Winter 2021

Courseload

I took 15 credits worth of classes. Classes are listed as follows:

DEPT ### (# credits, grade): Description

Quarter GPA: 3.93, Cumulative GPA: 3.94


Artifact Gallery

Some of my notes on second order ordinary differential equations. Laplace Transform (and second order ODEs in general) comprised a big part of the new material in Math 135, and it was pleasantly difficult. ๐Ÿ˜Š
A math problem I was helping a student with in a tutoring session. I tutored eight students seven hours a week during this quarter. Look closely at the triangle in this problem. Hmmm...
One of the many class discussions during English class. Professor Gilbert set up discussions based on maps, and how they can impact politcs, majority/minority groups, distribution of resources, and more!
A page from a small picture book I made for my Chinese final project. This satisfied the visual/creative requirement for the project. I'm not great at drawing, but with enough effort, I think I made something servicable.
The introduction to the sound and scent map assignment, based on Tejal Rao's Smell Museum of Los Angeles. This assignment helped teach me how to integrate the visual element with an argument.
Surprise, Professor Bekyel! For her birthday on February 13, the Math class put together an online birthday card! A difficult class demands a great professor. ๐Ÿ˜‰
Shoutcasting! I started volunteering Sunday nights for UW's Overwatch team. It's a very high-tempo job, considering Overwatch's fast pace. Here, I'm breaking down a map that just finished in UW's favor.
One of two big assignments for English, I created a map that explores the Olympics and international affairs. I had to leverage the visual element of this assignment to strengthen my argument; a cool challenge!
An event hosted by Ruth Wilson Gilmore on police abolition. While I personally am not completely on board with abolition, nevertheless, Gilmore and the panel made the case that the current system is, at the very least, suboptimal, citing examples both abroad and right at UW.
Every two weeks, a small group of Honors students meet to discuss an interesting article. Most of the club members are social science majors, so it's refreshing to talk to them about various current issues.
A map of Narnia from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. This was the result of rereading the book and figuring out how to best pictoralize various events in the book. The goal of the map is to visualize how the position of certain places influence our perception of said place.
I decided to live on campus for Spring quarter! The situation seems safe enough, and both of my parents now have a vaccine dose. I'm excited for next quarter, living in the floor above the Honors LLC.
A card I made as part of the Chinese Festivals unit. Of course, it celebrates the Spring Festival and the Year of the Ox. Inside, I wrote a typical New Years greeting to my parents. ็‰›ๅนดๅฟซไน๏ผ
A problem from my second midterm. I pulled out a somewhat obscure theorem that's generally learned once in Precalculus and then never used again, called Descartes' Rule of Signs. It was awesome pulling it out of almost nowhere.
A problem from the 81st Annual Putnam Competition, the math competition for undergraduate students. It's difficut, but out of the 12 questions, I answered 4, and I feel good about that!

Reflection

Something old, something new, huh?

The novelty of college has, for the most part, dissipated. The online college experience has become something of a routine; my first two classes of the day were exactly the same as Autumn quarter. It was just the Computer Science class being replaced with an English class. Still at home. Still tutoring. This had the makings of a relatively steady quarter, just barely meeting my goals for college of learning things and having friends.

Of course, when I say that, you know that I'm about to tell you what made this a great quarter. But I'll delay that just a bit to dispell some misconceptions. I don't want to suggest that Chinese and Math were boring classes. They were great; Chinese this quarter focused on the experience of immigrants, along with a bit of Chinese festivals with the Spring Festival (ๆ˜ฅ่Š‚) occurring in the middle of the quarter. Math was also a great class, learning techniques to solve second-order differential equations and starting vector calculus. But in the end, they're the second quarter of a one-year course, which I had started last semester. What was actually new and interesting - and I believe aided my personal growth the most - was English 182, Section H, taught by Professor Gilbert.

I talk a lot more about my experience in the class in my Final Reflection in the portfolio for this class, linked right under this quarter's reflection, but I'll give the abbreviated version here. I thought I was signing up for a different class when I selected this course. I read "Multimodal Composition" and thought, 'Great, this is a course that covers the four modes of discourse, or the rhetorical modes: Exposition, Description, Narration, and Argument.' I knew that my skill as a writer was heavily skewed towards exposition, so I thought that by taking this class, I would be able to strengthen my weakpoints in writing style.

I didn't get that. I got something that might actually be even better.

In actuality, this class targets the skill of incorporating visual (think pictures) sources and aspects into a text-based argument. And it was such a good class. Not only is this a new, undeveloped skill, but it also demonstrated the power of visual arguments, both in how they can be used well, and in how I myself can be mindful of potential manipulation through visual sources. Through the class I created several pieces embracing the visual aspect of this course, even though I don't usually consider myself a very "artsy" type of person. My favorite piece out of all of them was the last assignment before the cumulative portfolio, where I created a map detailing the relationship between international affairs and the Olympics. You can check out the map here!

Social life has also been busier than I anticipated. Although I haven't joined many new groups compared to last quarter (I'm still hanging out online with the Math 13x group, the CSE study group, the Overwatch community), I was involved with them more in general, and I also got to entertain pleasant conversations with some Honors English classmates, and I joined an Article Club with primarily social science majors (makes for a very intersting perspective). Things are looking up for next quarter, though, moving onto campus next quarter!

Overall, remembering that my primary goal in college is to learn things and have friends, while the second goal made not a ton of progress, I overaccomplished the first goal, much more than I thought I would at the start of the quarter. The only thing that could have made the first goal better is if I could be on a math team. I hope that will come in due time.

Next quarter should be quite the experience, although I still am not a fortune teller. Crossing my fingers, metaphorically speaking of course.

Check out my ENGL 182H Portfolio!

This webpage was made by me, Nelson Sun! You can contact me at nelsonys@uw.edu.