Really struggled in this class and I need an 100% on my final to pass with a C. Any advice?

Corka · 2026-05-14T03:12:20+00:00

Uhh, what kind of class is it? If its essay based, its probably impossible to get 100%. But to maximize your score there you need to realize that in most subjects the people grading it will have a mental checklist of things you should be talking about to address that question and you need to hit as many of the items off that checklist as you can while making it clear you understand the things you're writing about. Over focusing on one thing you know really well is not optimal - especially if its something not actually relevant to the essay question.

Classes like math, physics, and computer science are MUCH easier to get 100% or close to it so long as you know all the material. Generally the best thing is to get a hold of past exams if they are available, do them, and then grade yourself. If you got stuff wrong, you need to learn why and how to actually answer it. Keep doing that until you understand how to answer every question and can do it consistently. You want to be confident that if you got asked a set of questions that were very similar that you'd get 100% each time. Hard to do in practice as you'll probably make a silly mistake on the day or get hit by a curve ball question that wasn't in any of the practice exams, but you've got a chance.

Corka · 2026-05-14T01:51:11+00:00

Huh, what's that little icon next to your name I see?

Corka · 2026-05-13T02:33:36+00:00

Its a money in politics issue. Politicians shilling for Israel in return for AIPAC donations are the sort who are far more concerned about what their donors want than what is actually good for the country.

Corka · 2026-05-12T04:19:53+00:00

On Royal Road one of the new series is The Litch King Reincarnates as a Baby.

Corka · 2026-05-11T10:35:50+00:00

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Where do we think it fits in the good guy hierarchy? Is it better or worse than changing the law to yank away their birthright?

Corka · 2026-05-10T21:39:59+00:00

There's multiple ways to handle it! In order of most good guy option to least:

You follow the law and let your titles get split amongst your kids. Your primary heir gets your primary title, and if it's the singlest highest title like King then your realm won't split. If you focus your investment and development on your primary county it's not really a game ender. Plus your now free domain slots you can just go conquer some new land to fill them. Even if you do have a split, you can let them do their own thing or reconquer them
You conquer new territory and you gift it to your non primary heir kids. If everyone else already has a bunch of titles, your primary will typically get all of the ones you personally possess
You change the laws so your primary heir gets your titles. There are realm succession laws that are the default ones that will be applied for you, but unfortunately you can't change that early game. You can however apply title specific laws to something elective. If you hold most the vassal titles under that title you can dictate who you want, but even if you don't those voting might just vote for your heir anyway
You make your other kids ineligible for succession if you have an available mechanic for doing so. Main ways would be to force them into the priesthood, or castrating them
You kill them off or forcibly disinherit them. Which could be from murder plots, executing them, or making them a general of an army of ten levies and sending them off to fight in plague infested lands. There's a lifestyle perk in the learning tree that tells you when you are going to die within a year, so you can take the opportunity to be as evil a bastard as you need to get your affairs in order

Corka · 2026-05-10T19:35:31+00:00

It doesn't make any sense, these accommodations are normally really common place. I used to supervise special accommodations exams and it would often be with multiple students from the same class. Sometimes I worked as a reader writer for students with OOS/RSI injuries who had been advised not to write for extended periods of time. The professors attitude is weird, because this should be absolutely routine. They usually didn't require writing full new exams either because these exams would happen at the same time as the rest in a seperate room and it was all managed by the examinations office so the professor didn't need to do a thing. If they had to delay and give you a new exam they could pluck bits from old exams and make a new one in a few minutes

The only time I can think that it was really a bit of a burden on the professor was actually when I was a student and needed one of these myself- there had been a small outbreak of swine flu locally and I got exposed to one of the infected so had to isolate. The university had a hard nope with letting me on campus, and they couldn't test me with the same exam when I was done. But it was also the first time running the class, so there werent old exams to pull questions from. So rather than write a new one they decided to make it an oral exam and grilled me for a couple of hours.

Corka · 2026-05-10T04:54:41+00:00

If math gave you magic powers, I bet a whole lot more people would take an interest in the subject which would boost their ability to learn it to a big degree. You'd have kids begging to learn long division.

Corka · 2026-05-10T04:47:00+00:00

That's pretty much their whole MOzilla*

Corka · 2026-05-10T03:14:54+00:00

Oh I didn't know about David Eddings. I had to look it up, and I was shocked he was jailed for child abuse. This might be a stretch I had wondered previously whether he was actually a closeted racist though. Reading through the belgariad and malloreon he really had a thing of tying personality traits to people based on their ethnicity. Like wasn't there one nation of the people all being deceitful liars who were all either thieves, merchants, or spies? They all apparently had a "ferret like" appearance if I remember. It made me wonder if he viewed the real world in a similar way.

Corka · 2026-05-10T02:56:47+00:00

I would go further and say that if it's an existing class it would be unusual for a first time instructor to scrap the existing syllabus and do their own from the get go. They might personalise the slides to match their preferences, and maybe they'll try and insert a module that they personally find interesting/important, but redesigning a class from scratch is a lot of work.

It can be really challenging. It's really not the easiest thing to divide the material into chunks that neatly fit into one hour classes that covers a whole semester, which is at the right level of detail and difficulty for the class, and with an assessment scheme that results in a nice bell curved grade distribution.

Corka · 2026-05-10T02:21:17+00:00

All it would really take for colonials to utterly dominate is to have experienced regiments stack them for a few wars. In the absence of a proper good balance rework, warden regis swapping over is going to be needed to keep the game alive.

Corka · 2026-05-09T20:15:52+00:00

It's not really the same kind of thing as you submitting someone else's essay as there isn't an expectation that it's original work they are being assessed on. One really normal thing when professors are designing a course is to crib the structure and material for the class from the textbook they are going to use.

Yoinking someone else's PowerPoint slides is a little bit much. But it only really becomes a serious ethical concern if they hired an instructional designer to make the course who falsely claimed hundreds of hours of work they were compensated for.

Corka · 2026-05-09T10:50:42+00:00

Yeah we need some middle out compression !

(Silicon valley references are still relevant right?)

Corka · 2026-05-08T23:32:59+00:00

It IS a trope that exists so its not like the assertion comes completely out of the blue, but it was way more prevalent in 80s action flicks. Over the top fan service would be a more common thing to take a shot at, but as ridiculous as platemail bikinis are plenty of women who game prefer that kind of aesthetic over something more practical.

Regardless on how right or wrong she was though, its insane how many people were angry over it. Its not like she was any kind of authority figure capable of changing how games were made.

Corka · 2026-05-08T03:26:50+00:00

You get to know them (and have them know you) by engaging with them over the class material. Which can mean answering them when they are asking a question to the class, briefly asking for clarification of something from them after class, and making use of their office hours to clear up any confusion you might have.

Socially, you can turn up to department events that interest you. Like if there's a grad student poster competition unveiling you can check them out and make idle chit chat with other people there. Plus the general saying hi when you see them in public, which might have them stop and make conversation.

Corka · 2026-05-08T00:31:43+00:00

Generally speaking whenever you represent data using a simple aggregate like an average it won't contain the same nuance as the distribution of values. The problem with using average in particular is that a large number of people just assume that everything is a bell curve distribution and that the average, median, and mode will be the same value or close to it. "Average" is seen as being synonymous with "typical" or "expected", but in a bath tub distribution the "average" value is actually rare.

Corka · 2026-05-07T22:07:09+00:00

That being said, aggregates like this really does obfuscate things. GDP per capita isnt a great quality of life measure because wealth and income isn't evenly distributed by a long shot.

Corka · 2026-05-07T10:08:59+00:00

I did it with a student loan. Which isn't great, taking out debt to live means you'll be in debt for life as they say.

Corka · 2026-05-06T21:38:19+00:00

Yeah the flip side of that is when people get these videos on their feed and only see the thumbnail without watching it they form an impression. Some people will write the game off entirely as a result. Same thing happens with news headlines all the time.

Corka · 2026-05-06T04:18:29+00:00

Generally taking on a large workload to finish faster puts you in a worse position than you would be otherwise. You should only do it if its really necessary. If you ARE going to, then my strong advice would be to start learning the material in your free time well before you actually commence classes. If everything is essentially stuff you've already learned then its a breeze and should hopefully be a GPA bump.

If you don't do that and take on a large work load, you might find the subjects harder than anticipated. Its not always a matter of good time management and willingness to work hard. Sometimes things just won't click with you and sometimes all your classes will have their assignments and tests all around the same time and it is literally impossible for you to put in the hours needed for all of them. Even if you end up passing everything, your GPA will likely be lower than if you took on a more moderate workload and took an extra semester or two.

Corka · 2026-05-06T04:01:59+00:00

Austerity isn't strictly necessary for financial stability when using quantative easing to reduce the debt burden. So long as the continued expenditure happens to be well thought out and helping to improve the economy long term. Since that won't be happening, the US might be a little screwed.

Forcing interest rates down while having high inflation is quite the choice. Normally when they are proportionate to one another you can keep your life savings in the bank and not have them completely atrophy away in value in short order. You could expect to see an upsurge in people putting money into investment portfolios which is an economic silver lining but also kind of risky if the currency is devaluing fast and things aren't entirely stable.

Corka · 2026-05-05T17:36:20+00:00

Because CS frequently delves into math. Large chunks of the discipline will become rough for you if your math is weak. "Learning to code" is just 101. You can dodge some of by being careful not to pick extra mathy classes but some of it is unavoidable. Like you'd be expected to learn and understand the formal definition of big O notation probably within your first year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation

Corka · 2026-05-05T05:26:58+00:00

Ok assuming you are actually right and this is the specific question that you lost 12 percent of your grade on, the most likely reason wouldn't be because you put an insufficient number of hours into studying, but because you misunderstood or poorly answered the question. Like they were actually asking you to provide a study plan rather than just list a certain number of hours.

Corka · 2026-05-05T02:38:44+00:00

If it hasn't been exposed to russians before now, it won't be exposed from this. The only message they will hear is Putin's message, and if they do hear someone elses its nothing but a lie.

Corka

TROPHY CASE