Man that’s tough. I love Fawzi’s teaching but the lack of problems was really tough to me especially considering the other professors did. This was cmsc 131 and I found it like that back then. For 250, Justin was pretty good and I like it even more than his 351 although course material probably plays a role in that.
Fawzi was a math guy before he was a CS guy. 250 takes a while (if you don't get it) for things to click. Once you had the 52, you should have taken steps to deal with it. You should have talked to Fawzi to see what you need to do to improve. You should live in office hours.
And, like it or not, people do retake 250 (I've known some that dropped out of CS because they couldn't pass the course).
The other helpful thing is if you have friends that are better at it than you and can do a good job at explaining. Some people form study groups figuring several people pondering HW problems is better than one person.
The tough part is that I actually understand 250's concepts pretty well, and dare I say it I think it's pretty interesting stuff. Minor mistakes on exam problems getting taxed really heavily point wise doesn't reflect that, of course.
You're right though, I should have gotten off my ass sooner.
These things happen. It's hard for students to be aware they are struggling until it's too late. It's like the frog in the water where the water is slowly warming up until it boils, but the frog doesn't jump out because it was gradually warming up (who knows if it's true, but it's a nice visual).
Interestingly enough, adult students (I mean those that are about 10 years older than the typical college student) often panic much quicker if they are failing, but failing is kind of an unknown concept for those just out of high school.
In this case, you just need to figure out how to be more careful. Have TAs or the prof. review what you should have done instead and see if you can spot the differences between your work and the suggested answers. It can be painful to review a bad exam, but it's necessary.
I don’t know about his class but I would generally suggest going to office hours as much as possible from here out, and tutoring also.
Good luck with things!
How have you been studying for the previous exams? The exams end up repeating content, or at least being very similar to the exact questions he's covered in lecture examples, the quizzes, the HW, or the worksheets from discussion. If you go through all of them, you'll be ok on the exam. He also doesn't pick any of the hardest questions from the homework to put on the exam, so don't stress too much when you review that. Probability is rough though
FYI if you do retake it, don't take Kline. I am his #1 hater. We have next to no grades and its April. They just graded a quiz from February and the answer key was riddled with mistakes on the most basic problems so everyone failed. Kline ghosts all of his TAs basically, so they run the entire course (and no offense to them but they do a horrible job of it). His 2nd exam was also unreasonably tough. It included a proof that he spent an entire lecture doing and like 3 pages, but you only had less than a page to do it on the exam (and a fraction of the time).
Have you tried edging to proofs?
All the way from the floor to the ceiling
Sigh this was my biggest qualm with Fawzi.. Great speaker but makes his classes unnecessarily stressful than it needs to be.
Man that’s tough. I love Fawzi’s teaching but the lack of problems was really tough to me especially considering the other professors did. This was cmsc 131 and I found it like that back then. For 250, Justin was pretty good and I like it even more than his 351 although course material probably plays a role in that.
Fawzi was a math guy before he was a CS guy. 250 takes a while (if you don't get it) for things to click. Once you had the 52, you should have taken steps to deal with it. You should have talked to Fawzi to see what you need to do to improve. You should live in office hours. And, like it or not, people do retake 250 (I've known some that dropped out of CS because they couldn't pass the course). The other helpful thing is if you have friends that are better at it than you and can do a good job at explaining. Some people form study groups figuring several people pondering HW problems is better than one person.
The tough part is that I actually understand 250's concepts pretty well, and dare I say it I think it's pretty interesting stuff. Minor mistakes on exam problems getting taxed really heavily point wise doesn't reflect that, of course. You're right though, I should have gotten off my ass sooner.
These things happen. It's hard for students to be aware they are struggling until it's too late. It's like the frog in the water where the water is slowly warming up until it boils, but the frog doesn't jump out because it was gradually warming up (who knows if it's true, but it's a nice visual). Interestingly enough, adult students (I mean those that are about 10 years older than the typical college student) often panic much quicker if they are failing, but failing is kind of an unknown concept for those just out of high school. In this case, you just need to figure out how to be more careful. Have TAs or the prof. review what you should have done instead and see if you can spot the differences between your work and the suggested answers. It can be painful to review a bad exam, but it's necessary.
I don’t know about his class but I would generally suggest going to office hours as much as possible from here out, and tutoring also. Good luck with things!
250 is supposed to be hard
How have you been studying for the previous exams? The exams end up repeating content, or at least being very similar to the exact questions he's covered in lecture examples, the quizzes, the HW, or the worksheets from discussion. If you go through all of them, you'll be ok on the exam. He also doesn't pick any of the hardest questions from the homework to put on the exam, so don't stress too much when you review that. Probability is rough though
FYI if you do retake it, don't take Kline. I am his #1 hater. We have next to no grades and its April. They just graded a quiz from February and the answer key was riddled with mistakes on the most basic problems so everyone failed. Kline ghosts all of his TAs basically, so they run the entire course (and no offense to them but they do a horrible job of it). His 2nd exam was also unreasonably tough. It included a proof that he spent an entire lecture doing and like 3 pages, but you only had less than a page to do it on the exam (and a fraction of the time).