Two Weeks of Classes

So, it’s been two weeks since that first day, and it seems only fair to provide an update on just what’s going on:

My score on the FEE required that I take a CI-HW class sometime in the first year. Unfortunately, some massive percentage of the freshman class received the same score, and there is only capacity for about 306 students to take a CI-HW class per semester. Long story short, I couldn’t get into a section that fit my schedule, so I dropped the class, and I’ll take it next semester.

Instead, I’m taking 6.042. This class’s official title is “Mathematics for Computer Science,” but was apparently introduced by the professors as “Proofs, Proofs, and More Proofs.” That’s OK with me, because between GSS and math last year, I’m pretty good at proofs.

The class looks like it’s going to be good. I’m told that they played a clip from The Colbert Report on the first day of class, but since I joined we’ve received a hilarious list of invalid proof techniques and watched a clip from Die Hard 3.

6.042 is typically a sophomore class, but it’s only prerequisite is 18.01, and almost all of the other Course VI classes require 6.001, which I can’t take as a first-year freshman along with my advising seminar.

The problem sets are hard, but my TA is very helpful. I actually just got back from office hours where a couple of us and my TA worked through about 60% of the p-set.

As for other classes, 7.012 is still basic material. We just finished macromolecules and started on genetics. Eric Lander is doing the lecturing on genetics (because, well, it’s kind of what he does—he was heavily involved in the Human Genome Project), and his lectures are always very engaging.

The work load has been pretty light—a relatively p-set every two weeks, although the TAs don’t seem to be quite as good. 7.012 is an introductory class, so its goal is to basically teach all of biology relatively poorly. The TAs, however, are all very focused in particular areas, so they all can’t help with everything. My first TA, for example, did genetics, so he couldn’t help as much with the biochemistry we were doing initially. I did have to switch out of his section, though, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had a lunch break on Mondays or Wednesdays, and my new TA seems to be more focused on protein folding. Go figure.

3.091, also known as “Chemistry for People Who Never Want to Deal With Chemistry Again,” is also a lecture-format class, but has a completely different style to it. The professor, Donald Sadoway, is legendary at the Institute for this class; he’s a true showman, and he’s been doing this for a while. His lectures are always carefully planned out, complete with Powerpoints where he’s scribbled all over various slides and such. I’m told that 3.091 has the highest enrollment of any MIT class, and Sadoway is one of very few professors who can teach a class of 450 people.

Incidentally, it’s worth pointing out that 10-250, the largest lecture hall on campus, only has 425 seats. On some days, there are people sitting in the aisles, but videos of the lectures are also put online, which is great when you can’t remember some aspect of the lecture.

My recitation leader for 3.091 is actually a professor, who has so far done a great job of simultaneously working various problems with us and teaching the material a day before Sadoway does.

Homework for 3.091 is optional and not collected. Instead, we have a quiz over the homework every week. So far they’ve been insanely easy, but I’m not expecting that to last. In addition, we had a quiz over the periodic table today for some unknown reason. Even my recitation professor thought it was a little odd. In any case, it was pretty easy, and I think I got everything right.

My last full fledged class is 8.02, taught in the TEAL format. What is TEAL?

In theory, TEAL is a departure from the traditional lecture and recitation format of college classes. It encourages collaboration, working in small groups, better knowledge retention, and all kinds of good things like that.

In reality, it’s an example of how too much technology can be a bad solution. Classes generally consist of a professor lecturing off of a Powerpoint with intermittent interruptions for 5 or 10 minutes of group work at a time.

Many people agree that it works very poorly, and my advisor wants me and my friends to try and figure out why so that he can go complain and try to fix it.

Speaking of my advisor, that brings us to my advising seminar, 6.070. It’s mostly freshmen, and most of them are advised by the instructor (there are a few others that snuck in). There are then two upperclassmen also in the class. It’s worth half the credits of my other classes, and will probably have far less than half the workload.

The class will involve some basic electronics work, but after that, it’s basically free-form; we come in with ideas of what we want to build, and Ed (the instructor) provides us with the materials and a little of the information. Right now we just finished building mobile robots controlled by a PIC, and we have to work on the programming aspect, which will probably be more challenging than the building.

In any case, it’s a great stress relief class, and even though I think we get a lot done, it doesn’t feel so much like work because it’s so free-form. In fact, I’ve actually stayed around working on various things for an hour after class both Monday and yesterday.

Outside of classes, I haven’t gotten involved in any activities yet, but that’s mostly because I’m still club shopping. Friends have recommended that I get involved with the FIRST Robotics team here, which should be good because I think it’s based at the Edgerton Center (which is where my seminar is). Other than that I’m still looking.

So, that’s life. Oh—also, my roommate and I are going to sign up to host visiting pre-frosh. So if anyone that reads this is interested in Course VI (specifically, the computer science aspects of it) or Course II, Kris and I don’t have any real experience in our respective fields, but we’d be glad to host you anyway.