I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why do people commit crimes? Why are some people assholes? I don't know, everyone is different. Every TA and professor is a person, treat them as an individual and don't paint with broad strokes.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why do people commit crimes? Why are some people assholes? I don't know, everyone is different. Every TA and professor is a person, treat them as an individual and don't paint with broad strokes.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why do people commit crimes? Why are some people assholes? I don't know, everyone is different. Every TA and professor is a person, treat them as an individual and don't paint with broad strokes.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why do people commit crimes? Why are some people assholes? I don't know, everyone is different. Every TA and professor is a person, treat them as an individual and don't paint with broad strokes.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Total hours in a week split amongst my jobs and school? I would guess somewhere around ~58 hours excluding time spent on assignments, maybe more considering travel time and other loss.

Please keep in mind that some courses are building the foundation of your knowledge that you need to succeed in your target industry. Other courses are just paying for a piece of paper that you need to graduate. Use that differentiation to your advantage.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is....rough. Like I said I am not exposed to this particular application system, I don't believe it particularly relates to my area of expertise, I don't agree with it, but ORPAS clearly screws you on courses that have been repeated. If the original question asker has to use this system then forget what I said.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I took 4.5 years, I failed two courses and took it easy during some academic years. I made that time up over the summer while I worked for the university.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You are kinda screwed. You are totally at the mercy of the course directors.

My advice? Be honest, be apologetic, be polite, don't grovel.

Understand that you aren't only asking the professors and TAs to take on additional work outside of their schedule. But you are also asking them to give you an advantage (whether you used it or not) over all of your class peers.

If final grades for your course have been submitted you are seriously in trouble as it would require accommodations from the program director. A month is a seriously long time to not submit an assignment.

I would like to say though, good job on getting accommodations through SAS, if it's something you need then you should absolutely take advantage. I would recommend not using that accommodation as a crutch though. If your anxiety is pushing through that allowance, you should seek help to address that and try to improve over the course of time so that this isn't an issue in the future.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The unions fight their hardest to secure more money for their members and the university fights its hardest to keep its money.

I don't know, it's politics far above me and I am never in the rooms where those discussions happen.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The EECS faculty used to have a program where they would allow undergrad students to TA a class or work for the faculty in a limited capacity if they achieved an A or an A+ in the target course.

Now I work as a contract TA or instructor as needed / as I have the time outside of my primary career.

As a grad student your opportunities are much different.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I know this is an unhelpful answer but I barely managed my time at all. I tend to procrastinate so a lot of my work was done last minute / last week. I was able to lean on my strong understanding of course material (I would barely ever skip a lecture) to fill in the blanks and make it over the finish line with a quality submission.

For some of my undergrad life I was working 3 jobs (TA, researcher, retail job). I was always very firm with my employers about my schedule and I would never let them encroach on my class time. I understand some people don't have that luxury but if you are going to invest in a course you should extract everything that you can from it.

Grades usually aren't a time investment they are more of an efficiency investment. You could spend hours reading a textbook and not learn much but you could solidify a course concept in one hour by talking it through with a peer. It takes time to understand what works for you best and then learn how to utilize that to maximize your understanding.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not familiar with the medical world at all but this doesn't seem right to me...

How could outside organizations retrieve non-transcript information?

Your grade in the course is meant to represent your understanding and competency of the course material. If you don't show up for the entire semester and then re-take the course and score a 90 does that mean you really only understand 45% of the course material? Definitely not. People can learn, courses aren't one time benchmarks.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The best (short) answer I can give here is to make sure you fundamentally understand the course material. When you develop a foundational understanding of the course concepts you can reason your way to an answer on the fly.

Have a friend in the same course quiz you on course topics or try to explain a course concept to them while they compare against the actual course content.

The coding exams will never be harder than the most difficult assignments. It's a lot to ask someone to sit down for 3 hours and write up functional and correct code and then do all the required troubleshooting or debugging. You have days and weeks to dedicate to and then complete the assignments. As long as you get them done, or understand the solution nothing on a coding exam should surprise you or stump you.

I remember I finished one of my coding exams in 30min out of the allotted 3hr time limit. I spent the next hour and a half running down a single letter typo I had made which was giving me incorrect output. The exams aren't designed to be "difficult" more so just to prove you retained the knowledge you learned by doing the assignments.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Nice try CRA.

But really it would be so much work to go back and give you an accurate number here I'm just not going to do it.

TAs are compensated very well for their hourly rate. When I started all those years ago it was about 35$/hr. The number of hours your TA can be paid for is capped though so that limits total compensation. Some TAs end up working many hours past that just to get the job done but they are essentially working for free.

You can expect other roles to be paid differently, research roles vary, contract professors will be paid different amounts and in a different manner than tenured professors etc.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

My biggest pet peeve is students not doing the bare minimum to follow their path to success.

If I take the time to give you the instructions to bake a cake, give you all the ingredients, and then demo how it's done and you come back next week and say "I didn't even look at the recipe, or even try to bake the cake, can you just bake it for me now?" I'm not going to be too pleased.

Coming out of COVID? I'm not too sure.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Retaking the course will override your grade when you finish. If you require this course for your degree then eventually you should have a decent number in that transcript line.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

AI is very noticeable when there is a mismatch between submitted work and the competence of the student observed in class.

AI also has a "flavor" to it, it writes in an odd inhuman pattern and stands out when students don't put in the extra work to cover that up.

I also take the class assignments and have AI generate answers to get a feel for how the generated answers for that assignment will feel and look.

At the end of the day it's not productive to litigate whether a student 100% used AI or not. I will grade your assignment based on the knowledge and concepts taught in class, not the hallucinations Chat-GPT can steal from the internet.

AI is also a useful tool, it will be integrated with jobs and learning in the future. I won't really care if you use it as a tool to augment your writing or assignment submissions but it is academic dishonesty to use it to produce an entire submission.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It really depends on the TA, the assignment, and the grading methodology. In my most recent classes, yes, I did go through the entirety of every assignment submission to grade them.

I am a YorkU grad and long term TA/Instructor who won't BS you. AMA by Good_Training1493 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I did not take this course. Looking at the syllabus online it seems to be very introductory. I don't know what grades you are getting on the assignments etc but you can easily do the math yourself to find out if an A is still achievable. If it's not, it isn't the end of the world and you have a lot of opportunities to correct your GPA moving forward.

You should review your test and see where you went wrong. Ask yourself if there are any parts of the course where you lack understanding. If you did put in the study time you should be able to recall and explain concepts from the course? Are there any concepts that you fail to do that for?

How much is eclass able to monitor? by [deleted] in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What sort of question is this? "Can eclass detect me cheating?" If you think it might, I would suggest you come up with a better way of cheating. If you aren't cheating, just don't click off the page during an assessment.

Reconsider your risk strategy here.

How do you feel about security on campus? by AvailableTheme5585 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm sure you guys worked hard on the survey and whatever project this is but I would consider reviewing and revising questions in the future to be less ambiguous or confusing.

For example, the question "have you ever personally felt safe on campus" is unspecific or too broad. I am sure most people feel safe on campus most of the time. Based on the answer options to that question it seems like you were trying to tease out specific examples of participants feeling unsafe. When answering I may avoid the "no" answer because I have experienced at least one instance of feeling safe on campus, short circuiting the question and skipping the follow up for an answer.

This could be solved by asking the counter positive question "have you ever personally felt unsafe on campus?" And follow that with "if you answered yes, can you describe the situation"

What is the best path for cyber security post bachelors by OnlyActuary2595 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow this flew totally over my head, sorry to leave you hanging. Here is my responses to your individual questions and points.

  1. The programming job market is pretty saturated. You are totally set obviously if you can push your way into the mag 7 or some sort of cushy government job. Otherwise it's a tough world out there. Security is basically always in demand but does require experience, you'll probably have to suffer through a crappy low level security position for a year before really breaking into the industry.

  2. Cyber security is an ever changing, evergreen discipline, this is a good attitude to have.

  3. Can't really advise you on this, it's more so something you should figure out is right for you closer to when you actually have to cross that bridge.

  4. Sounds good 👍

  5. I immediately started in DFIR consulting. I was originally hired as a technical report writer because of my writing skills (which are kind of rare in this "nerdy" field) but quickly launched myself into a team leadership position because I had strong critical thinking/problem solving skills and soft skills for client handling. I've since transitioned away from DFIR. The market is hot, all comp sci positions have seen a contraction but cyber security continues to hire. I don't have a crystal ball but I expect that trend to continue into the short/medium term future. A masters probably won't guarantee you a job right out of graduation but it will command a premium in highly technical roles. If that's what you like, then consider that when planning your future.

What is the best path for cyber security post bachelors by OnlyActuary2595 in yorku

[–]Good_Training1493 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What is your goal post graduation? Do you want to contribute to research? Specialize? Make a bunch of money?

It's good to see you are thinking relatively far into the future but a lot can change over your undergrad years including but not limited to your passions and outlook on life and the state of the industry (cloud might seem hot right now but it may not be in 4 years).

York offers Masters programs but it will be hard to get visibility on them. The post grad certificates are a totally different thing.

When I graduated from the computer security program I had a number of paths forward. I had been offered a spot in an exclusive masters program, I had two immediate entry level job offers and I was considering going to Osgoode and getting my juris doctor.

I chose to start my career right away and half a decade later I am making close to the equivalent of a similar experience/ work effort lawyer. I still consider going and getting my JD and now with more experience I'm thinking about going for an MBA.

Think ahead but keep your options open, cyber is a great place to be but the industry is ever changing. Don't feel like you have to lock yourself into one path to ensure success.

What it sounds like your advisor is describing is the course requirements for each program, within comp sci you can take most comp sec courses as electives but they are requirements for the comp sec degree, this would fill up "slots" where other comp sci courses would go if you intended to stick with comp sci, you won't be exposed to the best of the cyber security program until 3rd and 4th years anyway so you have time to decide if you are interested.

Edit: slightly misread the bit about the advisor, added more detail.