This was my first dive into the world of programming. I found this class extremely hard given the fact that this was my first semester of college, so I had no study habits built up and I was not used to the rigor of the program yet. This class had projects that were due every two weeks, if I remember correctly, as well as weekly homeworks on top of that, so the workload was extremely high for me. If that didn't sound like enough, there was a team project which was, to this day, the hardest thing I've ever had to work on during my time here at Purdue. My teammates did not work on the project at all, so I had to carry the weight of them, but eventually I got compensated for my efforts via extra credit as I explained my situation to the head TA.

The exams for this course were really hard for me. I remember scoring low on all of my exams and questioning whether or not I belonged in CS. This was due to having no study skills or problem-solving skills relating to computing due to my lack of background.

Overall, this course was an OK introduction to programming. The best part about this class was Professor Dunsmore. The worst thing was the workload, but I guess it helps prepare you for later classes and builds grit.

Not much to say. I don't really remember much about this class apart from the fact that we were taught how to use Git and LaTeX.

This class was a required class for my Purdue Promise scholarship. Purdue Promise is a program at Purdue that I appreciate dearly. My mentor and professor for this course, Desmine Robinson, is one of the kindest people I have met and he has constantly supported me throughout my time here at Purdue! We have had a lot of meaningful conversations together and I believe that my meetings with him is a part of the reason of why I have been able to do some of the things I have during my time here.

The class was teaching us about how to adjust to college life and about building skills that would be useful in university overall. Extremely fun class!

This class was a lot of fun! Professor Ohashi is the kindest soul at Purdue, and I recommend that if you need to fulfill a language requirement, take JPNS 101 + 102 with her! The workload was decent, some homeworks were very tedious and took some time, but overall, I think that this class was very fair. My favorite thing about this class were the lectures due to the energy that Ohashi brought to them.

This class humbled me a lot. It heavily punished my lack of study skills. I remember being extremely confident for the first exam since I could solve questions on topics such as finding areas under curves, integration, and trig substitution, but the issue was not that I didn't understand the topics. It was the ability to perform under pressure and recall topics that aren't presented in an explicit way. What I mean by this is the fact that I knew how to do, for example, trig substitution, but if a question required it and it wasn't explicitly stated, there was a good chance that I had no idea how to do it.

My first exam I got my lowest exam score at Purdue, a 32/100, where the average was, if I recall correctly, about 58%. After this exam, I questioned if I was fit for Purdue and my major, but I'd consider this a turning point of my time here at Purdue. Instead of giving up, I dedicated every day past that exam to trying out one new study technique and seeing if it worked for me. For example, I'd wake up one day, try out a new study technique, then at night I would write down what I liked and didn't like. After a couple of weeks of trial and error, I got better and better at identifying study techniques that worked for me, but the tactic that stuck with me most was deliberate practice and studying the 20% that results in 80% of the results.

Because of this, I scored almost a standard deviation above the mean on the next exam, but ultimately, the most important thing to me was the persistence and grit that this course gave me.