C
Charlie E.
Guest
On Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:27:34 -0500, krw <krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:
back to school and get my EE degree, I learned a lot of interesting
lessons.
While I had been a hobbiest since I was a kid, my bachelors degree was
in psychology. I know that I didn't know a lot of the math and such,
so went back to get a second bachelors in EE. I moved from California
to New Mexico just to get into a program, and in my first class
learned my first lesson.
You don't need a bachelors in EE to get a Masters in EE.
Because of that lesson, I inquired back in California, and a year
later started at UC Santa Barbara in the Masters program.
I started taking a lot of the basic circuits and control theory
classes, and found myself on academic probation. In the masters
program, you need to keep a 3.0 gpa, but in those basic theory
classes, they graded to a 2.0 average. These were also the 'weed'
classes, where they TRIED to get students to fail, by heaping so much
make work on them that they would be overwhelmed. My problem - I
didn't do all the homework and make it look spiffy and nice, I just
did what I needed to learn the subject. I had A's and B's on all the
tests. In my second semester, the T.A.s taught me the second lesson:
When there is a bachelor level course, and a master's level course,
take the Master's level course.
In the BS course, they go into excruciating detail on the basics, as
well as heaping loads of meaningless homework on the poor students. In
the Master's class, they mention the important aspects of the basics
in teh first couple of weeks, and then get right to business. The
Master's courses also tended to be more real world, with actual
applications and circuits. If you could keep up, they were a lot more
fun. they also graded to a B curve, not a C curve!
The final lesson was, choose your professors carefully. I took
classes from many professors, but learned after almost flunking the
second class in a row from one professor, that we were not on the same
page. I had the same material from two different professors, and from
him it always sounded like greek, while I grok'd the material
instantly from the other. Sometimes, the learning chemistry is just
not there.
Charlie
Well, twenty years ago (Wow! how time flies!) when I decided to go
back to school and get my EE degree, I learned a lot of interesting
lessons.
While I had been a hobbiest since I was a kid, my bachelors degree was
in psychology. I know that I didn't know a lot of the math and such,
so went back to get a second bachelors in EE. I moved from California
to New Mexico just to get into a program, and in my first class
learned my first lesson.
You don't need a bachelors in EE to get a Masters in EE.
Because of that lesson, I inquired back in California, and a year
later started at UC Santa Barbara in the Masters program.
I started taking a lot of the basic circuits and control theory
classes, and found myself on academic probation. In the masters
program, you need to keep a 3.0 gpa, but in those basic theory
classes, they graded to a 2.0 average. These were also the 'weed'
classes, where they TRIED to get students to fail, by heaping so much
make work on them that they would be overwhelmed. My problem - I
didn't do all the homework and make it look spiffy and nice, I just
did what I needed to learn the subject. I had A's and B's on all the
tests. In my second semester, the T.A.s taught me the second lesson:
When there is a bachelor level course, and a master's level course,
take the Master's level course.
In the BS course, they go into excruciating detail on the basics, as
well as heaping loads of meaningless homework on the poor students. In
the Master's class, they mention the important aspects of the basics
in teh first couple of weeks, and then get right to business. The
Master's courses also tended to be more real world, with actual
applications and circuits. If you could keep up, they were a lot more
fun. they also graded to a B curve, not a C curve!
The final lesson was, choose your professors carefully. I took
classes from many professors, but learned after almost flunking the
second class in a row from one professor, that we were not on the same
page. I had the same material from two different professors, and from
him it always sounded like greek, while I grok'd the material
instantly from the other. Sometimes, the learning chemistry is just
not there.
Charlie
