Year 1 Fall at HKUST
Published:
Inspired by Toby Lam, here is some life update.
Lying flat
Lie flat is me. Before the midterm, it was still alright, I was engaged in some sort of work for several hours per day, even though some of it was not relevant to my studies. Post midterm, the trauma from my failure of a linear algebra exam struck me hard and I basically did not do anything until like three weeks from the final exams. By some luck I got barely satisfactory grades on my maths and physics courses. I’m not too sure about my language courses though, the grade is currently unreleased. Edit 2024-01-03: The grades are released, they are satisfactory to good. So although I laid flat, my overall GPA is still ok, fortunately.
Courses
The Honors Calculus course was pretty trivial, and I laid flat after midterm because I knew that no matter how much I screw up my final, I can still get A.
The Honors Linear Algebra, or formally Honors Linear and Abstract Algebra I, course was a bit of a nightmare at the start. It was just too concrete for me! I completely screwed up the midterm, probably in the bottom third of the class. The final was better though, and I got an acceptable grade at the end. Definitely would focus more on concrete stuff from now on, not just to get better grades, but I actually realise how important it is.
The physics course was boring af. I think the material itself is alright, but the textbook is just really dumb. It’s like high school textbook which is bloated to the highest degree. Luckily at the end of the term I found a good set of textbooks by Alonso and Finn that looks like maths textbooks. Will read in summer.
Actual life
I continued my trumpet hiatus, it just seemed too tedious to have to register for the practice room at the Shaw Auditorium and carry my trumpet there and back every practice session. Maybe I will start in spring term, idk. Due to some health course requirement, I registered for a diabolo class, easily the most fun thing this term.
Future plans?
There are just so many things to learn… It doesn’t help that my interest in algebraic geometry and probability theory basically partitions modern mathematics. I have no idea what to do. But I am somewhat sure that I will take mathematical analysis, abstract algebra, and probability theory in spring term, to lay a strong foundation and to somewhat specialise, but at the same time learning something that I will have to learn anyway. Nevertheless, it is regrettable that I am unable to take courses like complex analysis and calculus on manifolds due to skill issue.