The Quarter System is Stressful

I am glad that I never spent my undergrad days in Stanford or UChicago for that matter as this quarter system is sapping away my energy. Why does the quarter system suck?

1. You take 50% more courses than people on the semester system in a given year. See right, my friends and I believe that the US operate on this policy of "if you retain most of what you learnt in your old courses, you will have to pay additional school fee". So even if you take 50% more courses, you probably won't retain that much, unless you are bound for a related PhD program.

2. You have 50% more projects --> enuff said...remember the headaches and last minute rushing?

3. People think we learn less in less amount of time but actually some courses are pretty accelerated. In my Finance for non MBAs course, it is a combi of Corporate Finance, and Financial Mkts and investments PLUS more, which is effectively 2.5 courses at Duke in 2/3 of the time taken for each course.

4. You die during dead week. Why do freshmen have the primal scream during their dead week before finals. Why should we be subject to completing essays AND studying for exams at the same time. We barely have more than one week to prepare for exams, on the average. I am so jealous of princeton people!

5. Everything is rushed, especially after week 6.


One good thing is that the MS&E project is finally over, thanks to our group effort. I think we did a decent job on that one thanks to two people who didn't sleep the night before it was due. I think I got the easier option of tinkling around with the spreadsheet and creating graphs. I think Joe Tham's class gave me certain very valuable skills even though I suffered a lot in his class.