An overall review of the experience :)

Well hey there slog, it's been a while....

Starting off this course, I thought keeping a diary-like blog of my experience in the course and how I handled difficulties would be an easy part of it. I still think it would've been, but there's something about an on-going assignment that's due at the very end of the course that gets you, or me at least, to put it at the back of my head, and maybe sometime, when busy with all the other assignments and tests, even get to the point of forgetting about it, which is too bad considering how cool and exciting I thought this assignment is. In any way, I'm here now and nothing's preventing me from going over the entire course's experience and what I did throughout to keep up with the material right now. So here it goes.

The following will be divided into an overall review of the course, and then a more detailed review of each and every evaluating method, including the difficulties I might've had and how they were handled, in addition to the preparation that happened before the particular quiz/test/assignment-typing.

THE COURSE was definitely a great learning experience. The materials were presented clearly in a very logical progression throughout and a big component of the lecture-time was dedicated to discussions and answering any questions anybody had, no matter how small or trivial they were, in great detail which was absolutely amazing.  In addition, the evaluation methods were well-spaced out. I really liked how we had a chance to review material every week in tutorial, with a relatively simple quiz at the end to make sure we understood the tutorial, and to encourage us to pay full attention in tutorials. The assignments were just as well-paced and they took what we learn an extra step to challenge us. Tests then became the sweet middle.

THE QUIZZES were the evaluation methods I rarely got over 50% on, mostly cause they're marked on the scale of either 0/2, 1/2 or the perfect 2/2. Most marks lost for me personally weren't due to lack of knowledge as much as missing small details here and there. They were a good way of knowing where I might be giving too little information or making a logical mistake in proving a certain thing. I'd usually prepare for quizzes on my way to them or the night before. I looked at the questions and tried answering them, then went on to see the TA's answer and compare mine to that of the TAs to see the differences. It was a great way of staying on track.

THE TESTS weren't difficult at all compared to what we've seen in class. Unfortunately though, test 2 was at a bad time for me since I had countless other assignments/tests and things I had to take care off quickly at the time. Therefore my answers didn't reflect my understanding of the material due to the amount of stress I was under. Even though that was the case, after getting my test back, I made sure that I understood exactly where I went wrong in my thought process/problem solving technique to avoid it in the future, which I think was what was important to move on and do better afterwards.

THE ASSIGNMENTS were at just the right difficulty, in my opinion, for us to be able to solve them not immediately but after a bit of thought and a bit of staring at the assignment trying to figure out exactly what each question is asking. My process for attacking assignments went as follows. Read the questions and attempt them. Look at the course notes, the annotated lecture notes and tutorial solutions for similar concepts and how they were approached. Sleep. Look at the problems again. Have an idea of how the solution's going to be like. Go to Prof. Heap's office hours to see what people are struggling with and confirm my idea of the right solution. Type up the solutions. The only problem I was facing was that I'd know what the solution would be like very well, but I'd actually write it down on paper/type it later than the ideal time to. This usually caused my solutions to have less details in them than I would like. To try and avoid that problem, I tried writing, in great detail, the solutions I had in my mind on paper to try and express everything I mean to and leave the typing up the formal solution to the problems till near the end. I feel that this approach improved my final solution to the assignments a lot.

If you're reading this, it means that you've either skipped over the LONG post, which I don't blame you for, it's long!! Or you've read through the entire post, which I really appreciate and thank you for taking the time. :)

PS. If you want a great writing a blog entry experience, the UC quad on a day with great weather, like today, is a fantastic choice! :D
PPS. sorry for the super long post and I hope the caps give the readers an idea of what each paragraph is talking about in order to maybe choose what to read about.