The Art of Engineering · Engineering
Just a few random assignments you gotta finish by the end of the semester. Very lax on being late. Easy A, just do the work by the end.
Since he was non-existent, he assigned no homework. That was left to José and the T.A.'s.
Not that bad, though the podcasts are a real grind and you can't speed them up. Also if you don't have the software or a fast computer to run the modeling programs, you're going to be going into an engineering library/computer lab to do the assignments, which is a pain. Tests are not that hard though you can be squeezed for time.
Weekly "required" readings of Dieter and design lectures which aren't worth anyone's time, I mean, do I really have to read a 500 page textbook to understand teamwork, milestones, and design parameters?
Be sure to get a good group for the group project. Take the group project seriously and try not to procrastinate (though you probably inevitably will). Easy A. I really recommend you attend as many friday seminars as possible or as many as you find interesting. I was sick for a lot of them, but some that I attended were really cool and I missed some interesting ones as well, which I'm sad about.
Jack McGourty did not show up once for class in the spring semester of Gateway of 2011. Additionally, for anyone who's actually read the Team Developer, a little "treat" we get for taking Jack's course and him writing a "guide" to teamwork, it's completely outdated and useless, I mean, we're supposed to use alongside a program on a floppy disk. FLOPPY DISK. None of this would bother me if the course were not listed under "Jack McGourty." The man needs to take responsibility for a severely lacking design course, or let someone capable and willing take his stead.
This professor is extremely rude, has a big ego and is disrespectful to his students, impatient, and possibly worst of all, boring. He mainly teaches modeling courses and I am reviewing his teaching for the infamous Gateway. His courses involve computer modeling, so most of the time he has his computer connected to a screen and then simply sits there clicking things and telling you to click things, which naturally, accomplishes nothing. The classes were extremely boring so naturally, people dozed off or left all together since he does the exact same thing in a podcast. However, when he notices that people don't come, he takes attendance and becomes very agitated and angry and starts threatening students. During midterms week, a lot of people left and he got so angry he gave zeroes for their homework assignments, something not noted in the syllabus. So he is inflexible, can't teach, and unfair. Also, when people actually do pay attention and ask him questions, he insults them and makes thinly veiled comments about their intelligence, and in one class, even their sexuality ("Are you two holding hands down there or something? Keep bouncing and holding hands and i'll kick you out!"- The people at fault were simply talking.) In summary- avoid this guy at all costs. If you don't want to end up feeling degraded and insulted and learning nothing, avoid him like the plague and hope you…
In taking Gateway, Promitti rather reminded me of a childhood friend on mine, "Where's Waldo?" Even though she is technically the head of Gateway, now that Jack McGourty has moved on to greater and better things than tormenting SEAS freshmen, this semester she has shown to class for perhaps 2 lectures, not including the first half-hour session for introductions and making friends and other hippy crap. I suppose to compensate us, only a brief section of the design midterm was actually on design, specifically around 9 questions out of 40. I have this theory that Promitti is turning into Mr. McGourty and slowly leaving us to suffer in Gateway.
There aren't many assignments outside the large common project due near the end of the semester, and the mini check-ins and order due dates you have for those projects. There are papers due randomly throughout the semester, and he won't announce them in class, so you just have to make sure to continuously check Courseworks and make sure you don't have a paper due that week. There are like 3 papers total, and he posts them at the beginning of the semester, but it's easy to forget about them, so just be aware. Make sure you and your group have an idea of what you want to make, and if you don't know how to design it, the many TAs will help you. There were a couple of weeks where we had Python assignments due, but they were fundamental, and if you submitted anything, you'd get an A. Some of the department projects had work outside of them. Still, otherwise, the workload is relatively light until the end, depending on whether you and your group procrastinated on the project.
A lot. But not as painful as you might think. Make sure you budget your time. The presentations are best done over a couple weekends, not the last one. But as long as you put the work in, you should get a good grade. Our presentations scored over 95 every time.