(attempt at funny emoji pun for “1B”)

As noted in the previous post, I am back to do a review of how 1B went. However, instead of trying to review e v e r y t h i n g that happened in 1B, I will try to keep it largely to the academic side of things (with potentially other posts on different aspects of 1B).

Preliminary Information (ugradcalendar)

Same “classes paragraph” from my review of 1A, in case you are new around here :)

If you were ever wondering what the course descriptions of any courses at Waterloo were, you can check out the course descriptions page. There is also the degree requirements page for computer engineering. Depending on the year you start, you may need to navigate to “past calendars”. The link defaults to the most recent calendar, so right now that would be 2021-2022. For my course requirements though, I would need to navigate to the 2020-2021 calendar since that is when I started.

Courses

ECE 106: Electricity and Magnetism

Hehe. Hehehehe. I think most people (including me) find this course to be the hardest one in 1B, just because it is conceptually heavy and likely new to you (as it was for me). Still passable, but do make sure you spend enough time reviewing and doing the practice problems! Also our professors this term were extremely nice, helpful, and had good explanations, which really helped a lot. They listened a lot to what they academic reps had to say, which helped move quizzes and lectures around when there were conflicts.

There are labs for this course, we did them all online with PhET simulations, not sure how the in-person ones would be like.

ECE 108: Discrete Mathematics and Logic 1

This course had some pretty interesting content, since it covers another side of math that I had not seen before (think propositional logic, graph theory, proofs, etc.) Unfortunately though the lectures and class in general was not too engaging, so it ended up being an average class. I think the Stream 4s who are currently in school are having a better time though, so it likely will depend on your professor.

ECE 124: Digital Circuits and Systems

A more “computer engineering”-y kind of course! Goes over boolean logic, boolean algebra, combinational and sequential circuits, and other similar topics. There are also labs for this course, we did them using a software called Quartus, and we would design circuits and use a language called VHDL. In-person labs probably look similar, except you would do them in a room with computers? For people with Macs, since Quartus does not work on Macs, we had to do a remote desktop connection with the engineering faculty’s remote access site.

ECE 140: Linear Circuits

Do a bunch of practice problems, and that should help a lot. Should be manageable. In this particular edition of the course, all of our midterm and finals were multiple choice, so it was interesting to know that 85% of our mark rested on a total of 30 questions. (Format definitely depends on professor, and plus we were online, so typically in person it will likely not be all multiple choice)

ECE 192: Engineering Economics and Impact on Society

Not much to comment on this course. It is part of the requirements as an accredited engineering program. Worth 0.25 credits (half of the typical 0.5 credit for a full course), just use the formulas/tables given and it should be alright.

MATH 119: Calculus 2 for Engineering

The professor for this course made the course so much more interesting and fun! Pretty much everything was new to me. There is also some overlap with ECE 106 for double and triple integrals, which they start off with right away in ECE 106 but do not get to until later on in the course for MATH 119. Overall, a good and fun course :)

FR 192A: French Language 1: Module 1

Wait a second, French?? Yeah, I overloaded this term because I thought “why not take French?”. It was good in just recalling some grammar, learning new vocabulary, as well as practicing writing. I enjoyed it! The professor was also very nice, even though I joined the class 2-3 weeks into the term.

Closing Thoughts

1B was definitely more challenging than 1A, given that all the courses covered new content that I had never seen before (oh wow, welcome to school ) I did worry about actually passing at some point during the term, but here we are! Looking back, there are definitely some skills (like time management ) that could be improved upon, but I would not attribute the challenges of 1B to me taking an extra course. So would I still overload if I were to do 1B again? Yes! Although this time with better keeping-on-track-skills-at-home.

That wraps up a review of the 1B courses. Thinking of doing a post about the past Spring 2021 term, and perhaps also one on my first coop. This was posted already rather late, oops.

Otherwise, until next time!