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My courses for fall 07...some advice would be greatly appreciated~
Hello all. I'm coming to SFU in the fall (directly from highschool) and is becoming extremely frantic as it is now already middle of August...
Is not prepared at all...here are the courses I signed up for:
MATH 157 (Manfred Trummer)
PHIL XX1 (Jillian McIntosh)
ENGL 104W (Peter Cramer)
ECON 103 (Mohammad Akbar)
ECON 105 (David Cox)
...I actually only want to take 4 courses (almost everyone I know has advised me so) but I couldn't decide which 4 to take so I just signed up for 5 in the beginning (then I didn't know that I have to pay $50 for every course I drop after August 10th). Well I'll still be dropping one, but still don't know what to do...someone advised me to drop one of the ECON courses (the 105 one to be exact). I really need to do well in the first term to keep my entrance scholarship and all, and I kind of feel that the courses I have chosen aren't exactly easy...(not saying any course would be "easy" but I heard about GPA boosters and things like that?). Please help me out~~
Wow this msg got so long...I hope people didn't give up half way through. I will also add the profs' names beside each course, so if anyone is familiar with any of them, please tell me about them...good points or bad points, if any. Thanks!
Ah, almost forgot. Is it really hard to get to the next class if my classes are scheduled right after the other? like my ENGL 104W is 10 minutes after my PHIL XX1 lecture...and some other tutorials too. I'm not familiar with the campus arrangements so yea = =. Thanks in advance!
Is not prepared at all...here are the courses I signed up for:
MATH 157 (Manfred Trummer)
PHIL XX1 (Jillian McIntosh)
ENGL 104W (Peter Cramer)
ECON 103 (Mohammad Akbar)
ECON 105 (David Cox)
...I actually only want to take 4 courses (almost everyone I know has advised me so) but I couldn't decide which 4 to take so I just signed up for 5 in the beginning (then I didn't know that I have to pay $50 for every course I drop after August 10th). Well I'll still be dropping one, but still don't know what to do...someone advised me to drop one of the ECON courses (the 105 one to be exact). I really need to do well in the first term to keep my entrance scholarship and all, and I kind of feel that the courses I have chosen aren't exactly easy...(not saying any course would be "easy" but I heard about GPA boosters and things like that?). Please help me out~~
Wow this msg got so long...I hope people didn't give up half way through. I will also add the profs' names beside each course, so if anyone is familiar with any of them, please tell me about them...good points or bad points, if any. Thanks!
Ah, almost forgot. Is it really hard to get to the next class if my classes are scheduled right after the other? like my ENGL 104W is 10 minutes after my PHIL XX1 lecture...and some other tutorials too. I'm not familiar with the campus arrangements so yea = =. Thanks in advance!
Comments
1) go to orientation, don't be like me, be lazy and don't go. i ended up being lost and late and stressed and panicky and all that for my lectures for the first day.
2) math 157, i'd call it, math for the crippled, easy peasy japanesy
3) phil xx1 haven't heard bad things about it
4) econ 103 and 105, definitely don't take both, they're intensive courses but i've been told 103 is more interesting ( or maybe i've got it the other way around so double check with other students )
it's along the lines of .. say you have 1$, you can buy ONE chocolate bar, or 4 x $0.25 candies, which would make you happier, and at what opportunity cost etc.
and 10 minutes is plenty, i thought it wasn't enough too but you can walk across the campus in approximately 5 minutes.
I took math 157 w/ Bruce Kadonoff. I believe he is the best math 157 prof based on the reviews given by his ex students. His midterms were easy as they were based on the practice exams that he handed out. But when it came to the final that was a real killer. I along with everyone else in the class died. Luckily it was curved or else I would have probably did poorly in that class.
i took 105 first before 103 and found that to be an easier way out.. 105 is more abt the world economy as opposed to 103 which is more business oriented... 105 gave me the picture of what economics is and then 103 focussed on the details.. it just seems like the logical way of taking the two courses for me..
The other classes you're taking are arts courses so they're reasonably similar to one another. Math is a whole different ballgame. You'll be used to writing and studying text if you take the four arts courses. With math, you'll have to re-orient yourself and become used to studying numbers which is different. It's always better to take similar courses in a given semester because some of the creativity you gain in one course may rub off on the others you're enrolled in.
If I were you, I wouldn't taky any math course unless you absolutely must.
And don't rely on "GPA boosters" to help you out. THERE IS NO SUCH THING: it's all a matter of luck and this you simply won't foresee; you gotta work to achieve decent grades and even harder for scholarships. If you think a course is a booster, you'll end up slacking and do even worse in the end. Do you want that? The first year is by far the most disheartening, so if you do badly, don't feel bad about yourself because the first year is the hardest.
I have Mohammad Akbar in the Fall for ECON 210. from what i've heard, he's not so much of a good guy.
Math 157 isn't hard per se, but the curve can really screw some people over, so beware of that. Though I didn't have Trummer, so I don't how his marking scheme works.
I took ECON 105 and ECON 103 while in my second semester and I didn't think it was too bad. Actually, I felt that the material from one course helped supplement the other, but that's just my two cents.
if u do decide to drop his class make sure u get a chance to be in his class in the future
I hated econ 103 too, lolol. I would personally drop the econ 105 class and just do 103. Taking both at the same time might not be smart.
10 minutes is tons to get from one class to another.
ps orientation was a waste of time fyi. I skipped the tour part and went off with my friend on our own tour of the school. We got it done way faster than the group did. I dont understand how people get lost at sfu....its not that complicated to find your way around.
My advice? Go the week before classes start, and try to find the rooms your classes are in. That will give you a bit of a feel for where you're going when you attend classes for real.
As for the droppage of math, I'm inclined to agree. Having to switch gears between fundamentally word-oriented versus number-oriented classes can be a bit of a jam, although econ is kind of in the middle there. 157 is the class you take if you're planning to do economics or business, while 154 is for the biology/biochem people and 151 is for the math/physics/chemistry people.
I don't know anything about Trummer but I will say that as non-politically correct as this will sound - getting a math prof that speaks and writes proper English will, for the most part, benefit you in certain ways that can mean the difference between scraping a C and getting a B-.