Intro:
Looking back to first year, I probably could have done a lot better. Should have spent less time fooling around and more time studying, but the most important thing would have been to choose a path of study. In this second year, although things are going well, I wish that I had taken courses that actually interested me, instead of those that would "open more doors". I would suggest that one should look beyond the requirements. For example, this year, I took a linguistics course, and it was the most fun I had in class. I wish that I could have taken LIN100Y in first year to qualify for the Linguistics minor. However, not to say the least, I found the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology courses ok, and would consider taking more of that. Finally, I would like to note a few things:
- Look beyond requirements, and beyond your program, there are many courses that are interesting if you are willing to give them a shot.
- I found that profs can make or break a course. Look in the anti-calendar to check out which kind of prof suits you the best. It also wouldn't hurt to look up the course pages beforehand, they can sometimes give you a hint as to how hard a course is gonna get.
MAT137 - Calculus I:
MAT137, a necessary evil one might call it. Looking back, it isn't as hard as it seemed when I took it. I probably should have done better on the problem sets, and studied more for the final exam. On the other hand my prof for this course was very enthusiastic and knowledgable. Although weekly problem sets are a good way to learn the material, it's definitely more work than any of the other first year courses I took. I believe you will absolutely need this course if you are taking any of the sciences, it is the most basic of elementary calculus.
PHY140 - Modern Physics:Ah. The full year physics course, since I'm not from Ontario (and thus did not take and OAC courses), I can clearly say that nothing I took in high school really prepared me for this kind of material. Fortunately, problem sets were few and far between (good for the scheduling, bad for the learning) and were pretty hard. Considering it wasn't a requirement to take CS, I am not quite sure why they promote that everyone should take this course. I agree that physics may be useful in the future, but many of the specialist programs do not go any further. I believe that MAT137 (if taken previously, not concurrently) would probably help in the latter part of this course, with the fields and integration and whatnot. Overall, I'm lucky I knew people taking this, it certainly helps. Only time will tell if this course is of any use.
ECO100 - Intro Economics:Now this is a course that I kinda wish I didn't take. Not because it's a bad course or anything, but why in God's name did they teach it as it is? Well firstly, I had a prof who was no-doubt very knowledgable in economics, but had a voice that could put a bear into premature hibernation. Not to mention that they taught this in the Isabel Bader (sp?) theater, where the seats are soft and ripe for sleeping in. Other than that, the material was pseudo-interesting, but the books that they had (both the commercial and the additional text) were of less use than I thought they would be. I would have gladly traded this for another two half courses, but I must admit, this course had the lowest workload of any all the courses I took.
CSC108 - Intro Programming:A very fun course, this was the reason I am hooked on CS right now. It was an easy introductory course, that taught the in's and out's of Java, but on a shallow scale. Props to the profs who were great at making the course seem interesting. Assignments were pretty easy, but my memory fails me as to when exactly we did. Overall, a nice course to take.
CSC148 - Intro Computation:Also a very fun course, it was taught by the same 108 instructors, so that was a bonus. Assignments were good, a lot more on actual CS material, like data structures, OO, recursion, etc. The basic stuff you should be able to apply to any language. Props to the profs, me and a friend betted that they would never ask us to write out the merge sort algorithm on the final, and as Murphy's law states, they had the merge sort on THE FIRST QUESTION. Wow, although it was easy to piece together, I nearly laughed out loud when I flipped open the test.
CSC165 - Intro Computational Theory:Hm. Having finished CSC236, I really don't think that people have trouble with computational theory in the second year, so I'm not sure why they created a first year course for it. In essence it goes through basic theory like predicate logic and proof structure. It was a ambiguous kind of course, since it was offered for the first time last year. Not to mention that the book they had was useful only for the first parts of the course. I'm sure they will be revising it for future years.
MAT223 - Linear Algebra I:I took this last year, but probably should have left it till this year. The material was not hard per say, but I ended up taking six courses in the final term and this was just another load on the camels back. I believe this course will be especially useful in future CS courses. Unfortunately the tutorials for this class (last year) were held right after the first test (not much use there). Also, some of the dimension and spaces theories were hard to understand if you've never taken any sort of linear algebra.