my switch from CSC240 to CSC165

On Monday I dropped down from CSC240 to CSC165. The decision was one that very difficult for me so I’ll spend my first blog describing the decision-making process.

First, some background. I graduated high school in 2004. Math was always easy for me, so when I went to Western for a Bachelor of Arts degree after high school, I took first year calculus for an easy science credit. This year, I came to U of T to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Statistics and Computer Science. Because I already have a degree, I am considered a second year transfer student and I have credit for MAT135 and MAT136 because of the calculus I took when I was at Western.

When I registered for my courses this year, I made some cocky decisions. I registered for STA257 and STA261 (the most difficult statistics courses) and of course CSC240. In STA257, I learned that theoretical math was not for me. I was doing very well in the calculations aspect of MAT223 (linear algebra) and MAT235 (second year calculus with a focus on applications) but not very well on the proofs. And I was hopelessly lost in STA257. When I realized I should not have taken STA257, it was too late to drop down to another stats course. I made sure to switch into STA248 (statistics for computer science) for second semester, got a tutor and worked really hard to pass STA257 and the results weren’t actually that bad.

On the first day of CSC240 this year, the professor said that we should be in CSC165 if we weren’t just as comfortable with theoretical ideas as we were with concrete examples. My experience with statistics showed me that I need concrete examples in order to understand theoretical ideas. In addition, the professor said we should be in CSC165 if we memorized math and were unable to derive formulas on the spot. Truth be told, I didn’t even know there was a second option to memorizing formulas, a strategy that had always worked well for me. So I decided I should enroll in CSC165. And so I added myself to the waitlist which was 92 students long.

I knew I wouldn’t get in before the waitlist closed, so I threw myself full force into CSC240. I couldn’t guarantee that there would ever be space for me in CSC165, and I didn’t want to be left behind in CSC240. In CSC240, we had online lectures that we had to watch before class so we could learn the new material before our scheduled class time, where we would work through some of the ideas presented in the online lectures. In addition to spending time making sure I understood the lectures, I did all of the recommended reading, which was not in short supply. I found that I was actually grasping the material, and even found a mistake in an MIT textbook, one of our accompanying texts. When it came to the first assignment, I went to office hours, spent probably over 12 hours on my responses, and second guessed myself the entire time. It turns out I needn’t have second guessed myself as much as I did because I managed to get a very good grade.

The turning point came when I couldn’t get through Online Lecture 7 over the weekend. Online Lecture 7 was about infinite sets and the unsolvable Halting Problem. I couldn’t grasp what an ASCII string was, never mind understand why this problem was unsolvable, how to prove something diagonally or how infinite sets can be bigger or smaller than one another. On the same day, Assignment 2 was posted, and I saw that it was likely beyond my grasp. Considering how much time I had spent on the first assignment, I knew it would be likely double that for each subsequent assignment. And also, I saw on the CSC165 syllabus that some of these topics (like the Halting Problem) would also be covered, but not until the end of the semester and I knew the topics would be presented in a more digestible way. First thing Monday morning, I went to my college registrar and made the switch.

This decision was very difficult for me. Should I have stuck with CSC240? I probably could have passed the course. Just because you can do something, does that mean you should? Are we obligated (morally or otherwise) to see how far we can push and challenge our brains? There is someone very important to me who said that maybe I wasn’t giving myself enough credit.

But if I can get the exact same degree with CSC165 and CSC236 and be able to digest the material more easily, is doing so being lazy? Or is it being resourceful? After all, those many, many hours I would’ve spent anxiously labouring on CSC240, I will now be able to use to focus on my other courses and maintain a better cumulative GPA.

I’m looking forward to CSC165. I won’t let this opportunity go to waste.