In the end, it comes to this: if you put the effort in, you'll pass. Maybe not with stellar marks, but give it time and you'll figure out the way to get the most for the least. -- Not that I advocate spending $16,000 to come to school and not learn; but you need to be balanced. PHYS 115 Mechanics http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-PHYS.html#PHYS115 67 Hated it. The midterm sucked, a big thank you to Dan, whose mark of less than half my own stellar 58% really brought my spirits up. Plus the lectures were at 8:30AM. Yeah, I was screwed from the start. CS 133 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-CS.html#CS133 Developing Programming Principles 93 Loved it. I knew no Java going into this course, didn't go to the lectures, and did well. Plus our group ranked #1 for the final project. if you've used a modern programming language, this course will be a breeze. CO 103 Discrete Mathematics for Engineers 81 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-CO.html#CO103 Loved it. The midterm and the final were really easy, so I kinda enjoyed the quizzes Nayak gave us, even if I failed one or two of them. Bloody difficult at times, but a really fun challenge. Most of discrete was entirely new to me, as I was coming from BC. Fun stuff. MATH 115 Linear Algebra for Engineering 82 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-MATH.html#MATH115 Indifferent. Coming from BC I hadn't seen any of this stuff before. Although the concepts were neat, I'm more of an applications person. Perhaps in graphics we'll use this, I don't know? Highlight of the term: Poddar singles out one of the class academic reps for being disruptive (chewing his gum too loudly was the accusation, I believe). With 5% of his course grade on the line, Wan had to finish the professor's question on the chalkboard. Beautiful. A professor standing up to our class. (It didn't last.) MATH 137 Calculus 1 for Honours Mathematics http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-MATH.html#MATH137 79 Hated it. No clue who I was, where I was going or why I was in Software Engineering. Lectures were immediately after Physics at 9:30AM. A double-team. Best professor ever though -- cool accent, good looking, sense of humour AND he knows the course material. SE 101 Introduction to Methods of Software Engineering http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-SE.html#SE101 88 Liked it. Would have loved it, but for the annoying web reviews (think weekly quizzes, done online). The interface for them really, really sucked. It seemed very buggy, and I know a number of people whose marks were lower than they should have been as a direct result. The LejOS project (programming a Lego robot to navigate a maze) was fun. The pseudo-work report on it was not fun. Now this was a semester! Only five courses, I didn't go to many of the last month's lectures, and I finally realized that you could do ok in New's Calculus just by studying his assignments really well.

This was also the semester of the MexBox. The semester of Halo. The semester of click-click-boom. Many a biology lecture was missed due to the foolish thought that we had time for "just one more game". And we did. Just probably not time for the nine more games we actually played. MexBox, whereever you are, I miss you. Please, come back! NAFTA! BIOL 139 Genetics http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-BIOL.html#BIOL139 73 Loved it, in time. Our professor had a fucking beautiful computer. Other than that, the course was really boring, or so I thought! -- towards the end, when I started cramming for finals, I found I really started to enjoy the material. There is probably a lesson here somewhere... Anyway, I only had biology up to grade 11 and I managed all right in this course. Mandatory tutorials though, which is a crying shame. CS 134 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-CS.html#CS134 Principles of Computer Science 87 Loved it. Picks up where CS133 left off. The three projects are smaller than the one project in CS 133, but more focussed and technically interesting -- the third one involves writing a parser, and an optimizer for the parser if you so desire. if you enjoy algorithms, you'll probably also enjoy the first project, which for us was implementing a class to do mathematical operations on integers of any size. Highlight of the term: Jesse left the first project too late to complete successfully. So he relied heavily upon the Java BigInteger native class, instead of his own custom implementation. This earned the young lad a trip to the course coordinator's office where he had to do some wheeling and dealing to avoid a trip to the Software Engineering Associate Director's office. MATH 138 Calculus 2 for Honours Mathematics 78 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-MATH.html#MATH138 Too confused to know how I felt about it. Even less aware of what was going on than last term. Somehow eked out the 78%, though. It got to the point where the only reason I went to class was to hear New say some words and draw some pictures. (My three favourite words: three, tricks, integrable.) SE 112 Logic and Computation 87 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-SE.html#SE112 Loved it. Straight-forward course, deals with proving software correctness and the principles and theories used to do just that. The only thing I would criticize about the course is the fact that there was a bit of a disconnect between the prof and the TA's teaching/marking schemes. C'est la vie, though. Update (Feb 6, 2005): Wow, craziness. One of the TAs, Anne Zimmer, is the wife of the President of Arius Software Corporation, my current employer. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in software engineering. SE 141 Digital Circuits and Systems http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-SE.html#SE141 81 Loved it. Somewhat dry material in the way it was presented, but interesting content nonetheless. The two lab projects were really fun, especially the last. "Programming" in VHDL is a neat experience. I spent way too much time on that lab, but on the bright side, I think Dan and I had the fastest-clocking pong game of everyone. (160MHz baby). CS 241 Foundations of Sequential Programs http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-CS.html#CS241 77 This was a fun course! Course content covered the fundamentals of programs, how computers execute them, how compilers work. Final project was a MIPS-assembly code generator written in Java with JLex/JavaCup for a toy language called SL. I received the highest mark in three sections of CS241, more than doubling the class average for this particular project. I then went on to bomb what I thought was an easy final exam. Go figure. ECE 126 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-ECE.html#ECE126 Introduction to Electrostatics, Magnetism and Electronics 81 Interesting. This was BC Physics 12 taken to the next level. Supposed to be the hardest course of the semester, and yet it was my best mark. This was a semester for oddities as far as marks went. ECE 222 Digital Computers 77 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-ECE.html#ECE222 Fun course. The professor was a little bit dry, but I enjoyed the course material. An historical overview of how digital computers have evolved since the 1950s. Four labs on the ColdFire 5307 boards, similar in nature to the Motorola 68k family. MSCI 261 Managerial and Engineering Economics 78 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-MSCI.html#MSCI261 Terrible. This was to be the easiest course of the semester. It was - or seemed like it. The professor, bitter about sparse attendance, fucked everyone on the final exam and then required students to file formal appeals in order to review their exam papers. Highlight of the term: Tesfayohannes puts up a long lecture slide, instructs the class to read it, then excuses himself to use the washroom. The washroom is directly behind the podium where his microphone's wireless transmitter/receiver is. Awkwardness follows. STAT 206 Statistics for Software Engineering http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-STAT.html#STAT206 77 Wow. This course was insanely easy - up to the final. I (and most of the class, I suspect) had 100% going into the final exam. Coming out, I have 77%. You do the math. Lectures consisted of grade 12 statistics followed by a movie followed by Prof. Fan showing us how to use Microsoft Excel to draw pretty pictures. G-O-N-G. WKRPT 100 Work Report #1 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-MATH.html#MATH137 75 To be updated when I have Microsoft Office and Acrobat Professional. CS 246 Software Abstraction and Specification http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-CS.html#CS246 80 ECON 102 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-ECON.html#ECON102 Intro to Macroeconomics 71 ENGL 109 Intro to Academic Writing 78 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-ENGL.html#ENGL109 SE 240 Algorithms and Data Structure 70 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-SE.html#SE240 MATH 213 Advanced Math for Software Engineering http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-MATH.html#MATH213 68 WKRPT 200 Work Report #2 http://www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infoucal/COURSE/course-MATH.html#MATH137 75 To be updated when I have Microsoft Office and Acrobat Professional.