Wrapping up

I loved this weeks assignments. Especially the homework. I feel like the Google Maps API is really easy to work with, and the lecture was really helpful in explaining exactly what we needed to do and how to do it.

The project is coming along, slowly but surely. We're creating our visualizations right now and working on the paper. We're also in the process of loading everything onto a website as we complete the work. I'll be pretty glad to be done with this project because I didn't enjoy it that much. The topic was kind of boring to me... I guess it's my fault for not finding a group and letting myself get assigned.

This week

I think I liked the way we did the lab this week much better than normal. Even though it was combined with the homework and was longer and maybe more complex than normal, I feel like working on it was more enjoyable than normal because the stress of having another assignment right after was not there. Being able to work with someone on the entire assignment was also helpful.

One thing that I was not crazy about, and I know a lot of people were not happy about, was the fact that we had to finish the assignment 2 days after it was assigned. I had a very busy week this week and wasn't able to finish it in time to run it 5 times. I even forgot to do my blog post until now...

A suggestion

I think it would be much more helpful if we did the labs as a class so that we could follow along with you. Then having a homework assignment that is similar to the labs but different enough that it forces us to apply what we learned in the lab to the homework. I am still struggling to complete the labs and homework and feel like I am barely making it through each assignment. While being able to ask questions in class is helpful, I usually don't feel like I have many questions until I actually start the assignment and then get stuck. It's really hard to relay a question about this stuff through an email, and usually I have tons of questions and feel like I'm being too "needy" if I have to send 10 emails a week to the GSI asking questions about the assignments. In short, this class is making me feel dumb.