures I gave up. I cannot understand my physics professor at all. He barely goes over the material that we need to complete the homework assignments. I was even considering going to the lecture before his so I can listen to an American professor who has no accent. Only bad thing about that is I have to show up to my orignal professor's class because he checks attendance through iClicker questions.
I've talked to a few sophomores and upperclassmen who are second or third year engineers in my hall about physics. They told me that the first year program is tough and chemistry and physics are the weed out classes. They also said that you basically have to teach yourself the material and if you can do that, you will succeed in the program. Hopefully we all can get through chem and physics....
Yea, bro.....chem is most def a weedout class, and it straight up makes me feel like a weed! Lol, I feel like I'm going to have to start giving up my weekends just to learn chemistry - in class today, we started asking about what we were going to have to have memorised for the test, and I didn't know like any of the things she was going over - OWNED! It's aiight though, as they pretty much have to have them being a big 10 school.
ReplyDelete-Jayne
My experiences are similar to that of yours. I couldn't understand a word of what they taught us in chemistry the other day. I'm weak at chemistry, and it makes harder for me to grasp the things they say. I'm trying to teach myself from the book that arrived at my doorstep only a day ago, and I'm doing all the homework and reading and all that is required. I have an exam already in two weeks, so I'm stuck with chemistry for the rest of the week. Good luck with physics anyway! :) (Jayne)
ReplyDeleteI'm also taking the same lecture. I usually sit on one of the back seats, about three rows further from where you sit. I agree with your statement, his words are sometimes hard to understand due to an accent.
ReplyDeleteYou can give your iClicker to me and not come to a lecture, so I could send answers from it… No, I’m just kidding.) Once I was thinking of giving my iClicker to one of my three fellow Kazakhs, who have the same lecture, while I could have done my other businesses. However, after careful consideration I decided not to do it. If this guy with two iclickers were caught by professor, hard to imagine what would happen with both of us. :)
By the way, good luck on Exam 1.:) (Jayne)
I'm guessing that your lecturer is Yuxiang Wang. If so, I totally understand what you’re going through.
ReplyDeleteThe classes are very superficial and do not help us further our understanding well in depth. On top of that the teacher has an accent that is sometimes hard to understand.
Also, apart from the webassign homework and our book, there isn't that many resources we could can use to practice our physics skill. Till now I haven't found any solutions manual for the book we are using, that I could use to practice whatever we learn.
Anyway don't worry too much, do the problem of the week, and redo the lectures and the web assign questions.
And the iclikers are annoying too. I feel like not going to the lectures most of the time since everything we cover is in the book. But then again going to lectures, is still an important thing to do. You can see whether you have understood the material or not, with the I clicker.
We just have to do our best I guess.
Study and study until you understand.
Good luck on the Test this Wednesday.
(jayne)
ReplyDeleteI don't like to tell this story, but I think the moral is a good one...
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in first-year engineering taking PHYS 152 (I'm sure it's a different number now, but essentially the same horrid class) I got a 6% on the final exam. Yeah, so you can imagine that I ended up failing the class. It was devastating. I took the class again the next semester and went to a tutor every week to help me with my homework and prepare for the exams. That next semester I just missed getting an A in the class (this was before the +/- system was implemented). So I guess there are two morals: (1) Don't be too proud to accept the help of a tutor. My only Physics experience in high school was a night class that I took at the local community college twice a week. You can't expect to succeed, especially if you haven't had a lot of background in the material, if you don't put in a little extra effort. (2) If at first you don't succeed, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and give it another shot. I cannot emphasize enough that you cannot let an exam that you bomb ruin you. There will certainly be more exams for you to try again.
A fraternity brother recently told me about the physics help center in the physics building. I spent two hours there on Thursday and finished all my homework with the help of the physic majors or graduate students. Before I told myself that I will try learning it all on my own, but now I'll be spending a lot of time in the help center.
ReplyDeletephysics building room 11 usually 10am-4pm
I recommend going there if you need help, and I'm pretty sure there is a help center for chem.
(jayne)