OK, so this isn’t my angry voice quite yet…

We’re knee deep into the 4th week of the 10-week winter quarter here at PSU. Obviously, I have opinions. My two classes this quarter are “Physics” (PH222) and “Engineering Computation” (ECE102).

Physics

So far there’s not much to say about Physics 222 (this quarter) that I haven’t already said about Physics 221 (last quarter). I’ve been warned by several people, the professor included, that this will be a tougher quarter than the Fall. The grading format is identical to last quarter: two big exams (each worth 30% of your over all grade) and a final (worth 40%). The first of the exams happens to be tomorrow. The challenge this quarter seems to be a bit different than last quarter.

Last quarter was all about gravity, friction, and basic F=ma kind of stuff. All of that was easy to comprehend and the challenge came from the computations due to both quantity and complexity.

So far the challenge of PH222 isn’t the math, but the conceptualization of what it is you’re looking for. PH222 is all about electricity, electric fields, and electromagnetism. All things which you can neither see nor feel. This abstraction seems to be, for me at least, the main challenge of the course so far. But as last quarter, I enjoy the class and the content. I appreciate the challenge and will continue to fear each and every exam.

Engineering computation

Cue the angry voice…

Before I even waste time on full sentences, I want to just say some random words: insulting. infuriating. tedious. banal. acrid. sadistic. motherfuckbitch.

OK…

This class. Seriously, this fucking class is incomprehensibly aggravating. It angers me so much that I’m sincerely having a tough time writing this post with anything close to a legible tone. I fucking hate this class! Grrr!!!

deep breaths…

OK, let me take a step back and reference last quarter’s engineering class, Digital Design. Because of my combined 13 years experience in the electronics field I fully expected to know the bulk of the material in my early courses. Digital Design taught me literally 2 things, both of them trivial. The rest of the material I knew going in. Yet I still enjoyed the class. It was taught well, it was a nice refresher of semi-forgotten information and the homeworks seemed to follow along with the class. The main point here is that sitting through information you already know doesn’t default a class to the painful position.

In comes ECE102. Though the course title is “Engineering Computation” I personally believe a title that better reflects the course content would be “An Exercise in Mental Anguish.” Seriously, fuck this class.

Let me give you a break down of how a typical class session goes down. We pile into a small auditorium-style classroom. We then spend 2 hours being subjected to a whirlwind of slides. The instructor proceeds to read each slide verbatim. Then we leave.

We are taught nothing. The slides can be categorized into three classifications:

1. Topics & formulas that we might learn in our future “real” engineering classes. These, he explains, will make more sense later. “I’m just showing them to you so you can see them.” Example: Taylor series
2. Completely simplistic tasks that are, by any measure, prerequisites to entering an engineering program. While the tasks themselves aren’t without worth, spending time on them in a required engineering class is just a waste of fucking time. These are tasks which should rightfully be assumed as understood prior to starting this course. Example: Unit conversion (mm to m, inches, to feet)
3. Class couldn’t be complete without totally random nonsense added for no other apparent reason other than to fill the time. Example: Did you know before computers calculators were really expensive? And before that, people used an abacus!

The above slides are then combined into a bevy of information that is just spewed forth. Verbatim. Bevy. Spewed. But here’s the best part, within that bulk of random information lies answers to questions that will be asked on an exam. The first exam was last week, we’ll talk about that; however for the sake of chronology I want to precede that by bringing up our first homework assignment.

So our homework assignment was due this past Monday. Late Saturday night I sat down to get started, fully intending to bang it out in short order. The assignment itself is fairly simple and I didn’t expect to give an real amount of attention. Silly me. In order to maintain the painful nature of this course the homework ended up taking 6-8 hours. Why? Details. Details, details, fucking details. We were required to show our work, and I mean all our work.

Now I want to clarify an important fact here. I’m not against showing my work. I’m not against thoroughness. But asking me to show, in explicit detail, how I calculate the area of a fucking triangle, well that gets fucking old. Quickly. This entire assignment was a lesson on how you can take simple tasks and over-complicate the ever living shit out of them. Pain. That’s the single lesson of this class so far. Pain, deep deep inside your brain.

Now here’s my biggest worry about nonsense courses: you’ll still be getting a grade. As our quiz approached last week I voiced my concern to a couple classmates: “WTF are we even supposed to study for this exam? We haven’t actually learned anything.”

Long story short, the quiz came and went and the general consensus was as expected. It was four random questions two of which we covered in class, the other two were pulled out of… well… not from the class. One of those questions, question 3, involved some vector math that you learn in physics. Unfortunately for most of the class physics is a 200 level course and they’ll be taking it next year. Fantastic.

Wednesday we took the quiz. Monday we came to class to a slide on the projector showing a breakdown of the scores for each question. Apparently the class bombed Q3 so badly that he didn’t even share the grades with us. Instead he decided to allow us to redo Q3 on our own time and turn it in to be graded as a replacement for Q3 found on the quiz. This was completely voluntary though, if you did well on the quiz then there was no reason to redo it as an assignment. When he offered this up in class I had the nerve to ask a pretty supid question.

“Are you going to give us our scores for question 3 before we leave?” I asked.

“No”

“Well then how are we supposed to know if we should redo the question?”

“That’s up to you to decide wether or not you want to do it.”

That’s right kiddos. You may have fucked the pooch on this one. You may need to try again. But fuck you if you think you’re going to find out.

I. hate. this. fucking. class.

So this is my quarter this winter. There’s also physics lab, but not much to say about that I guess. Physics will challenge me to learn new things and gain a greater understanding of the world around me. Engineering Computation will challenge me to remain calm & non-violent as I try stay in my happy place.