Reflections

On November 1st, many Canadians turned back their clock and enjoyed an extra hour of sleep. Alas, I wasn’t part of that group.

Last week was largely dominated by CS 240 (Data Structures and Data Management). Assignment #5 was due on Tuesday and the midterm was scheduled two days after. They were worth 12% and 15% of the final grade respectively (yeah, a midterm worth only 3% more than an assignment ). For me, at least, those were the only immediate tasks at hand. Easy, right?

Not so, apparently. The assignment, which was about implementing a B-tree structure, took nearly 30 hours. It definitely didn’t help that I had little experience with Java and completely underestimated the length (my estimate was <10 hours using C++). Anyway, there goes my weekend. I did end up finishing though, albeit with some minor bugs; the program length measured up at over 700 lines (with comments and braces) and the documentation at another 250.

Now, what’s really interesting was the number of people who asked for an extension on the assignment. Fine, there’s nothing wrong with that – indeed, I’m sure most professors wouldn’t mind accommodating their students (given a valid excuse ). However, what really happened was that people essentially pressured the instructor into extending the deadline. It even went as far as implied insults directed towards the course staff (criticizing their lack of foresight in putting a major assignment right before the midterm).

If you ask me, most (if not all) of those arguments in favour of an extension were just BS. There was at least two weeks of notice given in advance (not including the clear weighting on the syllabus). Indeed, both the instructor and the tutor clearly said to start on the assignment early. There was really no real excuse why a mass extension was needed – those arguments were literally a façade to cover up people’s inability to manage time. Now, I’m sure there are those with legitimate reasons (perhaps coming down with the H1N1 flu), but those seem few and far between looking at the posts on the newsgroup.

Anyway, it turns out the extension (’till Friday) was reluctantly granted with a 30% penalty. I think those who needed it should be thankful the course instructor is so lenient; he was well within his rights to refuse (and he did, until an hour before the deadline). The tutor should be given some credit for dealing with this issue too; by trying to accommodate the class (asking the prof. for an extension in lieu of the students), she was essentially adding to her own workload. I later found out that approximately half the class didn’t submit on time; now that’s some statistic right there.

This is coming from someone who literally gets through university procrastinating (I have a pretty good reason for it, but that’s another topic). As I implied earlier, I pretty much rushed through the assignment and could have used some extra time. But I also realized that it was entirely my fault for miscalculating the length of it. It seems like a lot of people have a hard time admitting that.

Bah, whatever. What’s done is done…

As for the midterm? It was a breeze.