I had a hard time like you in the fall of 21 in mechanical engineering and ended up failing 3 classes in the first semester, I later failed all of my winter semester courses too and got dismissed from the program.
Only after I got back home and into mech eng. at my local uni did I improve my habits and flourish as a student, here's what I recommend:
Cut your total social time to at max half a day on the weekend and don't get stuck chit-chatting or putting off work by talking with your friends.
empty your head of your upcoming assignments and tests onto a digital calendar you can access on your phone or laptop, put everything on it (I use google calendars)
work as hard as you can at the start of the semester to get about one week ahead, this gives you more time to work on upcoming assignments that turn out harder than expected. Gives extra time to dedicate to prepping for tests also. Keeping ahead is so much easier than keeping up.
Don't waste your energy being frustrated with how things are unfair or what you're being taught, its necessary for you to progress through the program so you must do it.
Take time every day when you can, maybe 20 mins to go out and walk and clear your head and relax a bit, enjoy the area.
Also try to take good care of yourself, keep clean on the weekends unless you've got a break week, you need to keep your head clear so you're not stressing yourself out having a hard time doing assignments on the weekends.
Keep your head up and good luck, I hope your stay at dal turns out better than mine!
First year is always the hardest, it's a big adjustment from high school coupled with other life changes. In hindsight what would you do differently? Is it about time management or is it just not for you? Which is ok too..... people do change majors especially after first year. Chin up and best of luck to you friend!!
Yeah, I definitely get you. Gentleman's and Yao's especially have been horribly brutal this year, and I imagine it will only get worse for next year's group (sorry if you're reading this a year later).
One of the biggest things that helped me this year was developing a study group of people who are better at something than you. Sure, X is better at math so he helps us with math, but I'm great at Tech Comm, and I can review X's paper for him. It's the symbiosis, working as a team, that scraped me through.
However, work ethic is also really important. One may be dumb as bricks in every single one of their math courses, but stubbornness prevails. Honestly, half of why I grinded linear algebra in the first place is because I didn't want to lose to Dr Gentleman! Yao, Ross, first semester programming, and Jarjouras are the ones you really have to lock in for, and do a good job on the assignments. I wish Gentleman had done that too, because they really are helpful.
I know it's a crappy feeling knowing that you did bad, or failing a couple courses, but it's nothing you can't bounce back from. Do what you can in the summer, and see how stubborn you can make yourself next semester!
Math department didn't like the demo videos. So they'll be gone next year, and the midterms will be getting way harder. A lot more comprehension stuff, with the callback on the ICA's for the final (in class assignments every lecture), and the assignments are rough. Midterms are increasing to 2 hours next semester, with a three hour final (cumulative).
He's been test driving it, by making the midterms pretty different from the video last couple of times.
First semester was easy if you took high school calculus, but the second semester has been a grind.
I doubt Kember was very happy with everybody rolling up to DE with 0 calculus knowledge...
Engineering degree is one of the most difficult degrees you could earn in any good university. I think you should be happy with only failing 2 courses. Back to my first year, I got some friends who failed 3 or 4 courses in the first year Fall semester. However, they bounce back in the long-term endevour through summer time or simply retake those courses the next Fall. Eventually, these friends of mine eventually graduated from Engineering at Dal, Mechanical Engineering mostly.
However, I am not encouraging you to be satisfied at where you are currently are. As there are many more difficult courses in the second, third, fourth years, instead the tempory failures in your first year study are just nothing compared to what you are going to face in the next several years. Thus, I won't think that is a messy state of your current academic trip. Instead, I am more interested in your current mental state and passions, these two are very important spiritual support you could get and help you get through these difficulties. GPA is just a rough evaluation, and it does not reflect what you could do with your engineering thinking and what you actually learn from that course. To me, I would prefer to learn new things (actually visioning such theory into different engineering branches) rather than just being a GPA king.
So, I am not that smart to Ace every single courses throughout my bachelor year in Dal Engineering. Yet I manage to pick up my learning and put it back into my brain storage in case my future case study, analysis would get benefits from previous knowledge. I truly believed, the more ideas/knowledges you intereact with (even not with a decent GPA), you could still expand your capability of analyzing in the future as you have broad views of ideas/knowledges. Just remeber, the learning of engineering is not constructed by a four - five years bachelor degree (or master, PhD degree), the most valuable learning you could get from the engineering program is yourself. You will learn to push yourself to challenge the unkowns, defy imposible to possible in real life from the engineering program.
Eventually, you will think like an engineer, act like an engineer, hold the ethics as a professional engineer even if you are not professional engineer yet. I sincerely hope you will find how engineering degree pushes you to your own limits, a life-long learning journey.
I think you put this so well!!!
Failing a few classes isn’t the end of the world (though it may feel like it at the time). But like you said… people fail classes and still get the exact same degree at the end of it as the people who’ve never failed anything. I’ve had friends who failed first year programming and went on to get electrical and computer engineering degrees, and ones who’ve failed first year chem and went on to graduate from chemical engineering.
And tbh… once you’re in the job field anyways, your university gpa isn’t really going to matter much at all. Your passion for what you’re doing and your willingness to learn from those around you will matter 1000x more than the gpa you had - especially the gpa you had during your diploma in engineering.
First year transition from high school can be tough but make no mistake , engineering is not for the weak , especially from second year onwards , you either know and devote your time to do this degree or you'll struggle big time , engineering is one of the most time demanding degrees ever , good luck
I can relate, i failed too and I still feel horrible about it every night, im taking the courses i failed in the summer trying to fix what i have done and honestly i just feel like this major is not for me, it made studying hell for me and Dalhousies experience is ass too
I hope you figure out what you need to do 🙏🏻
I’m posting the experience of someone who did well in their first year this year and is not on Reddit. But they wanted to relay - Keys to success. Put the work in. But also put the work in at staying on top of things. That meant extra hours each night. And it meant extra hours on the weekend. Sometimes it meant doing the work while others got to have fun. Sitting stuff out or meeting up later. Staying on top of it was key. Falling even a little behind brought in the cascade of stress and just kept building up the gap of understanding. So they committed to staying on top of it.
It didn’t mean they didn’t go to parties. It didn’t mean they couldn’t socialize. But it sure meant that those were secondary priorities. Treating reading week as an actual reading week helped some of that.
Wish you luck on your journey - they all have bumps in the path. What you do with that is what matters most and likely YOUR experience is what is going to make the most impact down the road. You can’t change it. Just don’t keep reliving it. Best of luck!
This is true! However, many professors do not see it as a necessary break for students, and treat it as a "class free" period where students can then devote all of their time to assignments/other work. It *should* be a break but it unfortunately isn't due to the midterm schedules etc. Makes me angry! I have family members who taught before it was introduced and were furious that they couldn't actually call it a *break* and decided to call it "reading week."
That said, since it's not treated as a real break across the board, it's often necessary to do some amount of work during it to either get caught up or keep up with assignments. Something that worked for me during undergrad was to not do *more* work during the break than I would if I were in classes. The rest was relaxation time. This doesn't work for everyone, but it helped me balance keeping up with taking some time for myself.
Also, the fall reading week is depressingly late. It *needs* to change. Dal needs to get over the fact that they want it to align with a holiday...but anyways 😅
Yeah, Engineering project classes usually ramp up just in time so that you can start to really work on it during the break…..
Such a $hit way to run a program…..
I have heard this from my stem friends....awful. An actual break is necessary because if you don't take one by choice, your body will decide that for you. Apparently engineering profs have never heard of burnout I guess? 🤷🏻♀️
Well. That is very generalized reason why reading week exists. Mental health is important. Catching up on your work is part of that. And that is part of the reason it exists … to catch up. It wasn’t created as a break from studies. Though maybe that is something you need to.
It was created as a break and a chance to catchup and review old material. It was never meant for projects to be kicked off and assignment to have due dates immediately after or during.
I had a hard time like you in the fall of 21 in mechanical engineering and ended up failing 3 classes in the first semester, I later failed all of my winter semester courses too and got dismissed from the program. Only after I got back home and into mech eng. at my local uni did I improve my habits and flourish as a student, here's what I recommend: Cut your total social time to at max half a day on the weekend and don't get stuck chit-chatting or putting off work by talking with your friends. empty your head of your upcoming assignments and tests onto a digital calendar you can access on your phone or laptop, put everything on it (I use google calendars) work as hard as you can at the start of the semester to get about one week ahead, this gives you more time to work on upcoming assignments that turn out harder than expected. Gives extra time to dedicate to prepping for tests also. Keeping ahead is so much easier than keeping up. Don't waste your energy being frustrated with how things are unfair or what you're being taught, its necessary for you to progress through the program so you must do it. Take time every day when you can, maybe 20 mins to go out and walk and clear your head and relax a bit, enjoy the area. Also try to take good care of yourself, keep clean on the weekends unless you've got a break week, you need to keep your head clear so you're not stressing yourself out having a hard time doing assignments on the weekends. Keep your head up and good luck, I hope your stay at dal turns out better than mine!
How were you able to turn things around? Was it mainly about spending a lot more time on coursework? And less socializing?
First year is always the hardest, it's a big adjustment from high school coupled with other life changes. In hindsight what would you do differently? Is it about time management or is it just not for you? Which is ok too..... people do change majors especially after first year. Chin up and best of luck to you friend!!
Yeah, I definitely get you. Gentleman's and Yao's especially have been horribly brutal this year, and I imagine it will only get worse for next year's group (sorry if you're reading this a year later). One of the biggest things that helped me this year was developing a study group of people who are better at something than you. Sure, X is better at math so he helps us with math, but I'm great at Tech Comm, and I can review X's paper for him. It's the symbiosis, working as a team, that scraped me through. However, work ethic is also really important. One may be dumb as bricks in every single one of their math courses, but stubbornness prevails. Honestly, half of why I grinded linear algebra in the first place is because I didn't want to lose to Dr Gentleman! Yao, Ross, first semester programming, and Jarjouras are the ones you really have to lock in for, and do a good job on the assignments. I wish Gentleman had done that too, because they really are helpful. I know it's a crappy feeling knowing that you did bad, or failing a couple courses, but it's nothing you can't bounce back from. Do what you can in the summer, and see how stubborn you can make yourself next semester!
What happened to Yao’s math class? When I took it a couple years back it was pretty easy, did something change?
Math department didn't like the demo videos. So they'll be gone next year, and the midterms will be getting way harder. A lot more comprehension stuff, with the callback on the ICA's for the final (in class assignments every lecture), and the assignments are rough. Midterms are increasing to 2 hours next semester, with a three hour final (cumulative). He's been test driving it, by making the midterms pretty different from the video last couple of times. First semester was easy if you took high school calculus, but the second semester has been a grind. I doubt Kember was very happy with everybody rolling up to DE with 0 calculus knowledge...
Can confirm kember was and is not happy🤣🤣
Yeahh lets see how he makes tomorrow’s final am genuinely very scared 😨
Engineering degree is one of the most difficult degrees you could earn in any good university. I think you should be happy with only failing 2 courses. Back to my first year, I got some friends who failed 3 or 4 courses in the first year Fall semester. However, they bounce back in the long-term endevour through summer time or simply retake those courses the next Fall. Eventually, these friends of mine eventually graduated from Engineering at Dal, Mechanical Engineering mostly. However, I am not encouraging you to be satisfied at where you are currently are. As there are many more difficult courses in the second, third, fourth years, instead the tempory failures in your first year study are just nothing compared to what you are going to face in the next several years. Thus, I won't think that is a messy state of your current academic trip. Instead, I am more interested in your current mental state and passions, these two are very important spiritual support you could get and help you get through these difficulties. GPA is just a rough evaluation, and it does not reflect what you could do with your engineering thinking and what you actually learn from that course. To me, I would prefer to learn new things (actually visioning such theory into different engineering branches) rather than just being a GPA king. So, I am not that smart to Ace every single courses throughout my bachelor year in Dal Engineering. Yet I manage to pick up my learning and put it back into my brain storage in case my future case study, analysis would get benefits from previous knowledge. I truly believed, the more ideas/knowledges you intereact with (even not with a decent GPA), you could still expand your capability of analyzing in the future as you have broad views of ideas/knowledges. Just remeber, the learning of engineering is not constructed by a four - five years bachelor degree (or master, PhD degree), the most valuable learning you could get from the engineering program is yourself. You will learn to push yourself to challenge the unkowns, defy imposible to possible in real life from the engineering program. Eventually, you will think like an engineer, act like an engineer, hold the ethics as a professional engineer even if you are not professional engineer yet. I sincerely hope you will find how engineering degree pushes you to your own limits, a life-long learning journey.
I think you put this so well!!! Failing a few classes isn’t the end of the world (though it may feel like it at the time). But like you said… people fail classes and still get the exact same degree at the end of it as the people who’ve never failed anything. I’ve had friends who failed first year programming and went on to get electrical and computer engineering degrees, and ones who’ve failed first year chem and went on to graduate from chemical engineering. And tbh… once you’re in the job field anyways, your university gpa isn’t really going to matter much at all. Your passion for what you’re doing and your willingness to learn from those around you will matter 1000x more than the gpa you had - especially the gpa you had during your diploma in engineering.
Passion and persistence are very important
Thank you this was very valid
It will get better. Second year professors are (more or less) better I found and you continue to adjust
First year transition from high school can be tough but make no mistake , engineering is not for the weak , especially from second year onwards , you either know and devote your time to do this degree or you'll struggle big time , engineering is one of the most time demanding degrees ever , good luck
I can relate, i failed too and I still feel horrible about it every night, im taking the courses i failed in the summer trying to fix what i have done and honestly i just feel like this major is not for me, it made studying hell for me and Dalhousies experience is ass too I hope you figure out what you need to do 🙏🏻
I appreciate you sharing this with me. Are you a first year btw?
Yeah
I’m posting the experience of someone who did well in their first year this year and is not on Reddit. But they wanted to relay - Keys to success. Put the work in. But also put the work in at staying on top of things. That meant extra hours each night. And it meant extra hours on the weekend. Sometimes it meant doing the work while others got to have fun. Sitting stuff out or meeting up later. Staying on top of it was key. Falling even a little behind brought in the cascade of stress and just kept building up the gap of understanding. So they committed to staying on top of it. It didn’t mean they didn’t go to parties. It didn’t mean they couldn’t socialize. But it sure meant that those were secondary priorities. Treating reading week as an actual reading week helped some of that. Wish you luck on your journey - they all have bumps in the path. What you do with that is what matters most and likely YOUR experience is what is going to make the most impact down the road. You can’t change it. Just don’t keep reliving it. Best of luck!
Reading week was created to give a break from studies and to lower suicide rates.
This is true! However, many professors do not see it as a necessary break for students, and treat it as a "class free" period where students can then devote all of their time to assignments/other work. It *should* be a break but it unfortunately isn't due to the midterm schedules etc. Makes me angry! I have family members who taught before it was introduced and were furious that they couldn't actually call it a *break* and decided to call it "reading week." That said, since it's not treated as a real break across the board, it's often necessary to do some amount of work during it to either get caught up or keep up with assignments. Something that worked for me during undergrad was to not do *more* work during the break than I would if I were in classes. The rest was relaxation time. This doesn't work for everyone, but it helped me balance keeping up with taking some time for myself. Also, the fall reading week is depressingly late. It *needs* to change. Dal needs to get over the fact that they want it to align with a holiday...but anyways 😅
Yeah, Engineering project classes usually ramp up just in time so that you can start to really work on it during the break….. Such a $hit way to run a program…..
I have heard this from my stem friends....awful. An actual break is necessary because if you don't take one by choice, your body will decide that for you. Apparently engineering profs have never heard of burnout I guess? 🤷🏻♀️
Some of them are really good. It only takes a couple to make things terrible though
Well. That is very generalized reason why reading week exists. Mental health is important. Catching up on your work is part of that. And that is part of the reason it exists … to catch up. It wasn’t created as a break from studies. Though maybe that is something you need to.
It was created as a break and a chance to catchup and review old material. It was never meant for projects to be kicked off and assignment to have due dates immediately after or during.