Should I Withdraw from My Proofs Course?

[lordy12]

I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Should I withdraw from my proofs course or risk failure of the course by doing terrible in the final exam. It's a pass/fail course. Does withdrawing look bad?

 

[lordy12]

any takes?

 

[cristo]

If you withdraw from a course without a valid reason, then I'd say it looks like you've got something to hide; as in you've not done any work and think you'll fail. Of course, there may be a way that you can ignore the course, and remove it from transcripts, in which case no one will know.

It's upto you really-- do you want to give up on a course?

 

[usahockey]

If you're a math major, and a withdraw is on the record for a math class, then it could look kind of bad. I withdrew from some piano class I took last year just for fun, because I couldn't keep up with the music majors...I doubt anyone will care about that.

If you know you are going to fail, then it's much better to withdraw than to have an F. If your absolute best hope for a grade in the class is a D or barely passing, then I would probably withdraw. If you have a shot at working hard and getting a C or higher, it would be better to just finish it up.

 

[lordy12]

the thing is that this class is not required for math major, it's just an "extra" class that's "recommended" for higher level classes. It's not a core required math class.

 

[mr_coffee]

i'm in the same deilma, I'm currently taking a computer architectures class, and i get all 100's on the homeworks, and I do very well on the design projects. But on the midterms I DID HORRIABLE!

like really bad. First exam grade was a 47, next one was a 33. But the class average on the first one was a 70 and the class average on the 2nd was a 40. So the average of both exams comes out to ~ 55%.

My current average on exams is: ~40% each mid term is worth 20% of my grade. The final is going to be 25% of my grade, and the rest is all in homeworks and projects which I'm doing well in.
15% of my grade is homeworks, which i have a 100%
and
20% of my grade is projects, which I have 95% in, and only 1 more project left and I believe I'll also do well in that one.

I also need a C or higher in this class, but I have faith in myself! hah i hope. I also have faith in other people screwing up just as bad as me.

So if you have been doing poorly on everything, including exams, I would drop it, if you do well on other things but do bad on the exams I would say keep it because the professor will see that you understand the material, you just suck at his exams (if he's nice and you do semi well on the final then I wouldn't drop it).

 

[lordy12]

thans coffee, that's what i was thinking. same exact dilemmas as you. do good in the hw's but suck at exams. and i don't slack or anything, I study my ass of but still do poorly

 

[Coto]

I think you guys are looking at withdrawls with too much aprehension. If you're a good hard working student and the rest of your courses go to show this, then a W on the transcript doesn't denote failure. In any case you may have been in over your head, or things didn't end up clicking for whatever reason. If you are going to do really poorly in the class (C- or lower) then a withdrawl is perhaps a responsible option. A W can almost always be explained... a glaring D+ shows ill performance and inability.

That said, having one to two W's on a transcript is ok.. having more than that which can't be explained by a mass reason, i.e. family death, illness, etc. can also lead to a negative interpretation of the students integrity.

 

[mr_coffee]

I agree with Coto,

I had to with draw all my classes due getting f'ed up in a car wreck and on the transcript it doesn't say medical withdraw or anything but so far no employers asked why I had so many with withdraws on my transcript.

 

[kdinser]

Mr_Coffee, what kind of class is it? Is it like VHDL or Verilog?

 

[mr_coffee]

kdinser, neither, the class that was on VHDL/Verilog I did quite well in. This is the 2nd course called computer architecture, the first was called computer orgranization and design which was mainly programming in MIPS-32 and VHDL.

This class goes over the design of things, and the pros and cons but, very broad things, not really teaching you anything but giving you general facts, but so so so much information that I can't retain it all and that's why I screw the exams up.

For instance here is an example question:
Intel 80x86 ISA includes arithmetic instructions that can directly access an operand from memory. Let us consider including these instructions in a RISC machine like MIPS. Show how these instructions can be supported by modifying hte 5-stage MIPS pipline (You may add minimal number of extra stages for this.). Discuss the impact of this modifaction on instruction latency and CPU throughput with and without hazard penalities.

It just blows my mind because none of the lectures or any of the homework pertained to such a question, so that's what screws me. But oh well this is the last comp architecture class I have to take being a Comp Sci major. thank god!

 

[lordy12]

the thing is i am pass/failing the course which means its either a P or a F. However, I did so bad in the previous exams, that I have to get above a 46 to pass the class. Is this worth the risk?

 

[Coto]

Thats a question only you can answer. My suggestion is to talk to the professor and decide based on that conversation.

Good luck either way.

 

[mr_coffee]

above a 46 shouldn't be bad

 

[kdinser]

Got ya, Mr_coffee, that would be rough.

I'm taking a microelectronics design course right now that is loaded with an incredible amount of theory, but non of the examples actually deal with how to design a specific circuit to accomplish a specific task.

We are supposed to just notice that blah and blah work so blah and blah should also work and therefore blah, blah and blah are also true and therefore it's completely obvious that the best circuit design is blah, bak, cack, and of
course atcant. What could be more obvious?

Forgive me, just finished the final for that class and I'm blowing off steam, man that thing was ugly.

 

[mr_coffee]

I know where your coming from kdinser! Maybe the computer engineering students/graduate EE students in the class know what they are doing but if my mind isn't into it, I just can't absorb that much info when I know I'm never going to use it in my career.Finals for me arn't for another 3 weeks >_<