Comments from a first year

[phuriku]

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Also, keep in mind that the 160s are largely useless. Everything in the 160s is done much more rigorously (or made irrelevant) in 203/207. For example, the Riemann integral largely gets chucked out the window for the much more powerful Lebesgue integral, etc.

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<p>That’s an interesting viewpoint (and one that I have held in the past), but I’d disagree. It’s like saying that learning gravity is pointless because we can always make gravity into the more complicated thing that it actually is (namely, the curvature of space-time). The point of learning gravity is not necessarily to give the student a completely correct view of it, but to have the student be able to visualize/conceptualize it. Imagine if 161 started out with the definition of the limit with respect to metric spaces instead of the Euclidean metric, which is much easier for the student to grasp the general idea with. It would be mass confusion. So even if the course material isn’t exactly completely correctly or will be generalized later in your studies, it’s often very useful and essential to having a proper idea of the subject.</p>

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Indeed, 203/207 usually starts from ZFC set theory or a Dedekind/Cauchy construction of the reals.

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<p>I’m taking 207 as a freshman this quarter, and our professor declared that a prerequisite. Our first real lecture was today, and we began measure theory. We weren’t supposed to start measure theory/functional analysis/fourier analysis until 208, but Ryzhik is insane and thinks we can cover it all in 207. :/</p>

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hmm… I’m not a college student yet, but from what I’ve heard from people who are, it seems that if the students at the University of Chicago aren’t engaging… students anywhere probably aren’t to your standards either. The truth is, this is real life, and it doesn’t matter where we go, there are always going to be a handful of people who want to discuss “intellectual” things while the majority prefers something more “common.” I don’t think that there are many (any) real intellectual havens in this world.

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<p>I agree. On the other hand, I would like to sit on a few Harvard or Princeton (perhaps even Caltech) classes for a day to see how things differ elsewhere. From what I’ve seen, though, Chicago classes (at least in the areas I’m interested in) are considerably more advanced than their H(arvard)P(rinceton)C(altech) counterparts.</p>

<p>And for the record, with the entrance of the upperclassmen in the past few days, I’ve seen how the “real” UChicago student acts, and it’s pretty amusing. I’m much more pleased with the environment now that they’ve been brought into the mix. Freshmen aren’t too bad, though. They’ll learn eventually. (I’ve actually met a lot of extremely intelligent freshmen; it’s just that there seem to be more party-type, unintellectual freshmen than there are of the upperclassmen.)</p>

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-I was planning on getting a Classics minor/major to find some way to challenge myself, but after taking a year of Accelerated Latin, I realized that the Classics department had watered down their courses to a laughably low standard.

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<p>This is what I have discovered about another certain language department (that I’m not going to mention). I thought I’d come in and be able to speak fluently with other students and when I attempt to, all I get is a “Huh?” Also, the class is supposed to be taught primarily in this language, but I’d say that no more than 75% of the class is taught in the language, and what is taught in the language is incredibly easy.</p>