Congrats! You got this.
How are your classes this semester going @bodangles?
Easy for the first two weeks and then I got slammed with work! I need to step up my game in what appears to be my hardest class, because I’m not happy with how I’ve done on the homework assignments so far. (The cutoff for a C is 60%, though, so. At least there’s that.) 
@bodangles so If C 60% is a C in that class then is 80% an A? Is it the grading scale of the professors rather than the standard grading scale that your talking about? Is the homework online or on paper?
Not sure; the only thing it says in the syllabus is that the lower bound of a C is 60. 70 for a B and 80 for an A would make sense to me but I guess I’ll have to see how it goes. A lot of my classes have professor-created grading scales like that.
The homework is on paper, but I don’t have a great grasp of the concepts yet so it’s been hard to complete. Gonna have to start going to office hours for help, probably.
Congratulations on doing well on your first presentation in class. This comment might be a bit late, but here are some thoughts on giving speeches:
First figure out what you want to say. Write yourself notes that outline what you will say. In some cases (depending upon circumstances) it might be appropriate to have slides or a board which presents some notes / pictures / ideas that you can speak to.
Definitely practice your speech ahead of time. You can practice in your dorm room by yourself with the door closed. However, if you do this you should say the words out loud and say exactly what you would say if there were people there listening. Next you can practice with just a roommate or friend or classmate listening. When you go to give the talk to class, breath deeply, stay calm, and speak clearly at a normal pace and don’t rush.
Public speaking definitely gets better over time. I know one person who the first time that he gave a public talk got a note from his boss on his annual review that he should never again be allowed to speak in public. The last time that he gave a public talk (many years later, just before retiring) got a standing ovation from a meeting of about 1000 experts from all over the world. Same speaker in both cases. The difference was practice and preparation. For the last speech he had something that he wanted to say, he had carefully thought through what he was going to say and had slides, and mostly he had years of practice. If you got a 70 out of 75 on your first talk in class, you are way ahead of where this person was at the same age.
Given the likelihood that you might need to give presentations in the future, and given the value of practicing speaking in order to do it well, I think that it is really good for a university to require that students take a class on public speaking.
@bodangles I was just curious when I asked about the grading scale because usually a 60 is a D, 70 is a C, 80 is a B, and 90 is an A. Usually when a professor has a different grading scale it can be higher and harder. You must have it easy if the grading scale is lower than that but then I don’t know how hard your class is because engineering is a hard major for just about everybody and I’m not where you are at yet. I’m not even in the early engineering requirements yet because I’m still in Remedial Math.
I was very surprised the score I got because did studder and say um in my speech.
If a grading scale is “easy” (which I definitely agree, 80 is much easier to achieve than 93), in my experience that’s usually to make up for the class being difficult. In OChem 1 the cutoff for an A was an 83. I barely squeaked by.
That class actually waited until the end to see how all of the students did before setting the cutoffs. That way they ensured a certain number of A’s, B’s, etc.
Agree with a comment on page 1 that often the audience members may be looking in the speaker’s direction but are day dreaming about other things. They might be happy that you are speaking instead of them.
I got a B on my second speech which isn’t the greatest but I still have an A In the class. My grade dropped from a 96% to a 92%
How goes it? Final stretch of the semester, probably, if your school’s calendar is like mine. I always get frustrated and overwhelmed around this point, but I have to remind myself that it’s almost over and all I have to do is keep working for just a little while longer and then it’s winter break.
All I want is a D in physics. That way I can take physics again in the summer.
I just got a very high B on my third speech but still have an A in COMM. I can loose 100 points and still get an A in the class because there are 1000 points total in the class. Plus and minus grades are not used at my college.
@NASA2014 why would you wanna retake the class? Are you already in danger of failing? Is organic chemistry going better yet? Do you even need to take physics with your major being Biology now?
@bodangles yes I feel exhausted at this point of the semester but I’m hoping that becuase I get a week off during thanksgiving that I can rest and then finish the last three weeks of the semester strongly.
@SuperGeo5999 Congratulations on doing so well. I see you as a more mature, focused poster here and I hope you continue to move forward in a positive way.
Thank you @happy1. Again, I’m sorry for the way I used to be. We all can be negative or have been.
@SuperGeo5999 yes, organic chemsitry is going very well! Passed my third exam after I got a bad grade on my second exam. Unfortunately, yes I do. No idea why I need physics 1 and 2 as a biology major. Well I’ve talked to other professors and they said biology is useful once I’ve taken my major courses. That way I could see how physics plays a role in biology. So I won’t take my physics 1 and 2 until I finish with my biology courses.
They want you to have a well rounded scientific background no matter what science you go into. Even the new Biology TSAP program at my community college requires Physics 1 and 2.
Try to finish all your math courses. I regret not finishing the calculus sequence at my community college. I don’t mind taking it at UAlbany, but It annoys me that I have to take a departmental final for calculus 2. My professor is rushing and is not giving me time to understand the concept. It giving me anxiety because. I have a B+ currently and test this Friday. The test is on series and area of the surface of revolutions. I hope I do good. Why is there such a thing departmental final? Thank god, it’s only for calculus 1 and 2. Calculus 3 professors can make their own final exam.
Is a departmental final an additional test to the tests you already have to do for class?
A departmental final, are least in my experience, is when all professors teaching the class give the same final instead of each writing their own. Could be positive, negative, or neutral. On the one hand, my honors calc 1 class took the same final as regular calc 1, which was more straightforward than the exams we had previously been given. On the other hand, all of my physics exams (I believe in both physics 1 and 2) were common between sections of the class, and my specific professor wasn’t the one writing them, so sometimes there were curveballs we didn’t feel he had prepared us for.