Since the fall semester of my sophomore year is ending, I’ll share my thoughts on my classes. I got inspiration from the 2025 CMU discord server doing the same activity. Other blogs have also done this before and I’ll list them below.
This semester I took 5 classes, 3 of them being technical classes. The course numbers were 15251, 15281, 15259, 70342, and 84389. I’ll give each class a rating out of 5 and a ❤️ to classes that I loved a lot or just had a special place in my heart this semester.
15251 Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science ❤️ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐
This was one of my favorite class and a class I put a lot of time in (maybe too much time), but this may be more of me liking theory classes than the class itself. The class is a standard Discrete Math class with more theoretical CS. Lectures being at 8:30 AM makes it difficult to attend after a while, and I usually just read the textbook anyway. The interesting part of the class is the Writing Sessions. Instead of homeworks to turn in, we have “quizzes” where a select few of the homework problems are asked and we solve it live for 1.5 hours. Its nice that I didn’t have to formalize anything prior, but its annoying that I basically have to memorize our proofs just in case the question came up. Oftentimes, my Saturdays and Sundays were spent doing only 15251 problems and learning the material. My life revolved around these writing sessions for a session but overtime, we did end up getting better and optimized our learning time. From the lectures I’ve seen with Ada, he was a great prof and many other students who’ve had him speak highly of him too.
15281 Artificial Intelligence: Representation and Problem Solving ⭐⭐⭐
I took this class to fulfill the AI requirement for CS. I wasn’t too interested in AI stuff in the first place and that impacted my mental for the class. Homeworks are designed in 122 style way: a written every 2 weeks, a programming every 2 weeks, and an online assignment every 2 weeks. The homeworks aren’t designed to eat up too much time. I thought was pretty boring, and I don’t know how much new material I learned besides giving names to simple techniques. If I paid more attention and actually tried, I could have gotten an easy A in the class, but I’m fine with the B. This class would not be a good representative of how cool AI can be since its only introductory.
15259 Calculus in Three Dimensions ⭐⭐
The class was pretty easy for me. It is more or less integrals with extra steps. The prof I had was pretty mid and seemed like he did not have too much energy for the class. After a bit, I would go on to just use Pauls Notes to study. The homeworks were pretty simple, but would sometimes take the whole night if I didn’t understand or procrastinated on learning the material.It’s nice that exams are basically the practice, so I scored 100s on each exam. The Final was basically a regular exam with more time. Overall, a standard mandatory calc class with nothing too unexpected.
70342 Managing Across Cultures ⭐⭐⭐⭐
This class was fun. I took it with three of my friends. It’s nice taking a class outside of technical cs, and experiencing some humanities. The class talked about the difficulties of people working in a foreign countries and the cultural problems a person can experience. It was nice in the beginning, but after a while, it can be a bit dry as the examples in the class become quite repetitive. The professor was fun and full of energy even when the class was tired.
70342 Terrorism and Insurgency ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
My most favorite class this semester. Basically, it’s a discussion on how terrorism arises, defining rigorous definitions for acts of violence, and explored how particular terrorists came about. The class was Socratic in nature, and the teacher encouraged discussion at all times. She had a profound interest in Nigeria, and me being Nigerian, we got to talk about it for a bit. She recommended some interesting reads on the country for me to learn more about my history. Overall, I loved the diversity of backgrounds and thought and would highly recommend anyone to take this class. Its not hard and very interesting.
Conclusions
Overall, this semseter was medium difficulty to hard. It felt like my easiest semester after my first semester at CMU. I’ve only had three semesters so far though. This is the first time I’ve actually made it to the Dean’s List (Les go!), a nice confident boost to becoming an academic weapon. I definitely did sleep much more this semester, since I would usually wake up at 12pm to start my day. If I did have better habits, I could easily see myself having the most free time this time.
I sort of fear the next semester since I am taking three hard technical cs classes, 17355, 15259, and 15213, but I know I’ll be able to handle it, so I’ll be fine in the end. Overall, happy holidays and enjoy yourselves.