Yesterday was the first day of Mathematical Expression and Reasoning. Going into this class I was nervous; the title sounded somewhat intimidating and there were warnings out there that the material was challenging. This also happens to be the second course of my first year of undergrad, so naturally I as a little nervous. Once we had gone through the syllabus and admin talk, we launched into course content. To my surprise this class was basically covering some topics I had seen before. This summer I read the wonderful book Godel Escher Bach, and followed it as best as I could. With my programming background it wasn't a far stretch, but it was definitely challenging. In class yesterday I realized that a lot of the topics would be familiar with chapters and ideas from GEB. The lecture was lighter and more fun than I expected too, but I could tell some of my peers were finding it difficult to follow at the speed the professor was moving. The concepts are very abstract and unlike anything most people have seen before, and it was only my prior knowledge in programming that helped me that day. I can only imagine it will be another week before my head is spinning though. My impression is that the learning curve is steep, but I will just keep studying.
I am already looking forward to next week however, and am really excited to dive in to the material. It's been so long since I've done any serious programming that I'm really looking forward to starting again. Until then, I guess I'll take a look at some course notes.
M
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