As a
freshman engineering student as yet unaffiliated with any particular
engineering major, I was enrolled in a fairly standard 16 credits over the past
semester, as follows:
Multivariable
Calculus for Engineers: Typical multivariable course, as far as I could tell,
but apparently designed to ruin any engineer’s GPA within months of starting
college with its median grade of a B.
Minus.
Honors
General Chemistry: Another introductory class.
The highlights would have to be lab (minus the part where we were
expected to get our results within 0.7% of the actual value or lose points) and
the fact that our professor had a demo for almost
every lecture. To be fair, the lecture
he missed was about quantum mechanics, and I guess he didn't have anything
completely unrelated prepared.
Intro to
Chemical Engineering: Not your average intro to engineering class. Leave your textbook in your dorm room, but be
sure to bring your colored pencils and ruler.
Besides working on process design, mass and energy balances, and
dimensional analysis, drawing straight lines and color coding were strongly
emphasized.
Memoir and
Memory: Even as engineers, we are required to take (and pass) two first year
writing seminars. The best way to sum up
my feelings about engineers and English class: It could have been worse.
Beginning
swimming: Part of Cornell’s graduation requirements is passing the swim test: jump
into the deep end of the pool, swim 25 yards on your front, 25 on your back,
and 25 any way you want. As of four
months ago, I could swim on my front, but any movement on my back was more
likely to attract the lifeguard’s attention than get me to pass the swim test. So I signed up for beginning swimming,
suffered the freezing pool twice a week, and picked up enough to pass the swim
test.
Engineering
1050: I’m pretty sure this has an actual name, but what it comes down to was
that once a week, we met with our engineering advisor to listen to
presentations about stress and grades, get our questions about engineering
activities and clubs answered, and occasionally do something more fun. In the best meeting we had, we took a tour of
the clock tower, and at the end, I got to actually play one of the notes in the
hour bells. Definitely ranks in the top
five in the hypothetical list of “Cool things that have happened to me since I
came to Cornell.”
And so, I
have completed what potentially amounts to 12.5% of my undergraduate career, in
terms of time spent at Cornell. In terms
of credits, it’s more like 12.2%. In
terms of – never mind; I’ll stop now.
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