first two weeks

I realised I have been talking all about play, and nothing about everything that is outside play.

Lessons have started for two weeks, so far they are fine. Modules, or classes as they call it here, that I am taking are:

COMP520 Compilers
COMP524 Programming Language Concepts
CHEM251 Introduction to Organic Chemistry
ART104 Basic Drawing and Composition
GEOL103 The Marine Environment
GEOL105 Violent Earth

There is plenty of overlapping content in COMP520 and COMP524, which is not exactly surprising. So far lectures have been similar, where we learn lexical and syntactic analysis, Hopefully the overlapping continues as much as possible, because it will mean an easier job for me hehe. Problems will be that both classes uses Java as the programming language, which I am not good in and will have to catch up.

It was a little of a painful decision to take CHEM251 in place of COMP550 Algorithm Analysis, because I feel Algorithms Analysis is much more important to me. However, I don't think I can stand taking anymore Science modules in NUS. Furthurmore it is quite a bargain for me to take CHEM251 as well because it is only worth 2 credits here [the normal workload is 3], which [hopefully] translates to a easier workload, and there are no labs. And there is my friend and roommate, a Chemistry major, whom I can turn to for help.

For the record, so far I cannot understand anything that is being taught in CHEM251.

The ability to S/U everything taken here allows me to take classes that I might not dare to take in NUS. One example is ART104, or basically, drawing. My friend is taking, and I thought that it is time I should pick up some drawing again. Thinking back, I never had formal drawing lessons, except for the ones in secondary school.

Drawing classes have been fun so far. The art teacher is a typical 'art guy', with no fixed method to teach art, and plays random music when we are drawing.

GEOL105 is another class that I'm taking out of interest, although so far it has been a little less than interesting. Just like COMP550, it was a little of a difficult decision to do this instead of COMP535 Computer Security, which sounds fun according to my friends, so I hope I have not made a wrong decision and this class gets better as the semester moves on.

As for my last class GEOL103, I'm taking it partially because there are other Singaporeans taking it, and partially because I have ran out of classes to take. So far the class is okay I guess; the content taught in the past few lectures were almost exactly the same as that taught in GEOL105, which is the history of Earth. Like before, I hope there will be as much overlap as possible haha.

Unlike NUS, there are no tutorials here; assignments are handed out during lectures, and we hand them in during lectures as well. Therefore the bad thing is that there is no 'first two weeks' honeymoon period; I was handed an assignment on my first COMP520 lecture and the deadline was the following lecture.

After two weeks of computing lectures, I realised that many of my classmates had taken Theory of Computation before, a topic which I am trying to avoid as much as possible. It could be because context free grammar and syntax trees are closely related to that, but could also be because they are genuinely interested in learning it.

Americans in general are quiet when the lecturer is talking ie. they listen attentively. However when in doubt, they do raise their hands and ask aloud, and lecturers are more than willing to answer them. In today's COMP524 lecture, the lecturer asked for a volunteer to answer a question on the board, and the student who volunteered turned out to be clueless about the answer. Nevertheless, everyone helped her out in answering the question, and it turned into a long discussion session instead.

This is a stark contrast from Singapore, where students typically don't ask questions aloud during lectures, or volunteer to answer questions unless they are very confident they will get them correct. Maybe Asians have a 面子 issue. Over here, students are not afraid that they may ask stupid questions; they just ask. [Someone asked during a COMP524 lecture what is x86, and what is ARM, questions that some of my elitist friends would have laughed at.]

That's all for now, shall be back again soon.