Im taking 5 courses this semester, the lowest workload I’ve had yet. Class by class, here is how I’ve been faring so far:
DS110
I did end up passing DS110 and moving on to DS115, which is still with the professor I basically have to kiss ass for to pass. So far we have had two surprise 11:15am Sunday notifications telling us to read a chapter or some papers so we can have a quiz on them later. Agony. Only 3 more months of this left, at least.
All the tests and quizzes are so strict that you basically have to know everything, even though the professor is terrible at teaching. There is a lot of background math knowledge you are just expected to have, even though it was not a prerequisite. It feels like being graded on material you were never formally taught, which is exhausting in a very specific way.
GM105
My courses this semester are honestly pretty easy, and I am not going to struggle with them much. GM105 has online exams, which helps. The only part I am not looking forward to is the group assignments, because this class is heavy on them.
My group only has 4 people because some people decided to switch and apparently did not like us, I guess? Idk. I am in a group with the same guy I did a project with in MKTG 101, though, so at least I know he will actually do the work. That alone lowers my stress by a noticeable amount.
MKTG130
MKTG130 is also heavy on group projects, and honestly I think it has the most homework out of all my classes. But the teacher is awesome, and I got put in a group of fellow introverts and artists, so I think I will be okay there too.
The final is an online exam and not worth much, so I really need to lock in on the group work. We are doing a lot of practical, hand on learning, like a simulated internship, and literally making TikToks in class. It has actually been really fun and engaging for me as a visual, learn by doing person. It is one of the few classes that feels aligned with how I naturally process information.
MIS183
MIS183. Oh, what I have to say about you.
I was told it was meant to be a SQL and Tableau class. And hard. On the first day, we were told to “ask 3 questions to ChatGPT,” and since then that is basically all we have done. We feed ChatGPT generated assignments into ChatGPT.
At one point the AI hallucinated instructions telling us to use Tableau to make something. When I actually tried to do that, the professor came over and said, “You don’t need to do all that complicated stuff, just ask ChatGPT, “and then closed my application on my laptop.
So I guess it is an easy class, sure. Everything is group work too, even though it is just prompting AI. But I was genuinely looking forward to learning some skills for my career development. I do not even know if we have exams. The course is so disorganized and feels vibe-coded to the max. All the slides are AI generated. It makes me wonder what I am actually paying tuition for in moments like that.
FIN 136
This course also has in person exams, which sucks, but she allows a few note pages so it is mostly chill.
So far it has just been stats review with more financial terminology layered on top. The first exam is coming up, so I am a little worried to see how it goes, but I am pretty sure I will be okay with the notes I have. I basically copied all the homework problems and how to solve them, and that is almost all we have even really been given.
It is a hybrid course, but the exams are in person, which is not fun. I only took this class because I was told the exams would be online. Still, I do not think it is going to be super hard, so I will survive.
Computer struggles pt 2
Funny story! So you know how I said my laptop was fine after my desktop bricked itself? It actually killed itself
1 week into school my laptop had some fuck ass chip on the motherboard malfunction so that it stopped recognizing that it was being plugged in… i would have had to replace the whole motherboard, which has the cpu soldered onto it, making it cost 1.2k… I might as well get a new laptop at that point.
My laptop apparently commonly dies after 3 years due to this specific weird issue and im pretty mad i spent so much on a device that didnt even last more than 3 years and have to get a new one… I dont blame my senior year in high school self for buying a bad laptop, especially because I wasnt super into tech then, and had my dad plan my PC parts mostly.
My dad looked at facebook marketplace to find a new laptop for me (I don’t have any social media and refuse to make a meta account) and saw one that had OK specs (AMD A12-9720P, integrated graphics, & 32 GB ram for only $150), I bought it & took it home only to boot it up and realize despite having mostly good internals, the one spec missing on the listing, the storage, was a hard drive
That would have been way way too slow for any of my python analysis HW that already took me hours to run on my previous laptop. I was having a panic attack because I had class in like 3 hours as this was happening btw LOL um. My dad ended up going to best-buy and just getting me a really high end laptop 1. because he works at micron, (have you seen their stock???) and 2. because he wanted to get me something for keeping my grades in college really high (im graduating a year early this semester with program honors, got nominated for my school’s most outstanding student, with a 3.95 gpa!)
So, now instead of my 2060 Ti & 32g ddr4 of ram back at home (I dont remember what cpu i have but i do know its some sort of an intel i5 I think?), I have a beast of a gaming laptop, AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, RTX 5070TI, w/ 32GB GDDR7. Its running windows 11, and while I don’t like the telemetry and bloat at all, I do need access to windows native software for my last semester.
This is the best computer I have owned personally, (I think my dad’s pc and mocha8686’s pcs are both better and ive gotten to play on them before, but its super different when a device is yours.) This will become my powerhouse for everything now.
I am still not sure what I plan to do with my machine at home, or the shit ass hp laptop I got on marketplace (maybe I can just remove the RAM and sell it LMFAO). The most likely answer is that these devices, or the parts inside them, will end up being the start of mocha8686 and my homelab once we move in together after I graduate!