Hated this class!

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>Long story short, I had a rough first semester, it was not for lack of effort but I think it was more due to the "shock experience" being older, back in school for a 2nd degree in Engineering, etc.</p>

<p>I just finished my 2nd semester and my GPA was 0.5 better than the first semester, my GPA is still low but I am feeling better about my study habits and what it takes to do better- my goal is not overly ambitious but I want to bring it up to a 3.0 in the next 2 semesters.</p>

<p>I guess I get really frustrated with classes like IE 148- an Industrial Engineering class where we basically learned Excel, Excel VBA Programming, Access and SQL. I took a Java class when I was at another institution and got an A-. I remember the Java class being hard but fun at the same time.</p>

<p>This IE 148 class was horrendous. The professor herself was not proficient in VBA and there was so much confusion. The professor and the TA pretty much figured things out as they went, so there were a lot of changes and inconsistencies. Homework was ridiculous, I am talking about spending 8-10 hours on an assignment working in a group of 5-6 people.</p>

<p>I took Calculus II with this class and I not only did much better in Calculus II but the amount of time it required from me was literally half of what this programming class required.</p>

<p>Before Final, most of my colleagues had a B-, C+ average after all this work. Anyways, I ended up getting a C- and according to my professor, I should be happy because a lot of people dropped not to mention the number of people who were taking it for the second time.</p>

<p>Is is reasonable for me to expect a stupid, unreasonable class like this every semester until I graduate or is this a bit "out of the norm?"- I am not a complainer but this class sucked bad and it was not for lack of effort- we had a study group since Day 1 and very few of us ended up with a solid B.</p>

2

<p>Sounds like you just had a bad professor. There are a few in every program. As an astronomy professor at Arizona once told me, college professors aren’t given classes in how to teach.</p>

<p>You’ll probably find that spreadsheet class will come in handy if you ever get a job in management.</p>

3

<p>Typical weeder class. We have the same one in the ISE program and NCSU, it’s ISE 110. Tons of workload and tough grading but all programs have their barriers to keep out the people with not enough grit.</p>

4

<p>Just curious - what were the assignments like? I mean, VBA is easy, and Access is very easy to learn, so unless the guy asked you to code up the replacement Obamacare website or something how hard could it get?</p>

<p>Intro Access would be the Northwind project level of difficulty at best, a few screens, a few tables… how was the grade determined percentage wise? homeworks, tests?</p>

5

<p>

</p>

<p>My rule of thumb for Engineering classes (EE) is multiply by 3. What this means is the amount of time used for studying and doing work in Calculus should be multiplied by 3 for Engineering classes.</p>

6

<p>Glad to see you’re going back to school! I have a fair amount of friends in their late-20’s and early-30’s; some realized they needed school and others realized their “Associate Degree” is useless.</p>

<p>From my experience, there are always going to be those crappy classes. The professor is terrible, the TA is pointless and the homework hates you. But, you get better. I am in my final semester (wait, what?) of Mechanical Engineering and that is exactly what happens. You manage your time better, you get help sooner, you start the homework immediately and learn to learn. Just keep learning to learn and you will pull through.</p>