It's been a while since I've last posted. I'm really sorry. I wonder if people still come here.
Anyhow, the 23rd of July was the last day of lectures. At that point, I had finished all my graded work for all my classes except one. I've gotten 3 grades so far. A 1,0 (A+) a 1,3 (A/A+), and a 2,0 (A-). Those should theoretically all be A's back at UConn, but we'll see. My math grade hasn't come yet. I have a spoken-exam for Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the 2nd of August.
At the moment I am getting ready for Freak Stock. Freak Stock is the big (6000 people) once-per-year Jesus Freaks music fest. It goes from Wednesday until Sunday. It should be a great time.
Well, I just I'll post some general reflections on the time I've had here so far. I'm mainly doing that as a way to avoid studying for AI. Actually, I'm not quite sure what I should study for AI. The spoken test is 20 minutes. That seems a bit short to me. We'll see.
First some relfections on classes:
Pronunciation and intonation (grade 2,0): this class was so painful. Basically, it was the teacher listening to us, and then asking the others was we did wrong. If we knew, we wouldn't have been in the class!! I don't think the class helped my pronunciation. My pronunciation improved during the course of the class, but not because of the class.
Methods of Anthropology and Cultural Geography/Intercultural Communication (grade 1,3): Our graded project was a research project about intercultural communication in a grade school here in Freiburg. It was actually a pretty neat experience. So I managed to survive a masters-program social-science class. However, I found our report pretty boring. We got a near-perfect grade, but still, the first 20 pages (literally) were rather meaningless blather about diversity and how wonderful it is, and how differences cause peace (yes, all those wars were caused because the countries had so much in common. If they were only different, it would have been all good).
Aspects of Germany Society (grade 1,0): The teacher for this class was great. I learned a lot, and didn't suffer from much stress. The class was not deep, but it covered a lot of topics about German society.
Artificial Intelligence (grade not completed): This class was pretty interesting. It was an overview of many important topics in AI (searching, learning, logic, probability and other things). The class was half in English and half in German, and every lecture was video taped and put online for free download later. The teacher who taught in English had neither English nor German as his first language. His English was overall excelent (great grammar, great pronunciation, etc), but a few things bugged me. First, he used the word "like" in the only places where it doesn't work. He did the same thing with "so to say" and "kinda". Also, he used "would" in "if-sentences". But I think the Germans understood him better that way.
Differential Geometry (grade not received): This was my only math class this semester. The class was a fight and a half! The other students had 18 credit hours of analysis (I've probably had about 3 credit hours at their level of abstraction), 12 credit hours of linear algebra (I've had 3, but 3 super-high quality), 4 credit hours of algebra (me: 0), and 4 of complex analysis (me: 0). I had to learn a lot of background material to survive. I survived. I learned a lot, but the bulk of what I learned was not differential geometry (I learned a lot of that), but rather background topics. That'll all be helpful for graduate school.
Well, I have some more thoughts, especially about language. But you'll have to wait until I get back from Freak Stock.
No comments:
Post a Comment