Fall 2023
This was the first semester of sophomore year where I finally started to feel like I was understanding computer science. I only took three classes because each class had an extremely high workload.
Data Structures and Algorithms: This is the main data structures and algorithms class that every computer science student needs to take at the University of Michigan. This was the real class that made me feel like I was understanding computer science. This class made us focus on time and memory complexity and how to write better code because of it. This made me actually think about the tradeoffs each line of code would create.
Principles of Machine Learning: This was a very heavy math and coding class that was very interesting but also very difficult. I learned a lot of different machine learning algorithms and how to apply them. We were then asked to code them up for different projects/homework assignments. Our final project was very open ended and here I coded up a music classifier that can tell the difference between different subgenres within metal music.
Human-Robotic Systems: This is the core class that is considered the gateway to the upper level robotics classes. In this class, we focused on how robots and humans work together to solve problems and different challenges along the way. Lots of the class lectures were presenting different technologies and asking us to discuss them. Our final project was to design a robot that would assist nurses at their jobs. We talked to many nurses at the University of Michigan hospital and came up with different designs. After designing the idea, we then ran usability tests with the nurses again.