Having jumped head-first into a lot of new things over the course of the past month (a new position at work, training for another marathon, a full-time course load), and experiencing the ensuing balancing act, I've spent a lot of time doubting my abilities to do some or all of these things.
However, I've been delighted to find that I'm actually not bad at any of these things. My fitness hasn't actually disappeared in my three months of sparse gym attendance--from the get-go, I've been training at a higher level than for my last race, and my body is handling it just fine. At work, I've discovered that I was already fulfilling many of my new responsibilities before my promotion--now I just have a fancy title and meager pay raise to establish my authority. At school, and particularly in this course, my (too many) years of (mostly) good study and work habits are starting to bear fruit.
When I last wrote here, I was preparing to start A1 and conditioned by the fear of an overflowing inbox of Piazza questions to expect a hard row to hoe. I've started now, and while I can't say that it's easy by any means, it's much less daunting than I expected. Much of the assignment is focused on the initial steps, particularly programming the TOAHModel class--most of which I knocked out in one afternoon of work. Sure, I have some cleaning up and style editing to do, but I have the bare bones of the methods worked out, and it was utterly satisfying to print some representations of TOAH models (empty models, models with the first stools filled, models after moves have been made) and see what I envisioned seeing. E2 was a great warm-up as far a learning how to catch and raise errors, and I'm enjoying my newfound ability to write more versatile code, rather than having to implement stringent input preconditions.
I'm backed up against the wall with other commitments this week--condensing my class schedule to two days a week to facilitate work seemed like a great idea until I had 2 midterms, one major assignment deadline and a lab within a 36-hour period--so I know I'll be cutting it close on the deadline for this one, but I'm confident about my progress and excited to get to work on the ConsoleController after those two tests are out of the way.
Monday, 10 February 2014
Monday, 3 February 2014
(Lab)our Intensive
Phew, it's been a busy week. (That's why this post is a day late.)
I'm trying to get used to the grind of being a full-time student, part-time (sometimes closer to full-time) employee, and a full-time marathon-runner-in-training (it counts as full time if you're supposed to be running seven days a week, right?)
Individually, these quests are all going great. I turned my training up from 0 to 11 and logged 34 miles this week, worked 38 hours and aced a midterm in another class. Together, though, they're overwhelming my life. I made an executive decision this week (read: this afternoon), to scrap Monday's three miles every week at least until the end of March, because otherwise I'll have no hope of getting caught up with my homework (including this sLOG, and A1, which I haven't started yet (eep!)).
And there I go getting off track....(much like far to many runners at the UofT Athletic Centre, ugh.)
What I really wanted to talk about in my blog this week was the lab exercises for this class.
Overall, I'm not loving the structure of lab work in this course. I understand the value of pair programming and learning to work in teams, and I'll overcome my challenges with that. (I'm a control freak and will say no more), but coming off a second lab where my partner and I have been unable to finish the work because we got bogged down in details and concepts in the early stages of the assignment, I'm really starting to take issue with the policy of not working on the lab before class.
Specifically, I hate not being able to bring written notes to class. I get the concepts we're working on in class (finally understanding recursion--thanks for the great example in class last Wednesday, Dustin! I was really struggling with how you can call a function inside its own definition, but I get it now---it's kind of like a reset button that just takes you back to the top of the code for that function), but need some time to puzzle them out and apply them to an actual problem, and two hours just isn't sufficient for me to do that.
I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm a long way out of first-year calculus, second-year stats and higher order (i.e. above about the sixth grade level) math in general-- figuring out the formula for fuel efficiency in Lab 3 was much more complicated than it should have been--but mostly, I just feel that it would be more productive if I could bring written notes and/or diagrams to the lab to help explain myself to my partner, because I can't always communicate verbally. It's really important to me to able to finish the lab work during the lab because it's much harder to access the TAs outside of those designated hours (especially when you have a long commute and a dozen other things going on in your life) and can't justify taking the trip downtown.
I also struggle with the concept of "marks for participation". Since we don't have to actually finish the lab work in the allotted time, rather just needing to make our sincere best efforts to do so, there's not a lot of incentive to to go back and finish the work. I support the notion of some (even most) works for showing up to the lab on time and working things out with my partner, but it would ease my fears about upcoming tests if I could see how well I was doing in terms of actually understanding and writing good code on a more frequent basis than the assignments and exercises allow, even if it's just running the marks through an autotester or using the PCRS system like we did in CSC108 last term.
Finally--and I get that this is a tough one, because budget cuts, and also that it's a problem endemic to academia right now---I think we need another TA in the lab. I don't know if I'm just in a particularly challenged section, but if we're going to continue to be expected to finish all of the work in a two-hour period while having barely looked at it beforehand, we need to be able to have our questions answered in a more timely manner.
Annnnnnd that concludes my few (but not-so-brief) thoughts about CSC 148 for the week. Next week, look out for a recount of pulling my hair out over A1, which I'm going to start now, and about which questions posted on Piazza have been filling my inbox with e-mail (and my heart with dread) for the last week and a half. Wish me luck!
I'm trying to get used to the grind of being a full-time student, part-time (sometimes closer to full-time) employee, and a full-time marathon-runner-in-training (it counts as full time if you're supposed to be running seven days a week, right?)
Individually, these quests are all going great. I turned my training up from 0 to 11 and logged 34 miles this week, worked 38 hours and aced a midterm in another class. Together, though, they're overwhelming my life. I made an executive decision this week (read: this afternoon), to scrap Monday's three miles every week at least until the end of March, because otherwise I'll have no hope of getting caught up with my homework (including this sLOG, and A1, which I haven't started yet (eep!)).
And there I go getting off track....(much like far to many runners at the UofT Athletic Centre, ugh.)
What I really wanted to talk about in my blog this week was the lab exercises for this class.
Overall, I'm not loving the structure of lab work in this course. I understand the value of pair programming and learning to work in teams, and I'll overcome my challenges with that. (I'm a control freak and will say no more), but coming off a second lab where my partner and I have been unable to finish the work because we got bogged down in details and concepts in the early stages of the assignment, I'm really starting to take issue with the policy of not working on the lab before class.
Specifically, I hate not being able to bring written notes to class. I get the concepts we're working on in class (finally understanding recursion--thanks for the great example in class last Wednesday, Dustin! I was really struggling with how you can call a function inside its own definition, but I get it now---it's kind of like a reset button that just takes you back to the top of the code for that function), but need some time to puzzle them out and apply them to an actual problem, and two hours just isn't sufficient for me to do that.
I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm a long way out of first-year calculus, second-year stats and higher order (i.e. above about the sixth grade level) math in general-- figuring out the formula for fuel efficiency in Lab 3 was much more complicated than it should have been--but mostly, I just feel that it would be more productive if I could bring written notes and/or diagrams to the lab to help explain myself to my partner, because I can't always communicate verbally. It's really important to me to able to finish the lab work during the lab because it's much harder to access the TAs outside of those designated hours (especially when you have a long commute and a dozen other things going on in your life) and can't justify taking the trip downtown.
I also struggle with the concept of "marks for participation". Since we don't have to actually finish the lab work in the allotted time, rather just needing to make our sincere best efforts to do so, there's not a lot of incentive to to go back and finish the work. I support the notion of some (even most) works for showing up to the lab on time and working things out with my partner, but it would ease my fears about upcoming tests if I could see how well I was doing in terms of actually understanding and writing good code on a more frequent basis than the assignments and exercises allow, even if it's just running the marks through an autotester or using the PCRS system like we did in CSC108 last term.
Finally--and I get that this is a tough one, because budget cuts, and also that it's a problem endemic to academia right now---I think we need another TA in the lab. I don't know if I'm just in a particularly challenged section, but if we're going to continue to be expected to finish all of the work in a two-hour period while having barely looked at it beforehand, we need to be able to have our questions answered in a more timely manner.
Annnnnnd that concludes my few (but not-so-brief) thoughts about CSC 148 for the week. Next week, look out for a recount of pulling my hair out over A1, which I'm going to start now, and about which questions posted on Piazza have been filling my inbox with e-mail (and my heart with dread) for the last week and a half. Wish me luck!
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