UCI Survival Guide: 2021-2022 (In Person): Fall 2021 Edition (12/21/2021)

 I am now done with my first in person fall quarter at UCI. After last year, I thought that I would be able to handle a heavier coursework this year at UCI, and since I thought I had missed out on a lot last year I tried to join as many things as I could. This meant that I ended up being busy pretty much all the time, which was good and bad.

This quarter, I started working part time at the Anteatery, which is one of the dining halls at UCI. I worked around 18-16 hours a week. I also joined three clubs: TAO (Taiwanese American Organization), the volleyball club, and then BBA (Bboys Anonymous). All together, these extracurriculars probably contribute to around 28 hours a week, give or take a few hours. If I add 14 hrs for classes (I didn't actually go to any of my Anthro classes, so I saved 3 hrs there), and then if I add 9 hrs a week for homework (1 for ochem, 1 for anthro, 2 for cbe, 1 for engr 54, then 4 for chem lab), then that totals to around 51 hours of spent time a week.

I probably could've still spent more time working, but I tried to also spend as much time hanging out with friends. I never said no to a hangout in the first half of the quarter. Grades weren't exactly my biggest priority, but I still managed to pretty much finish all my work and whatnot. Since I still procrastinated a decent amount, I'd often stay up until around 3 or sometimes 4 to finish all my work. 

Eventually, I quit my job because I wanted to hang out with friends more, but overall I think that having this workload was definitely doable, provided you don't take the hardest classes. I got pretty lucky this quarter, because I didn't actually have to spend a ton of time on homework.

I actually got very sick twice this quarter, and after I got sick my motivation to do anything dropped pretty low. I think if I didn't get sick, I definitely would have still been able to finish out the quarter strong.

Biggest takeaways from this quarter is probably that hanging out late is very fun, but not worth it too much if you get sick. Also, taking any class before 9am is hell. I pretty much missed all my 8 am classes, and the few times I did go I just fall asleep in the class anyways and I couldn't remember anything.

Classes Taken:

CHEM 51A - Rychnovsky (A, 85.89)

Honestly, this was my favorite class this quarter. I can see why organic chemistry can be hard to do for some people, but personally I took it as more of a challenge, and I actually enjoyed doing the problems a lot. Even when the problems got hard (towards the end of the quarter, around when spectroscopy and guessing molecule formations gets introduced), I still (mostly) had fun with the problems. Often times, a lot of ochem felt like a puzzle that you had to logically put together, which I enjoyed. For example, a lot of the stereoisomer unit was picturing a molecule in your head, then rotating them around to see different orientations. This unit reminded me of doing rubrics cubes a lot, and even though it was confusing at first I did eventually find it to be pretty fun. Buying a model kit would probably help here, but I don't think that it is necessary at all.

CBE 40A - Silva (B+)

Silva is actually a really good professor. She explains things pretty well, and her approach really made me feel like I understood not only the concepts, but also the structure behind the class and how everything fit together as well. Basically, this entire class was based off of one type of chemical engineering problem, which is called material balances. All this means is that we calculate how much stuff goes into a system, and then how much stuff comes out of a system. For example, maybe we have salt water going into an evaporator, and then water vapor and salt coming out. Given the amount of salt water and the composition of the salt water, we can then find out information about the stuff that is coming out. Like ochem, the problems are very much like a puzzle, and they can be frustrating if you don't "see" how to solve the problem immediately. Doing homework (and practice problems) is probably the most important part of this class as the class focuses on problem solving, instead of memorizing concepts. The final and the midterm are basically a time crunch, and that was frustrating because I'm pretty sure most people in the class could solve all the problems given more time. That being said, the average grade of the tests was (and historically is) around 55-60%, so if you get anything about that you should be pretty good. The class average for the class is also around a C+, so a B+ would be around 1 standard deviation higher, and then an A would be around 2 standard deviations higher than average.

ENGR 54 - Mcdevitt (A, 94.84)

I almost hated this class as much as I hated chem lab. This class was super easy when you are doing problems, but it's a lot harder to understand concepts, partially because (at least for me) of how boring they are. I don't know if it was due to the professor or if the material was just boring, but this was in contention to be my least favorite class of the quarter. Thankfully, due to this quarter being hybrid, all of the tests were take home, so they were all super easy. Discussions were infinitely more helpful than lectures, because in the discussions you would actually learn how to solve the problems, and that was what was important. Looking back, it might have actually been worth it if I just skipped all of the lectures in the second half of the course, because they didn't actually help me that much.

Chem 1LD - Kimberly Edwards (B+, 89)

This class was just Chem 1LC all over again. There are a ton of complaints I want to list about this class, but I also don't want to spend too much time writing about it so I'll try to just list them out quickly: there is little to none leniency, your grade depends on your TA too much, ELN the website sucks, the manual has typos and is unreliable, and the structure of the class is confusing because you get different instructions from different places (the manual, the video, and the rubric), and sometimes they even contradict, at which point you are just fucked. 

By the time I took this course, I was already so burnt out by Chem 1LC I didn't really try too hard in this class. Since you sort of already know how the class works, the work in this class didn't take as long, but it was still every bit as painful to do. Sometimes, it just isn't worth doing all the work for a few extra points. The only saving grace of this class is that sometimes they give out a bit of extra credit. I actually had a pretty good grade in the class for the longest time, but I ended up flunking the final essay somehow, and I ended up with a 89%, which I'm pretty mad about, but it is chem lab with Edwards so there really isn't anything I can do.

Anthro 41A/IS 11 - Douglas (A, 95.2)

I spent pretty much zero effort on this class. I ditched it every week to go to TAO, and I always procrastinated to do the homework until the last moment. It was a pretty easy class, but perhaps maybe not as easy as other people make it out to be, because towards the end the reading does get pretty hard to digest. That being said, the homework for each week maybe only took me around 30 minutes to finish, so usually it wasn't that bad. A lot of the class is pretty much just about history, and I still managed to clutch out an A even though I completely forgot to to one of the homework assignments (He actually gave us some surprise extra credit, which was very helpful). To succeed in this class, print out/download all the class notes, and then read them before a quiz. During the quiz, nearly all of the questions can be Googled, or just control F-ed from the class notes. Make sure to actually read the class notes to understand what is going on in the class, however. If you do all that, you should be good.