Extrapolation

I could be doing better in Data Structures. That’s all I’ll chalk it up to. I’’m doing okay, but I need to be doing okayer, as in “I could probably put a middling effort into the final and still pass” kind of okay.

My professor offers lots of “extra credit” question opportunities. I put extra credit in quotes because it’s illegitimate. Oftentimes students are given a problem with a handwavy “you’ll get extra credit for this haha” to spur participation and we don’t get that extra credit. Nobody’s tried pestering for it, as far as I can tell, so it seems the extra credit is largely for practice.

In addition to the in-class questions, we’re given free reign to upload little programs for practice to the submission server via ssh. They’re not graded, the sole expectation is that the programs compile. There’s no limit to the amount you can upload either; some students have uploaded hundreds. There’s no set pace either. So students can upload 2 extra programs a day over the semester, or 2,000 on the last day of the course.

I’ve submitted few, far too few for my own standards. I’ve had to look real hard at myself and tell myself “I need practice.” Do you have any clue how hard that was for me? Very! So I’m adopting new strats.

I’ll be doing 3 extra programs a day over the next 3 weeks.

The final’s on December 8th, so I feel that’s a doable and healthy rate to practice at.

The number used to be 10.

Practice practice practice. That’s what I yearn for. I’ve been largely apathetic to stuff I’ve learned in lecture, with the assumption that “I’ll have it down” when the time comes. That mindset doesn’t scale, so I’ll change my operations.

I’ll also try to cobble something together to automate the uploading of these extra programs. Really, one of the barriers to me doing more extra programs prior to this was the monotony of the upload process.