Midterms are Done!

I promise I'll try to actually update this now (for all you nonexistent readers). Classes have been hard, but fun discounting the complete idiocy that is Bi 1. One of the profs thinks he's getting us interested in biology by attempting to turn it into physics, when in fact it ends up sounding like he's try to legitimize biology as a science (which he doesn't need to, I have no deep-seated hatred for biology). As a result, all of our sets are cutesy little pretend experiments, in which we play around on websites and read long strings of letters backwards. And to top it all off, our midterm was 6 hours. It was 23 pages long, had 50 parts, and had an hour long reading section at the beginning. The last question was practically a clone of a Chem 1b set. You needed to know little to no biology. It basically was a test of endurance. I once thought there could never be a test worse than the SAT. This came very close to beating it. Unfortunately, I actually have it worse than most students in the class. Each recitation section has two TAs. In our case one is a chemistry grad student, who is reasonably knowledgeable about most things. But the other is a physics sophomore undergrad who knows less about biology than nearly everyone in the section. Typically, we complain about stupid grad TAs, because, generally speaking, undergrads at Tech have taken the class and know how to help students. Our undergrad TA though, turned section into an hour of reading PowerPoint slides and watching biology YouTube videos. In fact, the poor grad TA is often so mortified that she ends up interrupting her to ask some slightly insightful questions that at least try to make us think.

All right enough ranting about biology. The other classes all make up for it.

Physics this term is so awesome. The lecturer is pretty good. His only flaw is when he tries to teach us about what he doesn't really know that well, like his lecture on the Faraday tensor, which was lost on everyone, except those in my section. Speaking of my section, Sterl Phinney is awesome!!!!!!!!!! (Yes, he does warrant ten exclamation points.) He knows everything and can do anything. He also teaches really well. I though Harvey Newman was awesome, but he's even better. To be honest, Prof. Newman and he should be teaching the supersections. His only fault is that he isn't too fond of repeating himself, which can make life a bit difficult for those who haven't been exposed to the material before at all, (not me, thankfully). But the stuff he teaches us is truly amazing, and gives us glimpses into the beauty of theoretical physics (It's at times like these I wonder as to why I'm not a real physics major).

Math is pretty good as well. A grad student can never measure up to to Sterl, but he LaTeX's his notes for us every week. They are very helpful. The only complaint you could have about him is his relatively harsh grading (especially compared to last term, in which I had the nicest TA ever in terms of grading).

Even the dreary frosh lab, Ph 3 isn't so bad. Each week the pre-labs and reports are statistical propagation of errors. But at least the math has real applications and it certainly isn't as painful as Ch 3a.

IST 4 is pretty awesome as well. The class doesn't require too much work. The sets are intellectually challenging, but the grading scale is nice and you don't have to worry too much about it. In addition, my mom has used a good deal of Prof. Bruck's work, so I can talk about class with her occasionally.

Last but not least, Ec 11. Ah, economics. The lectures are great, Rangel is excited about the class and he was an undergrad here, which is always a plus (even in the case of Nate Lewis), but Rangel (or his TAs) really need to work on their set writing skills. On the sets and the midterm there's always one very vague and silly question, whose meaning no one is sure of. Oh well, whatever.

Midterms went pretty well. My opinion on the math midterm went from ecstatic to worried to pleased after it was returned in less than twelve hours. You already know my opinion of biology and Ec 11 was "meh." I did fine though. All in all, it's been a good half-term.

EDIT: I can write, but that doesn't mean I know grammar and spelling :)

First Post

Well, since this is my first post, and as far as I know, no one will ever read this (not to discourage comments) I might as well be narcissistic and tell you all about myself. I'm currently a frosh at Caltech, and by no means should have the time to be writing this. Finals week of second term is just about done, and thankfully I have only two finals to take, Physics 1b and Chem 1b. Now, back to the introduction. I live in Alley 1 of Ruddock House, and was inspired to write by a fellow Rudd, (who has ceased to update her blog which began at the start of the school year. Unfortunately, I'm nowhere as eloquent as her.). I'll most likely be an APh major (Applied Physics) and that's about all I can think to say right now.
If you want to get a better feel of my academic nature (discounting the fact that I'm forced to take most of theses classes), here's the courses I just finished taking (Winter Term, ranked in order of what I liked) and the courses I'm about to take (Spring Term, ranked in order of what I think I'll like):
Winter (48 units):

1. Math 1B (Analytical)- Linear algebra with Ashbacher is the bomb, (and my TA was awesome)
2. Physics 1B (Analytical)- Special Relativity and Electrostatics with a short intro to electric current that will continue next term.
3. APh 9b Solid State Electronics for Integrated Circuits- An ok class. Unfortunately, Scherer can be a bit repetitive in the lectures, but you hear about some interesting stuff. The labs never work, but my TA was cool and I was in a section of two people. It's how a lab class is supposed to be. The TA cared about what I was doing, asked us questions to make sure we understood what we were doing, and told us about some of the research he was interested in. (elective)
   
4. Chem 1b- An introduction to thermodynamics, kinetics, equilibrium, spectroscopy and ochem (not in that order). Unfortunately, this huge breadth of topics leads to gigantic amounts of handwaving, which I find to be thoroughly disgusting, (which is why I surprisingly liked the introduction to o. chem. portion of the course the best, since there isn't much to wave away unlike in thermo or kinetics)
5. Chem 3a- Even chemistry majors hate this course. It's "Fundamental Techniques of Experimental Chemistry," in other words how to titrate to 0.01 mL increments with a buret that has 0.1 mL delimiters. Thankfully, it's P/F, (even if you're not a frosh) and I'll never have to take a Chem lab again.
   
6. En 5- Major British Authors, the course name is a serious misnomer (at least with my prof). Last time I checked Nabokov and Plato (although I like him) are not British. The only books I appreciated in that class were High Fidelity and The Romance of Tristan and Iseult. While Sherlock Holmes and The Symposium is cool, I've read them already. (forced choice via scheduling from various Philosophy and English frosh hums).
   

Spring Term (51 units):

1. Physics 1C (analytical): It's hard to make physics boring (Ph 1a is an anomaly).
2. Math 1C (analytical): Multivariable calculus- Math at Caltech might be hard, but unless you're Jason Bland (a frosh Rudd who also happens to be a Putnam Fellow), you can't say it's boring.
3. Ec 11- an introduction to economics. I've heard that this class isn't too bad and you actually learn something from it and unlike Hum classes there are no papers (my choices were either real (i.e., not frosh) humanities classes or an introductory social science,).
   
4. IST (Information Science and Technology) 4: "Information and Logic" A "menu class". The course sounds interesting but I'm a little worried about there being no final or midterm and all the sets being non-collab. Other choices were ESE (environmental science and engineering) 1, IST 1, Ay 1, Ge 1. Unfortunately, the coolest menu class, Ch/APh 2, Introduction to Energy Sciences is not being offered this year.
   
5. Physics 003- Physics Lab, From what I've heard, this is more of a course on statistical analysis than an actual physics lab.
6. Bi 1- Biology and Biophysics of Viruses, essentially an introductory biology course- it's biology, need I say more. But seriously, this class doesn't seem to be as tremendously boring as people say it is.