Hello again guys!
Since I've opened a blog, I figured that writing about my experiences as a freshman would make sense. In my first year, my lessons were already chosen by the university's system, I only added a collegiate activities course from the second-year curriculum. My other courses were CS101, MATH101, MBG110 (yes, biology, and it's mandatory), ENG101, TURK101.
In CS101, we've used Java. I'm not sure if it's the best language to start with as it's a completely object-oriented language, but, I guess, all languages have their downside as a starting language. Actually, I wasn't completely new to the topics because I had studied coding in C (not ++ or #, just C) and Javascript a bit last summer. I can say that, as basic as it might be, knowing the topics helped a lot. It allowed me to focus more on the problems rather than trying to understand the concepts. Other than that, CS101 was a basic and fundamental course with if/else statements, loops, arrays, and whatnot.
About MATH101... What can say about MATH101? It was the first-ever course on mathematics and its main topics are limits, differentiation, and integrals. My section's midterm average was 38.something and it was the highest average in the course. The grading criteria were incredibly strict, and I for one couldn't figure out where they took off the points. I'm not saying that the answer deserved full points, but I couldn't understand my mistakes. Also, we couldn't ask about where the mistakes were because asking the graders for anything except when they forgot the include a question's points to the total point was punished by taking off 5 points. I really couldn't understand it.
To be completely honest, MBG110 doesn't make a lot of sense in the curriculum of Computer Engineering but it was nice. I got to see a lot of animal videos! In the end, one of the areas I'm interested in is bioinformatics, so this course was like a biology introduction to that domain. Also, I like learning biology so it was fun!
ENG101 was like an essay-writing course. In retrospect, I think the topics were stretched out to extend the course to the whole semester, the syllabus included only 7 or so essays. We just read and examined different essays in the lessons, so, sometimes it became tiring. But it was certainly way better than preparatory school.
TURK101 was like a creative-writing lesson really. I guess it's there to connect students to Turkish amidst all the English.
Overall, I think I enjoyed my first semester of university. Because of the pandemic, I couldn't really make friends;-; I hope I can make some friends in the future semesters! I was mostly at home and there wasn't much to do really, other than watching tv series or studying. My GPA is 3.91 this semester and I believe the reason is the pandemic (though indirectly).
A note for future Bilkent Irregulars: CS101: My instructor ( and only instructor available for the 2021 spring semester) was Lori Rae Russel Dağ, she was very kind and tried to help anyone she could. I can say that she was a really good teacher although I couldn't meet her in person due to the pandemic.
MATH101: My instructor was Ahmet Muhtar Güloğlu. One of the things that I remember clearly is that one day he forgot that he had a lesson and was 20 minutes late. He seemed like a cool guy but his teaching wasn't for me.
MBG110: My instructor was Özhan Öçal and he was an interesting instructor. He was able to get the class's attention to the subject. His quizzes were by far the most awesome ones I'd ever taken.
ENG101: My instructor was Hakan Güven and if you haven't heard him by now, he is a great teacher. I waited in front of my computer for more than 2 hours just to get one of his sections and I really didn't regret it.
TURK101: My instructor was Deniz Demirel and she was really cool. Although we couldn't talk in person due to the pandemic and the nature of the course, she was very helpful and nice.
That's all I've got to say about my experience about my first semester in Bilkent!
Ece
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