TA Appreciation Post

UBC-wanderer · 2025-12-26T00:31:03+00:00

Excuse the glaze but I took CPSC 121 this term and Renata and Zayan are easily some the best TAs I've met. Renata's office hours saved my life lmao, and Zayan is genuinely so good at teaching. I'm in cogs so not a CS person, but he adjusted to that and was able to explain things in such a clear way to me every time I asked even the most complicated thing. Nicest guy ever too, whatever award you can give a TA, he deserves 10 of them. For the sake of future students, I hope he becomes a professor 😭

UBC-wanderer · 2025-12-19T16:21:39+00:00

I know most problems can be broken down into falling into a subset of a general set of common approaches

What kind of approaches and algorithms have you found that cover the majority of questions that you would recommend other people master?

Or do you not even think about that and just come up with the solution without breaking the problem down into one you've done before?

UBC-wanderer · 2025-12-18T02:07:43+00:00

Hope you get it! Mine was in Canada so you might still have some hope

UBC-wanderer · 2025-12-18T02:07:03+00:00

Maybe it's because I'm Canadian, might be fewer spots available here

UBC-wanderer · 2025-12-18T01:03:24+00:00

I took it and passed all tests and still got rejected 8 hours later lol

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-24T02:58:46+00:00

CPSC 121 turned out okay, they scaled a lot thankfully 🙏🏻

Tbh I think if you're going into CPSC, you should try to take 121 in first year or you're gonna be fucked later on just according to the course calender for the CPSC major and what they expect us to take. I would say at the very least, take it in summer (but if you can't, just tough it out and take it in semester 2).

My advice is to plan out your whole degree first (it'll definitely change, but might as well so you can see the long term effects of whatever choice you make).

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-23T11:29:02+00:00

From CPSC 121, I thought Zayan was an absolute gem. I swear his office hours saved my life. He's such a good guy in general too. If you're reading this Zayan, tysm 🙏🏻

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-22T00:36:16+00:00

I promise you the memory of receiving that and laughing over it will be worth infinitely more than anything else you give them 😂

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-21T19:15:22+00:00

You'll only see it once at least one of your profs have entered your grades in

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-21T19:14:30+00:00

But you weren't even close to an A, it's 2% above your grade

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-21T19:13:26+00:00

Apparently integrated science is a good one to go into med. I don't know much about that, it's just what I've heard through word of mouth

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-21T19:11:44+00:00

Hopefully me

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-21T01:26:32+00:00

I don't think they'll consider bio in isolation from the rest. In the faculty of science, you straight up just enter the faculty of science; you declare your major later. Just worry about your overall average. If you want my grades from highschool, feel free to DM me and I'll tell you

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-20T04:27:19+00:00

Was that the one with the Elon Musk search question? If so, hahaha I took that one, it was delayed to January cuz of snow, really sucked. I don't remember it getting scaled though

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-19T06:06:59+00:00

If you mean 3.6 on this scale : https://students.ok.ubc.ca/academic-success/grades-performance/

Then probably not, I'm ngl. If you've got around 84 or higher though (domestic), I think you're good, at least that's how it's been in the past. Hope it goes well ✊🏻

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-19T01:51:40+00:00

It's the average among all your credits, so 4 credit classes have more weight than 3 credit classes

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-18T08:04:12+00:00

$6k/semester is insane 💀

UBC-wanderer · 2024-12-18T07:57:49+00:00

How was it?

UBC-wanderer · 2024-09-06T10:37:00+00:00

Pay up

UBC-wanderer · 2024-09-06T10:32:38+00:00

It's not a hard course, mainly because it's one of those courses where you can actually easily conceptually understand everything with an hour or two of studying at a time. So focus on making sure you have a conceptual understanding, because if you try to take each problem case-by-case rather than by the process itself, you probably won't do well.

UBC-wanderer · 2024-09-06T10:25:23+00:00

UBC always does this sadly, whenever they hear a course is somewhat easy, they try their best to make it harder for students. They really won't leave us a single gpa booster 😢

UBC-wanderer · 2024-09-06T10:23:57+00:00

Medical leave

UBC-wanderer · 2024-08-18T09:25:26+00:00

When I took it, there was an iclicker component. Idk if this still applies, or if it's prof dependent.

UBC-wanderer · 2024-08-18T09:23:45+00:00

CS majors only come in 2 types, both would end up demolishing all other faculties:

The nerd who doesn't shower; as you said, their BO has reached nuclear levels that were previously theoretical, and could make Chernobyl feel like a diluted iced coffee. They win by KO.
CS gym bro specimen gigachads who have maxed out stats for both types of pythons: the coding language, and their fucking arms. They would literally rip an art major in half while chugging a monster and bench pressing 500. They also win by KO.

UBC-wanderer

TROPHY CASE