UCI Survival Guide: 2023 Spring (8/9/2023)

 Contradictorily, this was probably my most busy quarter yet. The very first week of the spring quarter I went to a jam in SLO, where I was one of nine collegiate invites for a special collegiate eight to smoke category. I, along with two other bboys from UCSD, stayed with the SLO bboys who organized the SLO jam, and that trip was just so fun. I was able to be driven up by bboys from San Diego that I'd only seen in videos before, and I also did much better than I expected. I didn't win or anything, but I technically got third place because I ended with the third most amount of rounds won.

I also made the decision to fly back up to Norcal and enter the Floorgangz Anniversary jam with Josh and Enzo, which was actually super fun. I spent a decent amount of money on this, but I saw a lot of people I knew and I think it was also definitely a highlight of the quarter for me.

Besides that, the CAT gathering was also during this quarter. I wasn't as involved with this, but I still had a lot of fun. It was cool to meet random people in the tricking community, and I landed some combos that I had literally never done before. Vibes were very similar to a bboy jam, but I think I enjoyed it a bit less because I don't consider myself good enough at tricking yet. I was very happy to be able to have such good tricking sessions here though, because it was indicative that my ankle was pretty much almost healed.

I also had to do two different performances this year, one for the Spring Quarter Dance Festival with BBA and one with CATT for Chinese Association (CA) Culture Night. I don't like performances, and doing hell weeks for them was such a pain in the ass, but they ended up being ok. I didn't do much in the CATT performance besides doing a webster in the very beginning, but I was pretty involved with the BBA performance and I had a little solo at the end too.

Speaking of BBA, BBA did so much this quarter. The community for sure got even closer this quarter, and we had a lot of events like a photoshoot, a spam musubi fundraiser, and even a banquet with an afterparty.

Whenever I had free time, I played volleyball. I tried to make time to play volleyball whenever, but I also ended up playing for an hour or two because I joined an intramural team this quarter. We didn't do was well as we hoped, but we did end up winning the lower division, which counts for something I guess.

Looking back, I actually also partied a lot. There was Louna's 30th birthday party, which wasn't that much of a big party party, but I also went to two tricking parties, two parties with the vball open gym people, and I had a BBA party. That amounts to like around a party every two weeks, which is a decent amount.

Surprisingly, I mostly had my life together this quarter, which I thought was interesting. I didn't really fall behind on any work, but when I started getting to the hell weeks I started sleeping at 4am, which is a sleep schedule habit I have yet to fix. I also developed a very strong fixation on cotton candy grapes this quarter. I must've spent almost $200 just buying those grapes this quarter. They are so good.

Towards the end of the quarter, my skateboard also actually broke, which meant I had to actually leave for classes and research and things earlier. I was basically relegated to taking the bus, which sucked at first but ended up not being as bad as I thought. My skateboard itself already had it's bolts that connected the truck to the board broken, but besides that the remote broke this quarter, which was the final nail in the coffin. Basically, the battery just stopped working, and although I was still able to skate by attaching an external battery to the remote, this method was super sketchy and I ended up almost not being able to stop at a red light and I had a scary fall off the board. During the fall I dropped the remote and a car ran over it, rendering it completely useless, which I took as a very strong sign to stop skating.

Classes wise, this quarter is supposed to be one of the hardest quarters of chemical engineering at UCI. It was difficult, but I honestly do feel like some of the other quarters might have been a bit easier. Maybe I'm used to the grind now, but I didn't even focus that much on classes this quarter. I would basically just show up to classes, and then study a little bit for each class, and then I was pretty much fine. What made this quarter busy and "hard" was really just my extracurriculars. 

Classes Taken:

CBE 120C (Mass Transfer)- Ali Mohraz (B)

The hardest class in chemical engineering at UCI, supposedly. I thought it was ok, to be honest. At this point in chemical engineering you are so used to getting low scores that getting a 40% honestly just feels like whatever. I didn't feel like I was ever going to fail this class at all, and I didn't study that much for this class either. I did pretty well on all the tests, so I'm pretty surprised I got a B, not even a B+ or an A-. Honestly, I feel like that just means basically no one got an A, which I think is pretty fair. Looking at Zotistics, historically only like 10% of people even get an A in this class, which comes out to at most 4 people in this class getting an A. Looking back, I most probably was not the top third or fourth performer in the class, so it makes sense that I got a B in the class, I guess. I estimate that I was probably around top 10 in the class.

I know a lot of people were super worried about failing this class, but I think most people will be fine because at this point, the professors can't really afford to fail many more chemical engineers. Mohraz is honestly a pretty good professor, and he held these problem solving sessions every week that basically acted like a discussion session. Those were super super useful, and as long as you pay attention in class and then go to the problem solving session I think you would do fine in this class. 

CBE 130 (Separation Processes) - Robert Nielsen (A)

I got an A in this class purely because I am decent in learning by myself, I guess. There is really no point to going to any of Nielsen's lectures at all, but going to his discussions can be kinda useful ish (I only went to 1 though). I pretty much stopped going to class after around week 3, and then I studied the material right before each exam.

The homework for this class can be a little bit confusing, but there are tons of resources online in the form of websites and YouTube videos that can help you learn the material by itself. Since separations is one of the most important chemical engineering subjects, the knowledge needed for this class is pretty accessible. I found reading the textbook painful but useful, and I also found that studying the discussion notes for this class helped me get a general picture of what was going on. Lecture notes were not useful at all for me, except to solve specific problems in the homework.

The hardest part for this class for most people was just understanding what you needed to know. After you know what you need to know (by skimming lecture/discussion notes), learning the rest is relatively easy.

CBE 181 (Polymer Science & Engineering) -  Herdeline Ann Ardoña (B+)

I can not believe I got a B+ in this class. I thought I was going to fail. Attendance was counted for this class in the form of in class quizzes, which absolutely sucked. I pretty much ended up going late to this class, especially after my skateboard stopped working. While in class, I found the material pretty boring, so I just ended up playing Minesweeper a lot. 

I did terrible on the midterm for this class, and I also did pretty horrible on most of all the homeworks. I just felt so stupid because I thought I knew what I was doing, but apparently I didn't because I just kept getting so many things wrong. The final for this class was take home but also actually super hard. I spent a pretty decent amount of time on it, but I guess I probably did pretty well on it because I was sitting at a pretty solid C before the final. Or, maybe there was just a really good curve. 

Taking this class has just been the final nail in the coffin to let me know that materials science is not for me.

ENGR 195 (Electrochemical Energy) - Vojislav Stamenkovic (A)

I got completely peer pressured into taking this class. I audited the first class, and then I just signed up for funsies. I then forgot to drop the class by like three hours, which was completely my fault.

That being said, this is one of the easiest classes ever. All you had to do was show up to class pretty much. We had one group presentation that didn't take too much time, and we also had a final that was open notes which was pretty easy as long as you were paying even 10% attention during the class. Every time I went to this class I would pretty much just show up and then play Minesweeper the entire time. Bringing my laptop to school with a charger was a complete game changer, as people think you are working if you open up a laptop for some reason.

I ended up not regretting taking this class at all, because I was able to request for this class to be used in my materials science minor. Pretty worth overall. Also, it boosted my GPA which was cool.

ENGRMAE 199 (STMS research) -  Advisor: Khalid Rafique (A-)

I am so fucking mad that I only got an A- in this class. We did so much this quarter, and I spent so much time this quarter in lab. I even went over the 80 hours required, and I didn't even bullshit my hours (that much). However, I didn't spend as much time polishing my EQR, which is probably why I got the A-, I guess. I think I definitely deserved more than an A.

A lot of my and my groups work this quarter was on designing good spacers for the cell. We tested a lot of designs and spacer materials, and at the end of the quarter we assembled a cell using our best spacer design. Testing the different spacers was pretty time consuming, but I liked it because I could just sit in lab and play video games while waiting for things to finish printing. Pretty chill quarter for STMS in general.