<p>I just saw my schedule posted on SIO HUB. </p>
<p>Calculus in 3-D with Flaherty
Intermediate Microeconomics with Mueller
Astro mk snc fnl (freshman lecture) with Freeman
Intro to Programming (I have no programming experience) with Kosbie
Interpretation and Arguement(on SPorts fan) with Nelson</p>
<p>I know programming is going to be hard. What about intermediate microconomics and cal in 3d? Are those courses difficult? I might try to drop economics for world history. Please help!</p>
<p>I have no idea how “hard” intermediate micro is at CMU but as a econ prof in my earlier days…intermediate bears little resemblance to intro or what you had in AP econ. It should be much more mathematics based and most of the time you are going to forget that you are discussing social, human behavior. Lots of graphs, math equations and somewhat conceptual. some students love it (go on to do a phD or major in finance) and some students hate it (change to be a psych major). If you like math, particularly, math theory like topology you will enjoy this. Make sure you feel comfortable with the concepts you had in AP econ. Any doubts, retake intro Micro. Econ is about human behavior and don’t let micro discourage you from taking more applied econ classes later which can be more interesting and seem more “real world”. I never took another undergrad econ after my first one–thought it was incredibly tedious and obvious–rediscovered it in grad school when the more advanced classes became more interesting.</p>
<p>looks fine to me. 3D and programming (unless despite having no experience you turn out to be pretty good) should be your hardest classes. Interp will amount to 3 sundays across the semester where you have to pump out an essay. Freshman lecture should be cake.</p>
<p>Time management is the key to making what seemingly appears to be a hard schedule an enjoyable and manageable one. </p>
<p>Take advantage of all the free tutoring-- there are sessions for several of your classes offered evenings, walk-in during the day and with a standing individual/group appt.</p>
<p>If you feel overwhelmed after a few weeks, you can drop a course. Your most difficult class will be programming – it’s an SCS class, and they are hard but rewarding when you do well.</p>
<p>CIT students take only 4 classes first semester-- I’m not sure why the other colleges don’t encourage the same. Especially if there are 10 and 12 unit classes in the schedule.
If I were a Tepper student and had to drop something-- I guess I’d pick the class that was the least of interest to me personally on my list. Always keep one class that you are super excited about taking every semester - the class you cannot wait to attend! Ask yourself which is that class for the Fall and then ask yourself which class are you dreading…go with gut and make an adjustment from there.</p>
<p>Kosbie is considered to be the hardest intro to programming teacher. I didn’t take the class, but that’s just his reputation.</p>
<p>Yeah, have fun with Kosbie. Writing Tetris in one week and tessellations woooo</p>
<p>EDIT: looking at this past Spring’s syllabus, both of those assignments seem to have been removed. I wonder if someone asked him to tone down his curriculum.</p>
<p>what about intermediate microeconomics? I am really worried about that class. Has anyone taken that course? Do freshmen take that course?</p>
<p>I must say though, from what I’ve seen all the people I know that had Kosbie really got the best out of it. I know people who took his class who today are doing much much more with Java than I can.</p>
<p>^ Admittedly, I did learn a lot from his class. And I can now write pretty much any simple game I want to on my own in Java, which is nice. </p>
<p>But he was kind of personally a huge dick to me. He has a style that really teaches to the “elite” of the course and ignores the 60-70 kids who don’t immediately get the material or are taking it purely for the sake of learning and enjoyment. (EG: I asked for help with a part of my Tetris assignment on the e-mail TA “help list” after spending ~20 hours trying to figure out a problem. He personally responded to tell me that my program was a failure, I sucked, and was hopeless at what I was doing and should just start over on a week-long project. My program was working fine, it was just that one bit that was wrong. And that one bit, a 3-d array, wasn’t even in the 15-110 curriculum.) </p>
<p>He later sent me an apology e-mail when I simply didn’t respond, but seriously - a professor who has to send apology emails really shouldn’t be communicating with students, especially if the only help given is “you suck at life.” </p>
<p>So I’m enormously biased, I admit it.</p>
<p>@ kate</p>
<p>That is a simply awful story-- and I hope you forwarded those emails to the Dean and lodged a complaint. That is way over the line and violates a host of internal CMU policies. That is simply not how people treat people-- and certainly not how any professor should treat a student. Arrogance is expected-- rudeness however is not.
You really should lodge a formal complaint through the institution.</p>
<p>I eventually decided it just wasn’t worth it. I’m not usually the kind of person who complains about that stuff-- life’s too short, and he’s too popular a professor for it to make any kind of dent in how he functions as a professor. I did, however, write him the one of the most scathing faculty course evaluation that has ever been documented in the history of forever. Maybe that helped contribute to an easier course in the Spring semester, which is what I’ve heard from a few people.</p>
<p>I have no experience with 15-110, as I started in 15-123 due to AP credit. However, from what I have heard and seen as my friends take it, the course seems a little ridiculous. The red flag to me is the huge disparity between kosbie’s 110 and the 110 for CS majors who have no programming experience (last fall taught by Jacobo). From this thread you can tell that the former is famously difficult, but all of my CS friends who were new programmers found the latter to be obscenely easy.</p>
<p>And the joke is that students from both camps do fine at the next level. I’ve done great in my programming courses and I was taught by an online tutorial in high school… Intro to programming doesn’t have to be hard. Kosbie is just taking something simple and fun, like legos, and demanding that his students become world class architects using only those pieces. Um… cool, dude?</p>
<p>Kosbie got rid of tetris? </p>
<p>boooo…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>^ This is basically exactly how I feel. What I didn’t mention was that I took AP CS A in high school and passed with a 5 with absolutely no trouble. O notation calculations and recursion and sort methods were fun and easy for me to learn. I decided to re-take 15-110 just so I was prepared for CS at CMU-- not for any requirement, I just wanted to take it for fun. Then I took Kosbie’s class and it was like ten hours of sodomizing, grueling homework each week while everyone else in 15-110 was breezing through, having the same fun I’d had in high school. </p>
<p>Ok, I’m done ranting and hijacking the thread now. :D</p>