It sounds like you should have 1-2 hard classes and no more. Can you take any easy GE classes instead? I didn’t read carefully your first post so if you are on academic probation, you need to take it easy. No need to be a hero. Let’s see if you can survive this quarter with higher GPA. It also will give you some confident. Plus quarter is very quick, you need to stay on top of it.
So slow down. Tell yourself it’s ok to graduate a little bit later. I’m ok if mine take one extra quarter even.
Those 3 classes are hard. I heard some of my friends said P Chem was harder than O Chem. The profs had very harsh curves. You should not rush to graduate in 4 years because doing so you may not graduate at all. It’s normal for engineering students to graduate in 5 years. Take some easy classes otherwise you will reget forever.
Heap, coolweather is right. I took Organice Chemistry and also heard Physical Chem to be harder. Fluid is not too bad.
Possibly the most important thing you can realize is that engineering is a very challenging field of study and very few individuals will breeze through it without working hard to keep up. It is the same with my field, physics. If you don’t understand something right away, I can guarantee that you are not alone. You have face the fact that you will have to put a lot of effort into getting through your courses but don’t think that that means you are incompetent. I teach quantum mechanics to Juniors and Seniors at Illinois Tech. The class is live but recorded for viewing on Internet as well. The tips for success I give my students are as follows and I think they hold for just about any course in science or engineering.
- Do the reading assignments before lecture, you will understand them better.
- Attend class or really view the lectures completely, there are things discussed which are not on the slides or the book. Sit in front, hiding in the back is really bad form and the instructor notices.
- TAKE NOTES! The processof writing down the important things forces you to focus and the act of writing is the first step in internalizing the material
- Ask questions in class, it's likely that others have the same ones. If you have a good instructor, he/she will uniderstand that there are no stupid questions and treat yours seriously.
- Go through the derivations yourself, kill some trees! Start with the book closed after you have read it.
- Do the homework the "right" way. Start with the book closed and then progress to the book open and as a last resort the solutions manual. Struggling is good and helps you learn!
- Come to office hours with questions, I'll be less lonely and it will help you too! The instructor has office hours for a reason. By taking advantage of them, you will gain insight into what the instructor feels is most important and that will help you come time for exams.
Also - no one at a top engineering school has a lot of social life during junior year, so recalibrate. OK, there are a few people who are just whizzing through all this and getting As, but it is time to face that it is not you, so you will have to work like the other 80% of people who will graduate. the work is a joy in it’s own and you have a valuable goal in sight.
UCSD engineering is a really top program, UCSD is hard to get into, engineering even harder. so you have no lightweight peers to curve off of and your professors are not going to pre-chew your food in class to make the slow kids keep up. You are the slow kid, which is OK, since you can get a prestigious and valuable UCSD ChemE degree out of this. But as the slow kid, you have to work harder, not less, and better, not only doing the things you want to but all of it, the extra problem sets the final preparations, the pre-lecture reading, etc.
Reconsider your major again as I mentioned in my last post. You have lots of options right now, you have all the engineering pre-reqs and science requirements done.
Since you are not a computer science major, there is no value in gaming instruction clubs or other such nonsense. Find some fellow students in ChemE, maybe B students since the A students will rather be gaming than tutoring you, and the C students are not going to help you at all. Work with them, have coffee, go to the beach and throw a frisbee, etc. Stop partying. put the books down at 11pm and wake up and have breakfast. start studying in the high mental activity mornings, go to the lectures, watch videos of your professors (or of MITs or other online videos).
PChem is the only class of my ChemE curriculum that I have no memories of 30 years later, but that does not mean easy… Too overwhelmed with 40 hours of thermo homework a week and other light-weights like biochem and microbiology and transport phenomenon aka fluids, heat, mass transfer. Fluids is not that hard, but getting an A is (you have to understand enough theory to get that last 25% of problems0.
Actually by junior year, to get a B, you have to know enough to do 25% more problems than a C student, so understand all homework, classwork plus straightforward applications. A is 50% more, including some very non-obvious things (if you are willing to work more, you can now likely find sample A-qualifying problems on the internet and work on getting your brain to be able to do them on a test).
When you have an A on the midterm in your classes you can add one EC … no, I am almost serious.
@xraymancs - great advice will give to my DD …
I just checked your program at UCSD, you need 199 units, is that correct or did I misread it, minimum to graduate, varies according to college. Compare that to BS in CS for my daughter which is 128. So you end up have to take a lot more than she has to. It sounds like it’s a really hard program. You need a almost 71 units more and that’s a whole year or more. I think for safe bet, you can do 36 units per year.
Also rereading your post again, why the sleep problem. Do you know why? It’s important to sleep well otherwise you will not be able to retain anything. I solve word puzzle much better after I have a good night rest.
@DrGoogle I think the 199 CENG requirement includes 48 units for general ed required by Muir or Warren College.
The 128 CS unit requirement does not include GE requirement.
CENG majors need to take 4-5 classes more than other majors. There is no shame to graduate in 5 years. I think graduating in 5 years is a big accomplishment.
EE requires 180 units including GE.
CS requires 176 units.
Revelle College may require more GE units.
@coolweather, that makes me wondering If my kid will graduate in time or not. She only took a few quarters with 4 classes, she came in with some AP units, skipped 2 math classes and some basic into CS classes, but she is taking junior courses this year. I just hope she graduates in 4 year.
She can take some summer classes. But I think summer internship is more important. No need to rush. The UC has more class requirement than other colleges, including MIT, Harvard. In my old time, I had to have 216 units to graduate with a Computer Engineering degree. Basically my degree required almost one more year longer than CS degree. I had to take more CS/software classes than CS majors.
@xraymancs
Those are some great tips that you have there!! Also, I’m curious about your class at Illinois Tech: how rigorous is Quantum Mechanics? I know that physics will play a heavy role into it, and frankly, I do relatively fine in physics, though I’m not too good of it.
@PickOne1
You are indeed correct. My first priority will be to work twice as hard, compared to others, to perform very well. I’m currently re-evaluating my major, in regards to why I chose it in the first place. In fact, I believe I may have found another problem that accounts for my performance: lack of motivation or interest. Do you have any input upon that by any chance?
As for fellow ChemE students, AIChE is one organization that I have gotten involved in, but I don’t think I pushed myself to study with ChemE classmates on a regular basis. Actually, I would like to know from your perspective how much hours it should take to study PChem, fluids, heat transfer, and mass transfer, along with additional steps to get an A in them, as those are courses that I will have to take.
@DrGoogle
Regarding the sleep problems, I think it comes from my mindset, in which I’m under the belief that a few hours after midnight can be sacrificed for coursework. Or rather, I’m always thinking that among many things in life, sleep itself can be sacrificed for other priorities. I just don’t know how to remove this counterproductive mindset.
@coolweather
Yes, a 5 year plan is what I’m definitely looking to commit myself to, as far as Chemical Engineering goes.
But I’m confused on one matter though: lack of motivation/ interest, and my tendency to not commit. I view that these two are certainly preventing me from doing well, but I don’t have a thorough understanding of them. Can anyone provide an explanation or clarification on them?
@HailHavoc, if you want a real eye opener, google “sleep and grades.” From there either read the lay articles (Time, NPR, etc.) or the scientific publications (PubMed). They all say the same thing…sleep is HUGELY important and lack there of has catastrophic ramifications. There are all sorts of ways to look at ot, but one of the ones I found most fascinating was how just a little loss of sleep can have a big impact. One study looked at deviations from ideal number of hours of sleep (I can’t remember how they defined that, individualized or controlled it) and its impact on grades. The correlation was very linear and the hour increments MUCH tighter than I’d ever have guessed. Basically, every 15 minutes of sleep less that you get from your ideal is equivalent to one grade. Translation, sleep 30 minutes less than ideal and you drop from A to C. 
@eyemgh You weren’t kidding! I’m currently scrolling through articles on correlations between sleep and grades and it is staggering to see the impacts a minimum amount of sleep has! I actually took a psychology course that touched upon sleep and the REM cycle, on how it’s important to sleep in 1 hr and 30 min intervals! Which points back to what you mentioned about 15-30 minutes less having devastating effects.
So, as a college student pursuing a chemical engineering degree, while I know that 8 hours of sleep is ideal, could 7 hours come to work? Say that for example, I may have either an 8am class or be working around that time. When would it be an optimal time to sleep and an ideal time to wake up?
I think a total of 7-8 hours would help. I saw some people sleep less than that.
In my experience, when I slept more than 9 hours I wanted to sleep more.
One of the problems I had was I felt sleepy when reading the books in the library. When I wrote or worked with the computer I never feel sleepy. I used to get up early at 4:30 AM or 5:00 AM to work until 7:00 AM then went to 8:00 AM class. I think that was a bad strategy. I probably should have stayed late and waked up late. I also drank too much coffee.
My son told me he did not wake up until 8:30 or 9:30 AM. He rarely took early classes.
@HailHavoc, when you say working do you mean at a job or studying? Unless it’s absolutely necessary, I’d try not to have a job until you can improve your efficiency. As for hours of sleep, if you’re organized and wisely use your time between classes, you’ll likely still be able to maintain 8 hours a night. You don’t need to be anti-social, but most can do with less along with less TV and less brainless surfing.
Quarter system is really inflating the course hours. I think you can multiply 199 x 2/3 to get a more rational 133 semester hours at other schools. That is about 10 credits more than standard …
Sleep studies indicate you have to go to bed and wake at the same time everyday, so whatever works 7 days a week is what you should pick. Coffee above 4 or 5 cups a day can make you jittery. I don’t drink coffee in the wee hours since it just makes me feel sick, but we are ruling out allnighters here, except to finish up a project.
Really you need to be 100% during tests to do well, well rested and preferably with knowledge in long term rather than short term (cramming memory) especially in engineering (memorization classes are different).
@coolweather, I think you’re right. Whenever I slept more than 9 hours on the weekends, I felt a tendency to take a nap on the same day as well. That or I felt sleepy throughout the day. Regarding the library, I actually had the same tendencies you had. Or rather, whenever I went to the library for studying, the overall atmosphere of the library just made me drowsy, even when using my laptop at times.
Coffee is a no-no for me. I can’t remember the last time I drank coffee. I normally stick to hot chocolate, though that’s made me sleepy more or less.
I think your son is lucky, considering that due to sleep debts, I’ve woken up at 10 or 11am, realizing that I’ve overslept my morning classes. It’s pretty frustrating.
For sleep by itself, there is one effect I’ve observed: at a certain point of sleeping very late (4 or 5am), you basically destroy your sleep cycle and thus suffer the consequences by waking up super late (11am). Is this true?
@eyemgh, Oh, I meant as in a job. Well, considering that I will be a junior, wouldn’t it be best to have something that serves as work experience for engineering? As far as I know it, work experience is crucial for students with engineering majors, as it’s what makes them employable for the future.
Overall, I’m quite confused as to whether to prioritize work experience (internships, jobs, research, etc) or academics, given that I have little work experience to show.
@PickOne1
Honestly, I’ve been thinking for a while on the pros and cons between the quarter system and the semester system. It’s really hard to see the practicality behind learning material within 10 weeks. If anything, the past 2 years have felt like professors and students have had to rush through material together. Wouldn’t semester systems have more advantages, based upon the fact that students have more time to process things and more importantly, themselves?
I think it’s better to have a regular sleep schedule.
About quarter vs semester: Some class taught in one semester could be taught in one quarter or two quarters. If the class is taught in two quarters then students will have more time to learn deeper. Overall the material covered will be the same in both quarter system and semester system.
It’s hard to do meaningful major related work while at school. You’re better off doing internships during the summer. You can even do mini internships over spring break and winter break. The exception would be research. If you can get a lab position that won’t steal too many hours, that would be helpful.
@HailHavoc - Quantum mechanics is one of the pillars of modern physics. As a Chemical Engineer, you will see some quantum mechanics in your physical chemistry classes but not the more formal type that we teach in upper division physics. The course I teach starts with solving the wave equation and then mves into the more formal linear algebra methods and in the second semester, we cover approximation methods.