Hi I’m a (16F) in high school. Lately I’ve noticed how I’m struggling in my social life, it never bothered me as a kid as I always viewed myself as friendly and extroverted but you can change a lot in when you’re in high school. I’ve always had a strong friendship with this one girl for almost 10 years now but she moved to another city quite far from where I live and as she does I feel like I can’t click right with anybody else, most girls i’m surrounded with are either talking about the latest trends/issues but honestly just gossip about people we shouldn’t be minding about and boys, I don’t even wanna get started on that, but basically I can’t find REAL friends, my experience with this one girl who I decided to befriend because I noticed how the other girls talked behind her back and she was always on her own, so I offered to become her best friend from now on, we had a good friendship but she always relied on me, on almost everything. She depended on me when it came to school works even in quizzes she would text me to give her all the answers and I even did one of our big projects in a subject and I realized how stupid I was to the point that whenever we had lunch, I’d provide her lunch since I lived really near the school and still she had the audacity to unfriend me all because a boy that she didn’t even know that well asked if I was her friend and that from now on he’ll greet me whenever he saw me and that pissed her off so she decided to block me. My second experience was with the worst one. She wasn’t the normal talk-behind-your-back girly she was the talk-sht-to-your face type of btch. She didn’t just victimize me but the entire class actually. She also disliked me because of a boy and made up this rumor that I had a hobby of taking away their boyfriends even if their boyfriends were the indecent ones. I remember one time we had a screening for a pageant and pageants has always been a thing of mine so naturally I entered and some of the girls in class also did and she brought heels to the screening so we all tried it on and as I’ve always had experience with it, they all said how good I walked and complimented me for it so she agreed to let us all walk and as it came to the actual screening, I was so confused as she wouldn’t allow me to use them, she stated that I might “trip”, what’s the point of a pageant without the heels? That was just an example of what she did that showed how obviously toxic she was and the third besty I had was academically competitive, she gets upset if I get a higher score on a test or gets a higher average which I think friends should be supporting each other about not the other way around. And now I’ve lost hope, I feel antisocial, I don’t fit in big groups, I feel outcasted and I force myself to enjoy because I know i’ll feel like i’m missing out but nobody nowadays wanna sit down and have a deep conversation and not just talk about the latest gossip. I always think that it’s the environment that I’m in and the people I’m surrounded with but I can’t help but feel like I wasted lots of my time in highschool trying to be a people pleaser and be friends with everybody even when I shouldn’t.

I’m the third. Alex the parrot was the second. A man named Karl Schuster who lived in Berlin in the early 1900s was likely the first. In total, only three individuals are known to have overcome the natural cognitive limits of their species’ brains. Alex did no harm. Mr. Schuster, I’m afraid, may have inadvertently damaged reality. My transgression may be humanity’s undoing.
I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted to be like Alex.
What made Alex special? He is the only animal to have asked a question.
Lots of animals communicate. Whales and birds sing their songs to each other. Coyotes use barks and howls for identification. We’ve been teaching primates sign language since the 1960s. But these animal tweets and howls and signs aren’t language. There’s no grammatical structure. No deep concepts conveyed - just surface-level stuff. I’m here, they say. I’m threatened, or breed with me.
Animals manage to transmit information and even desires through their species’ form of communication. But none of the thousands of animals observed by science have ever asked a question. Except Alex.
Alex was an ordinary gray parrot, purchased at a pet store by a researcher studying animal psychology. Alex was taught to identify shapes and objects and to speak the name of the items he was quizzed on. One day, while being taught to identify different colors, Alex turned to a mirror and asked “What color is Alex?” This is the only known case of an animal asking a question. Even the famous gorilla who liked to pose for pictures with his kitten and the chimpanzee raised as a human child never managed to ask a question.
As you cuddle up on the couch with Mister Snugglekins the cat, or make Mister Woof Woof the dog beg for treats, think about what it must be like to have an animal mind. Animals’ brains cannot even conceive of the idea of asking a question. They can wonder things: When’s dinner? Is this new person a threat? But the notion of using communication to get answers is beyond their capacity. The gulf between us and our beloved animals is truly vast.
Now, let’s take the next logical step. Is there a mind - can there be such a mind - that is to ours like ours are to animals’? What thoughts are permitted by the laws of physics but are unattainable to the limited machinery of our brains? What if we could improve our own cognitive infrastructure, so our own minds could grasp these currently-unattainable ideas. What lies beyond the ability to ask questions? Hyper-questions? What are they like? What is their purpose? Is there hyper-love? Hyper-joy? What accomplishments lie beyond our grasp?
I used to believe that these ideas amounted to only pointless philosophical wondering. Just stuff to talk about while you’re passing the joint around. Then I learned about Alex, who somehow broke past the cognitive limit of animal thought. If Alex can do it, maybe it’s possible for a human to do it. Maybe, I thought, I can do it.
Unfortunately it is possible for a human to do it. And unfortunately, I did.
* * \*
In 2015, dozens of social media users posted images of a confused-looking elderly man slowly driving in circles in a Walmart parking lot. The emblem on the back of the car said he was driving Toyota Raynow. Toyota denies that a vehicle called a Toyota Raynow ever existed, even as a prototype.
* * \*
I’m not the first researcher to set off on a project to improve human cognition. The eugenicists whose work flourished at the dawn of the 20th century may have been the first people to search for ways to adjust to the human mind. Of course, they had their own spin on the endeavor that, let’s just say, didn’t age well. Take a look at this: an excerpt from the Proceedings of the Third Berlin Conference on Eugenics, 1904. (Translated from the original German by me)

The session on Friday afternoon was opened by Mr. Gerhard Van Wagenen, who presented the report of the Berlin Directed Intelligence Improvement Society. If we are to develop ways of improving the overall intelligence of the human breed, Mr. Van Wagenen argued, we must have, as a guide post, the ultimate limit of human intelligence. Only when we know this limit, can we pose the fundamental question of our effort: Are we to use selective breeding to improve average human intellectual fitness in a population, or are we to find ways of advancing the limit of human genius itself into areas that no individuals born to date have occupied?
Our immediate research goal was therefore to find individuals for whom the light of genius burned, not just at all, but brighter than the lights of all others of that intellectual rank. We sought to find the one individual currently alive who can look down on literally all the rest as his intellectual inferiors.
It is known that in the mass of men belonging to the superior classes there is found a small number who are characterized by inferior qualities. And in the mass of men forming the inferior classes, one can find specimens possessing superior characteristics. Therefore, we shall search wherever those of superior intellect may be found, without regard to their current station.

Inferior classes? Intellectual rank? Try putting that in a research grant proposal today!
Mr. Van Wagenen and his assistants set out across Berlin and asked thousands of people a single question: “Of all the men you know who are still alive, who amongst them is the most intelligent?” They carefully reviewed the resulting list of thousands of names. They removed the duplicates and any female names that ended up on the list. (Those crazy eugenicists, right?) They tracked down each of these men who ranked as the smartest known by at least one male resident of Berlin, and asked them the same question, generating a second-stage list: the most intelligent people known to a group of individuals already considered very intelligent.
And they kept going. They generated the third-stage names, found those people and had them produce a list of fourth-stage names. And so on. This project took a year. There was a running joke in Berlin that Mr. Van Wagenen would only stop when the last name on the list was his own.
But, to Mr. Van Wagenen’s credit, he did not rig the study to identify himself or one of his patrons as the one individual who can look down on literally all the rest as his intellectual inferiors. Indeed, Mr. Van Wagenen eventually concluded that his year-long study was a failure.

A fraction of the people named, about eight percent, simply could not be found. We were appalled to note that a small percentage of the respondents identified themselves as the most intelligent man they knew. While the ultimate individual we seek could only truthfully answer with his own name, we took these first and second stage self-identifiers to be adverse to our research and ignored their input.
In a few hundred cases, pairs of individuals each identified the other. In smaller numbers we found sets of three, four, and even five men whose linkages formed closed loops of co-admiration, eventually working around back to the first man.
But the most striking feature of the data was that over three thousand lines of reported superior intelligence ended in the same name: Karl Schuster. Mr. Schuster had been a successful industrialist before suddenly retreating from public view later in life. Strangely, when we tried to find Mr. Schuster, we learned that he had, of his own volition, taken residence in the mental asylum located at Lankwitz.
He refused to see us when we paid a visit to his private room in the asylum. The only communication we had from him was a note related to us by the Lankwitz staff, in which Mr Shuster wrote:
“I’ve spent most of my life hiding from It. I have isolated myself here, with the notion that the confused noise of mental anguish that surrounds me would act as a form of concealment. I did not suspect I might one day be discovered by ordinary men. Please do not visit me here again.”
From his note, and the fact of his residence within the asylum, we must conclude Mr. Shuster had become a mental defective. Even more damaging to our research, we subsequently learned that Mr. Schuster was a Jew. This finding, unfortunately, invalidates our work. In the coming months, we will strive to find a protocol more suitable for investigation into the nature of superior intellect.

Let’s not be too hard on these anti-Semitic, white-supremacist eugenicists. I’m willing to cut them some slack because I’ve done far, far more damage to mankind than all of these guys combined. I should have listened to Mr. Schuster’s warning. I should not have let It find me.
* * \*
In 1954 a man arrived at Tokyo’s Haneda airport with a passport issued by the country of Taured. No such country exists, or ever existed. Despite the man being detained and guarded, he mysteriously vanished overnight.
* * \*
Where the eugenicists looked to make improvements in the human population over generations by controlling or influencing reproduction, I had a more ambitious goal - to make improvements to a specific human brain (my own) in-vivo. I set out to upgrade my brain while I was using my brain to figure out how to upgrade my brain. I had astonishing success.
I’m not going to tell you exactly how I did it, because it’s just too dangerous. I don’t mean because it’s dangerous to the person undergoing the process (which it is), but because doing so can lead It to notice you. I don’t care if you fry your own cortex. But having It eat even more of our reality will be a calamity.
The human brain consists of gray matter, which is the stuff that performs perception and cognition, and white matter, which deals with boring stuff like running your metabolism. The gray matter - your cerebral cortex - forms a nice thick layer on the outside of your brain. This layer wraps the white matter underneath. I found a way to use pluripotent stem cells to expand the thickness of my cortex. With careful dosing of the stem cell culture through a spinal tap, I created new layers of gray matter underneath my cortex. These new cells replaced the white matter that was there.
For reasons I don’t fully understand yet, the new cortical cells only become active when I have ingested a potent mixture of hallucinogens and antipsychotic drugs.
The process is arduous and very illegal. Experimentation on humans, even if the test subject is also the researcher, is extremely highly regulated. And the drugs I need to use are not available from the suppliers that the rule-following scientific community uses. This work was performed in isolation and in secret. No regulators. No administrators. No rules. Just pure scientific progress.
My laboratory is as unconventional as my approach to science. I’ve set up shop in an assembly of forty-foot shipping containers in the center of my heavily forested seven-hundred-acre plot of land. Privacy!
* * \*
Thousands of people have vivid memories of news coverage from the 1980s reporting that Nelson Mandela died in prison. In the reality that most of us know, Mandela died in 2013, years after his release.
* * \*
Uplift #1 - 3 cubic centimeters
By last October, after six months of stem-cell treatment, I estimated that I had added a total of three cubic centimeters of gray matter to my baseline cortex volume. I could already feel the effects of the diminished volume of white matter. My sense of smell and taste were all but gone. My fine-motor-control was diminished. I had weakness in my legs and arms. But I had three cubic centimeters of fresh cortex to work with. I only needed to activate it. To Uplift myself, as I came to call the process of thinking with an expanded brain.
I planned for the first Uplift as if I was planning a scientific expedition into an uncharted jungle - I stockpiled food and water. I stockpiled lots of drugs. I bought a hundred blank notebooks to record my uplifted thoughts in.
I filled a seven-day pill container with hallucinogens and antipsychotics. I scratched off the Monday, Tuesday, etc. labels on the pill compartments and relabeled them: hour 0, hour 1, and so on. I planned my first Uplift to last seven hours.
Over those seven hours, I learned how to make use of the new, extra capacity in my cortex. I filled notebook after notebook with increasingly complex thoughts. Here are a few excerpts:

Hour 1: The linguistic-mathematical relational resonance is far stronger than most have suspected.
Hour 2: Questions lacking prepositional multipliers of context prevent full expository [(relations)(responses)] yet, but (!yet) there is still an I in the premise.

By the fifth hour, I was fully Uplifted, asking hyper-questions and providing my own hyper-answers. What do the musings of a fully Uplifted mind look like? Page after page of this:

(((Imagine)Imagine[)Imagine)Relate->Time]<--Force(Animal,Object–>Think)

* * \*
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
H.P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu
* * \*
Uplift #2 - 5.5 cubic centimeters.
I waited a few weeks before my next Uplift. I needed time to recover from the mental strain of the first experiment, and to wait for a new dose of stem-cells to produce even more gray matter.
Although I only spent a few hours in an Uplifted state in my first experiment, I felt diminished as I returned to baseline. Hyper-questions. Hyper-answers. Hyper-joy. All of these are wonderful to experience. Life can be so much more rich and full with a post-human cognitive capacity.
But, as I learned during my second Uplift, there is also Hyper-fear.
I descended from my second uplift by screaming and running naked in the snowy woods outside my laboratory. As the drugs wore off, the activated sections of the new parts of my brain shut down. Thoughts that were clear one moment became foggy, like waking from a nightmare.
I fell into a snowbank, breathing hard. Only a trace of what terrified me was left rattling in my tiny, baseline brain: It. It noticed me. I occupied Its attention.
What was It? I knew exactly what It was moments earlier, when I had more gray matter to think with. But now I was like a dog trying to grasp the idea of a question. I was still afraid, but I couldn’t understand the source of the fear.
I returned to the lab and warmed up. Then I reviewed what I had written in my notebooks during the ten hour session. Most of it was the same sort of advanced writings that my now-normal brain could not comprehend. But, somewhere towards the end of the session, perhaps just before I shed my clothes and ran into the woods, I wrote this:

I know what Schuster was hiding from. Find out information about Shuster.

When I recovered from the strain of my second Uplift, I drove to town, where I was able to access the Internet. I found some information about Schuster in the same archive where I found the proceedings from the 1904 eugenics conference.
A short article in a Berlin newspaper described the man who had been named by so many people who took Van Wagenen’s survey.

…Mr. Schuster, at the age of fifteen, had made significant contributions to machine design, metallurgy, and chemistry. He founded four companies which he ran nearly by himself, without a large management staff to insulate him from the workers and day-to-day engineering tasks…

It seems that most of the people who identified Mr. Shuster as the most intelligent person they knew had known him well at this time in his life.
Another article, written in 1905, described strange event at his funeral:

…Also present was a contingent of a dozen people who claimed to have been friends with Schuster during the five years he spent in America. Many who had known Schuster for his entire life stated that he had never been to America, let alone spent five years there. Did a group of people mistakenly attend the funeral of the wrong man?
Everyone in attendance had similar memories of him. All recognized his photograph on the coffin. Indeed, some of the America contingent had letters, written in Karl’s hand and signed by him, fondly recalling his time spent in the New England woods. It is as if there were two Schusters: the one who lived his life in Germany and the other who spent years in America.

Uplift #3 - 6 cubic centimeters
Perhaps I’ve allowed my cortex to consume too much of my white matter. I now have trouble with perceptions. The woods surrounding my laboratory have been transformed into a city. Where there were trees, there are now charming stone buildings from a European city. The song of birds and the whisper of the wind in the trees is gone too, replaced with streetcars and voices speaking German.
I prepared my pill container and notebooks for my third Uplift, as the sounds of a busting turn-of-the-century city rang through the metal walls of my laboratory.
Although I had dozens of blank notebooks prepared, I only made one page of notes during my third Uplift:

I met it today. I know what It is. It is alive. Not just alive. Hyper-alive.
It is built into the very material that logic and mathematics is made from. The digits of the square of pi, when computed to the billionth quadrillionth place, is a sketch of a fragment of its structure.
It consumes pieces of reality. It weaves them into its being, and leaves the tattered shreds of logic and causality to haphazardly mend themselves. It ate the circumstances of Karl Schuster’s life, leaving the ragged edges of different universes to stick and twist themselves back together, like shreds of a tattered flag tangling together in a gale.
It has only begun grazing on the small corner of Hyper-reality where humanity lives. Imagine a cow eating grass from a field. A field where humanity lives like a small colony of aphids on a single blade of grass. It likes it here. It likes the taste of reality here.
I tried to tell it to go away. That we are here and have a right to exist.
It replied to me, in its way. I found its words at the bottom of a twelve-dimensional fractal, woven into the grammar of a language with an infinite alphabet. It taunted me with a question: “What flavor is Alex?”

Update to the Proceedings of the Third Berlin Conference on Eugenics, 1904
Mr. Gerhard Van Wagenen provided the committee with an update on his finding that the individual Mr. Karl Shuster was strikingly-well-represented in the responses of his survey on intelligent men. Mr. Van Wagenen writes:
Upon further reflection of the results of my survey, I returned to Lankwitz again to try to meet with Mr. Schuster. I arrived to find his ward in an uproar, as only a few minutes prior to my arrival, Mr. Schuster had been found missing. The preceding letter, which is reprinted here in its entirety, was found in Mr. Schuster’s room. While the letter does not indicate where he went or even how he managed to slip away from the asylum unnoticed, it does show the extent of his derangement. His detailed descriptions of question-asking birds, strange events from the future, and even methods of biological manipulation unknown to science are not the product of a mind that we wish to recreate. Perhaps intelligence, as a phenomenon of nature, is more complicated than we are able to appreciate with our current notions of science. If I may speculate even further, perhaps Intelligence is a phenomenon we should avoid study of, lest we learn things about ourselves that it is best not to know.

animdude (u/animdude) - Reddit
"Logic":

FNAF is completely grounded in real world science. Its logic is flawless.
You are the ones who are flawed. ^{game creator attacks fanbase and is killed in his sleep}

Let's make fun of how logic works In the FNAF Universe : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Fredbear isn't Brown (at least in VR):

Yeah it was an early build. The trailers and images needed to be done pretty early, before everything was finished.

Why does Fredbear have Freddy colors? How do you even mess this up? : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
No Silver Parasol Website:

Hey everyone, I wanted to make a post to officially clear up the confusion about this mysterious “Silver Parasol Games” website. It caught me off guard today, and there were a lot of details I didn’t understand (like why a guy in Pakistan had the logo and had a website created using it), but I think I have a good handle of what happened here.
When we were making the game (myself and Steel Wool), I thought it would be fun to have a logo for the mysterious “other game developer” mentioned in the game, so I had a logo created for it. At the time, I had plans to even go as far as making a whole website for them, but then decided against it. After all, there is a fine line between crafting an in-game story and just outwardly lying about something. I didn’t want to cross that line. I decided against creating a website, but decided to leave the logo in the game (since it was in-game after all.)
After doing a little more research today, it turns out that a graphic designer had actually thrown together a mock-page for it already and put it up on his personal graphic design page. EDIT: This was one of the designers working for the company who was going to design the website for me before I cancelled the project; that's how he got the logo.
And yes, that’s my personal phone number. I’m honestly not sure why that number would have been on that page in the first place. All I can do is ask for everyone to respect my privacy. My number has actually already been out there for a few months; I’d donated to someone’s school online fundraising page a while back and got doxed using my donation info shortly after. :P So, I guess it was about to time to get a new phone number anyway! Until then, just be aware I won’t be answering any calls from unknown numbers.
So yeah, this was done with good intentions as a fun in-game Easter egg, but then ended up causing a bit of trouble it seems. Sorry for the confusion.
EDIT 2: I want to call attention to the fact that ever since I made this post several hours ago, I haven't received a single new phone call (other than the few numbers who kept calling over and over and I had to block). That's a real testament to this community. I've been really amazed by it. I'll obviously still be changing my number in the morning, but you have all really impressed me today. I wanted to make sure I said it. Thank you.

Silver Parasol Games : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Showtime:

Hey everyone, just wanted to comment on a couple of things: Showtime, and the mysterious "secret images."
Showtime was left out of the game because it didn't feel right. It's not that it was unfinished, necessarily. There may be some bits and pieces floating around of incomplete versions; but there was, in fact, a completed version. I made the call to leave it out, though. It's one of those things that needs to feel 110% to me, and that may or may not ever happen.
About the secret images; Aaron Fetcher himself, the creator of Showbiz Pizza, was nice enough to take those pictures for me, specifically for this project. I had wanted some cool images of animatronics parts and went straight to him for them. However, I removed them when people traced them back to Showbiz Pizza (I'd hoped they were obscure enough to not be so easily identified). I obviously didn't want to connect the two and make people think that Freddy's was based on Showbiz (that's also why I didn't include his name). I loved Showbiz Pizza, and Aaron Fetcher has been terrific every time I've gotten to talk to him. I just didn't want to send any negative attention his way, so I deleted the pictures.
I hope that clears things up. :)

Concerning Showtime and the "Secret" images : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Book Mistakes:

Hey guys, the first priority was removing those fan-art images; everything else will take longer. Now we'll be working on a more substantial update with new content and a lot of those other fixes.

The Mistakes Are Still In The Book : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Actual Lore:

Hey everyone!
So, I received an email from a reddit member yesterday asking me to clarify something specific about the lore of Help Wanted. He was very polite and respectful with his question, which I appreciate, and I know it’s something that more than a few other users were confused about as well.
So here I am to set the record straight! (and probably create more confusion in the process)
The question is this: Is Scott Cawthon now a part of FNAF lore? The short answer is: No. My name is never actually mentioned in the game. The game says that an indie developer was tarnishing the brand of Fazbear Entertainment by making video games about them, forcing them to rebrand and try to reclaim their good name by making a VR game that made light of those crazy stories. (Or was it all part of the plan?) Yes, I used my own picture for this indie developer because it’s an obvious parallel, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s actually me in-universe.
On the surface, this might seem like an odd choice for a storyline in general, but there was a very, very specific challenge while making Help Wanted. The challenge was this: How do you take characters that are canon, along with characters that are questionably canon, and characters from every point of the timeline, and throw them ALL together in one game that IS canon? That’s quite the problem when you think about it. But it was important for me that Help Wanted mean something; I didn’t want just a meaningless collection of mini-games, although I’m sure most people would have been okay with that. I wanted it to be canon, and that meant that I needed to solve the substantial puzzle of how. Now that you all know the problem, maybe you can understand my approach. That doesn’t mean you have to agree that it was a good idea (I keep a bowl of candy out for people who show up with torches and pitchforks at my front door.)
So no, I’m not canon, Freddit isn’t canon, the fangames aren’t canon, YOU aren’t canon. Only the existence of a game developer that supposedly made video games based on actual events that may or may not be a cover up by Fazbear Entertainment is canon.
Along these same lines, keep in mind that I DO tend to use pictures of me and my family in the games just because they are so readily available. My little boy, Jason, is the face of “The one you should not have killed” in UCN. I’ll share the original sometime; he looks sweet as an angel in the original picture and I turned him into a monster! In FNAF4, I used a picture of a mountain range that I took while I was a truck driver in West Texas. I used a picture of a snowman that me and my older sons made together. I used a picture of a pet Mockingbird that we nursed back to health one year. Do these have lore significance? Well, you probably already know the answer.
Again, this doesn't mean you have to agree with any of it. I'm always available for a good roasting (and I sometimes deserve it), although I will say that I appreciate the fandom being polite about it, which everyone usually is. :)
I hope this makes things clear as mud for everyone. Expect a new teaser shortly!

A lore question about Help Wanted, and an answer! : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Dark Springtrap is canon:

Here is a funny story. When I went to visit Skylar about a month ago, I took several POP figures for him in a bag, and I quizzed him to see how fast he could name the characters when I pulled them out. I brought several lesser known characters and thought I'd stump him a few times but never could. The last one in the bag was Dark Springtrap, arguably the most obscure character in the franchise, with doubts that he even exists as a character at all. I thought to myself... I've got him, because NO ONE knows this character! I pulled the toy from the bag and Skylar was like "Dark Springtrap", without missing a beat. The kid knew his fnaf. ;)

Annual reminder that Scott created Dark Springtrap, not Funko. He IS a canon character, he's basically "Withered Springtrap". : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
LEREMY (World's most cruicial piece of lore):

For everyone looking for that last piece of lore you needed to complete your theories; look no further.

L E R E M Y : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Plot Holes:

There are no holes in the plot; only holes in your understanding.

what are the biggest plot holes in fnaf : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Is the story Solvable:

I’ve enjoyed the memes roasting me about the plot-line lately, but it does have a serious underlying concern from many in the community, and I hear you. The question is this; is the lore solvable?
Since that’s kind of like asking Is the story complete, in an ongoing story, it’s difficult to answer. So, let me say this instead. Over the next few years there are a lot of projects planned, and most are very story driven. Lots of the later stories will answer some of the biggest questions from the fan base over this past year, in my opinion.
Very few people will likely ever feel completely satisfied, as there are just too many head canons out there and so many great ideas on where the story could go, but I think there are good things to be found for people who are looking. All I can do is say that some questions will be answered; even if it may not always be the answer you wanted. Be patient. Let me at least say this; future games will look forward; but look to the novels to fill in some of blanks to the past!
Everyone in the community has been really great, and I’m working hard to bring you some great things in 2020 and beyond! :)
To answer your question, yes, I'm referring to the new Fazbear Frights series! :)

Just a note about the story. : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Candy really shouldn't be on the fourth closet cover:

No, this isn't official. I've notified my legal team and they're going to get it removed if they can. Can be difficult though in other countries sometimes.

ı was just looking at the fourth closet cover ın turkey and ı notıced thıs : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
No Patrick, the Kazoo isn't intentional:

Okay, raise your hands if you think I'd let Cloak reveal lore using a Kazoo. Never mind, don't answer that; it sounds just dumb enough to work.
But seriously, I can't tell you how many designs I've rejected because companies randomly throw around names from the lore. I'm pretty confident that I rejected this as well, or I guess there is a chance it just slipped through the cracks. Either way, get it while you can, cause I'm pulling it!

You can now buy an official "Cassidy Kazoo" on Cloak's website! : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
FNAF World:

There are no glitches in FNAF World; there are only things you don't understand.

A glitch I found the other day when I booted up my old fnaf world save : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
FNAF Movie History:

Hi everyone.
Before we get to the bad news concerning the state of the Five Nights at Freddy's movie, I wanted to share a brief history of the FNAF screenplay. It's been a long road, so let's take a look at some of the screenplays that have come and gone over the years, in no particular order. (Or, feel free to skip to the end really quick to see the bad news, and then come back and enjoy the list!) ;)
Some of these came from big studios, some from big directors, some from me, and some from other hired writers. I gave the screenplays a name, and I'll include a brief synopsis, as well as what ultimately led to each screenplay being rejected.
Let's get started!
The "F" screenplay
Basic Setup: Group of teenage trouble-makers break into Freddy's; chaos ensues
Problems: Although a pretty basic setup, there were a lot of odd choices here, which only got weirder as the story continued. The story ended with our protagonists in a secret underground animatronic factory that was designing robots for the government. -___-
Verdict: WT@#$@ Strayed way too far from source material! Tossed.
The "Plushies Take Manhattan" screenplay
Basic Setup: Plushies take Manhattan.
Problems: Plushies took Manhattan
Verdict: Burned with fire.
The "Random Charlie" screenplay
Basic Setup: Charlie and friends sneak into Freddy's after-hours to retrieve a lost toy.
Problems: Although sharing names of familiar characters from the series, these characters had nothing to do with their game and book counterparts. So, while featuring familiar elements of the games, it seemed too "loosely based" on the game, and lost a lot of its impact because of it.
Verdict: Felt like a random bag of FNAF elements with no real stakes. Meh.
The "Silver Eyes" screenplay(s)
Basic Setup: Kira and I both worked on three versions of a Silver Eyes screenplay over the course of about a year, trying to find the right approach to the story from the first book.
Problems: These were the first attempts I made myself to write a screenplay after realizing it was going to be difficult to find someone else who understood the lore well enough to do it. Unfortunately, it also meant these screenplays suffered greatly from my inexperience at writing. Even Kira, with her writing expertise, couldn't save them.
Verdict: Although these had some good elements, I ultimately decided to focus on making a screenplay from the games and not from the books.
The "Pawn Shop" screenplay
Basic Setup: A kid who watches after a pawn shop finds trouble when an animatronic is brought in. It turns out Freddy's had been robbed, and the animatronics were taken to different locations for sale. The other animatronics come to retrieve the one at the Pawn Shop, and the kid and his friends get roped into adventure.
Problems: A creative approach, but felt a little too much like "a boy and his animatronic". Too much after-school adventure, not enough horror.
Verdict: Seemed like a good idea at the time.
The "Cassidy" screenplay
Basic Setup: Diving deep, this screenplay packed in a lot of lore, following the story of Cassidy.
Problems: Spanning multiple time-periods, following multiple characters, and featuring lore from multiple games, this was pretty saturated, saturated to a fault. It may have been satisfying to the most hardcore fans, but it would have left the majority of people confused and lost. (Hey wait, maybe this WAS the most accurate screenplay...)
Verdict: Ultimately more of a visual encyclopedia than a movie, this just wasn't satisfying, even to me. Out.
The "Misfit Kid" screenplay
Basic Setup: Single Mom brings her kid to a new town; kid finds Freddy's; hilarity ensues.
Problems: One of the problems in creating a modern day story with an old Freddy's setting is finding a way to connect the protagonists to the restaurant, finding a reason for them to be there, and finding a reason for them to stay. The problem here was that the reason for this kid to go to Freddy's and have misadventures was too contrived and too forced.
Verdict: Not a bad setup, but it just didn't work. If I don't care about the characters, then there's a good chance no one else will either. Pass.
(This was going to be THE screenplay for a while because it didn't have any serious flaws. I ultimately just decided it wasn't good enough though.)
The "Ghost Trackers" screenplay
Basic Setup: A group of amateur ghost-trackers sneak into the abandoned Freddy's.
Problems: Although a very common-sense setup for this sort of movie, the problem again arose about how to give these characters a connection to Freddy's itself. What ended up happening was too much of the story went to their own backstories and their own hardships, and it took the spotlight away from the story of Freddy's.
Verdict: A stronger connection between protagonist and Freddy's was needed. Lesson learned.
The "Insane" screenplay
Basic Setup: Another ghost-tracker variation, this one involved the Funtime Animatronics, underground ball-pit tunnels, and a Marionette out for revenge!
Problems: As some other screenplays ventured too far into adventure, this one went too far into action.
Verdict: Too all-over-the-place, with too many characters doing too many things.
The "Mike" screenplay
Basic Setup: Hmmmm. This makes sense. Why didn't I think of this before?
Problems: Actually this is a good mix... it has the best pieces from all the previous screenplays... Not really any problems here. All the right characters, all the right motivations, all the right stakes...
Verdict: Yeah, we're going with this one. It's fun, it's scary, and it has a great central story!
Oh right, so onto the bad news. The bad news is that there won't be any more screenplays to add to this list since we're officially making the "Mike" screenplay.
Filming starts in Spring!!! :D

Bad news about the FNAF movie. :( : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Freddybear:

I actually never knew about this!!! That is a pretty special "typo" actually, copy and pasted from a time before Freddy's name was Freddy Fazbear. For a very short time, Freddy's name was going to be Freddybear, and that must have been when I originally typed this. I likely went back and changed other parts of the description but missed this one!

Petition for Scott to finally change Freddy's name in the Steam description for FNaF 1. Come on, Scott. It's been 6 years. : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Book Canonicity:

I'm not sure if the email itself was faked or if someone posing as me sent it, but anyone who knows me after all these years should know that this isn't how I would address such a serious topic. So let me take this opportunity to be as clear as possible:
Concerning what people are saying about the canonicity of the books- yes, that is correct.
I hope that clears things up, everyone have a great weekend.

For the doubters : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Doug:

Hey everyone, some issues are much easier to address than others, and this is an easy one.
As many of you know, Doug does something in the novelization that seems... out-of-character from the Doug we all knew and loved from the movie. This specific item was deleted from the official transcript months before the book was printed, but maybe I accidentally submitted the wrong version to Scholastic; I'm not sure.
Either way though, just to clear this up: Movie-Doug IS canon. Book-Doug is NOT canon. This is something I will change in future prints.

Concerning Doug. : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)
Talbert Files:

Okay everyone, here my official statement concerning The Talbert Files.
As I said elsewhere, I don't know what The Talbert Files is- I haven't looked at it yet. I never said it was fake, though, despite the emails I'm getting. We are talking about 2017, and that's a long time ago. If it is an unpublished version of The Freddy Files, like everyone says, then it was obviously rejected. Lots of stuff gets rejected. One thing that everyone needs to keep in mind is that a lot of companies that I work with come up with products from time to time that try to fill in the gaps of the lore. They essentially create new lore in trying to create a product. This happens a lot more than you may realize. Almost every time this happens, however, I step in and say- No, don't create lore; just focus on established lore. Even a detail as small as an "EST 1983" on a T-Shirt; I'll say NO, don't include an established date because that confuses the lore. Companies don't realize this; they have good intentions. All of this is to say that yes it's possible that "The Talbert Files" is an old version of The Freddy Files, but if it is, it was obviously rejected. Anytime you see an unpublished book, or unpublished screenplay, or even scrapped merchandise designs, try to keep in mind that a lot of ideas get scrapped because they are simply bad ideas. (I have enough bad ideas on my own; I don't need help.)
The other problem is that I've seen emails supposedly by me that were not written by me. I do sometimes reply to emails, rarely, however the one that I've seen posted on Reddit and one the one sent to me privately by members of this "Talbert group" is a fake. It wasn't written by me; there are too many obvious giveaways.
Please don't harass anyone over this. I think there is a lot of confusion over this obviously, but I don't think anyone has intended to cause problems.
EDIT: Okay, I've been looking through some of The Talbert Files pages. I couldn't find any downloadable versions but I watched YouTube videos browsing through it. I can pretty confidently say that The Talbert File is fake, and not an unreleased Freddy Files. It looks completely unfamiliar to me, and not something Scholastic would have put together. It also mentions characters that weren't created until years later. Pretty sure it's fake, folks.

The Talbert Files : fivenightsatfreddys (reddit.com)

I found a post about the Greyrat Children which caught my eyes, the original post is in the link, below is GPT translated, shout out to the original guy We saw in Redundancy Vol 1 Lucy's POV when she was young. She felt that Rudy expected nothing from her.
In the WN version, where Rifujin did not specify much about Lucy, many things were left in the air. At least, I understood that the issue of believing that "nothing was expected of them" had extended to Ars and Sieg thanks to Lucy's complex.
From what I understand, Chris didn't think such things, and since Lily and Lara could read minds, they didn't have confused ideas.
This has been much more clarified (or perhaps modified) in the chapter "The Greyrat Children."
Here we see that Lucy is brutally talented. She is basically "The Perfect Older Sister."
She is incredibly intelligent, gets good grades, is social, quite centered, and at this point (she is 13), she is much more talented with the sword than all her siblings.
Moreover, being extremely talented with magic, she uses the same strategy as Rudy did as a child, fighting with a sword in one hand while using "Shockwave" with the other to change direction quickly, making it impossible for Ars to follow her.
She is basically a "Magic Swordswoman." If you've read the chapter "The Elite Soldiers of Shirone" in the "Special Book," you know how difficult it is to fight someone who is talented in both swordsmanship and magic, and that guy needed enchantments, but Lucy doesn't.
Basically, at this point in time, Lucy far surpasses the talent of all her siblings combined. But this hasn't been achieved easily. She has worked hard to earn Rudeus's recognition.
Now, before continuing, let's explain something about the psychological world.
One of the most important personality tests in the world (and definitely the most recognized worldwide) is the "Big Five" test.
It measures five aspects of a person's personality that are genetically ingrained.
These are:
Openness = Openness to experience Conscientiousness = Measures how organized or disorganized a person is and whether they work hard or not. Extraversion = How extroverted you are Agreeableness = How kind and amiable you are with people Neuroticism = How much negative emotions affect you These form the "OCEAN" model and are used not only for hiring new employees but also for ad campaigns.
Those quizzes that say "Take this quiz to see which Harry Potter character you are!" usually collect your personality information to create your psychological profile and then target you with ads.
If you want to know more about this process, here's a talk with Alexander Nix in Hamburg, Germany, explaining how they used this exact method for a specialized ad campaign to help Trump win the presidency:
https://youtu.be/6bG5ps5KdDo?si=NrYWaPTv-uO5KZsF
Anyway, back to what interests us.
The OCEAN model can describe a lot about a person. One thing it has proven is that "opposites don't necessarily attract."
If a highly extroverted person gets together with someone highly introverted, this relationship will generally end up harming both greatly.
Similarly, someone with high "Agreeableness" hates conflicts, accepts everything from others, and if not "properly trained," they end up suffering because they never impose their will and always accept what others impose on them.
And if this type of person enters into a relationship with someone with low Agreeableness, in other words, someone confrontational who has no problem imposing their will, the first will suffer a lot.
Here we get to Lucy, someone with a very high level of "Conscientiousness."
These people can work brutally hard for long periods without stopping, they need structure, order, and can even feel physical pain in a disordered and dirty environment (think of people who thrive in the military).
Lara is her opposite, with a low level in this metric; she can be in the middle of chaos and dirt without caring.
Lucy, at this point in life, at 13 years old, has been working extremely hard to reach her position. She excels in everything she does, striving in every available area.
She has become highly competent in absolutely everything she does, and with the talent to do so, all for one single purpose.
To gain Rudy's recognition by giving her a "structure to follow."
Over the years, she has sought him out several times to ask for a goal, a purpose, the structure she so needs.
She has asked him many times, "What do you expect from me?"
But Rudy always rejects these efforts, saying, "You should do what you want."
For Lucy, this is not only a rejection of all her most basic needs but also makes her feel like she is a "failure" to Rudeus, a failure to the point where he doesn't care about her.
Eris doesn't help; apparently, Eris keeps shouting in the family that Ars will be "the heir." He will be the head of the Greyrat house. Rudy doesn't care because he doesn't see his family with noble obligations. Sylphie and Roxy say nothing to avoid fighting with Eris, but they don't care about those "positions" either.
However, Ars is an idiot; he inherited the worst of Eris's IQ. He himself admits he knows he is an idiot, and he feels awkward with his mother shouting about him being the heir.
He doesn't even understand what that means, and he has no idea what he has to do. He accepts that he is an idiot incapable of even having a "slightly complex" thought. Even if he "thinks hard about a solution to a problem," he can't obtain it; without Aisha, he would be screwed in life.
And he's supposed to handle things with nobles and complex problems like his father? No way!
On the other hand, we have Lara, who is expected to be "the savior of the world," someone who at this point is not only less competent than Lucy but also only excels in magic and jokes.
When it comes to jokes, she's intelligent, quick, agile, capable, but give her a sword and she becomes totally useless, and she's extremely lazy, not wanting to do anything.
Imagine having all of Lucy's talent, being as competent as she is, having worked for years to excel in everything, only to have what you want most given to less competent people due to factors beyond your control?
So, Ars, doing push-ups (punishment after losing a duel in training), asks Lucy:
"What are you going to do after studying?"
Lucy answers that she's going to the Asura academy.
Ars asks:
"No, I mean, after everything?"
Lucy starts to say she has no idea since no one expects anything from her.
Ars immediately reacts, saying that isn't true.
But then Lucy explodes, saying it's easy to say that when he is given swords and expected to be the head of the Greyrat house and a great swordsman.
Or easy for Lara, who is given staffs while expected to save the world.
Even Sieg already has a path while training with Alek.
But with Lucy, there's silence. Rudy refuses to give her that path because he wants to be "the cool dad" who lets them choose what they want.
But that freedom for people with high "Conscientiousness" is a heavy burden.
Roxy mildly scolded Rudy in Vol 22, saying he sees what he wants to see with his family and not what's really happening. By constantly being on the road, he can't involve himself better with his family.
Aisha, in her deleted chapter, scolded Rudeus for this same mistake, telling him he should talk more with his children and stop living in his idealized world.
In Jobless Obligue (WN), this also hit him like a hammer.
The problem is that Rudeus is a complete idiot with these things. He has obvious things in front of him but can't see them.
It took him a year to realize that "Fitz" was Sylphie, and if it hadn't been blatantly obvious, who knows how long it would have taken.
He also went along thinking Nanahoshi would be fine after her failure, only for her to explode seconds later in episode 15 of the anime.
He's very dense in recognizing that Lucy's constant questions are a desperate cry for what she wants most: structure, a path, a goal to follow.
She feels like she is putting a lot of effort into many areas for absolutely nothing.
Before realizing it, amid complaints to Ars and Lara for not understanding her since they have "their goals," their parents expect something from them, tears start to fall.
Ars, at this moment, understands even more his level of stupidity. He has no idea what to say.
Both Ars, Lara, and Sieg are lost, never having seen their sister like this.
Clive arrives to the rescue, calming Lucy and taking her inside the house to make her feel better.
All the siblings really don't understand why their parents are doing things this way.
For all of them, Lucy is obviously the best option to be the "head of the Greyrat house."
If the position were given to her, no one would complain; everyone knows she is the right choice, and everyone knows Ars is an idiot.
Ars is left in the clouds; on one hand, he didn't understand
The post is roughly translated, so pardon me for using GPT for this xD

I was a student in a ASN nursing program and the summer going into my second year (3rd semester) I received a call from my school stating that one of my pre requisite grades (a requirement to even be in the program) was not acceptable. This came as a shock to me since i was already in the program and you need at least a 77 in all pre reqs to even be accepted. Found out it was accidentally over looked since i had a A+ in the class but received a D in the lab. This was due to the fact I took the class when Covid hit and we transferred from in person to online and it was a struggle to figure out. Anywho now I was scrambling to get this class done and receive an acceptable grade before i had to start back up in the fall or they were going to have to hold me back. My advisor had recommended Portage learning since it was go at our own pace so i could get it done as fast or as slow as I wanted within one year of enrollment.
I did no research on other options and in hind sight I should have but it costs me an additional $984 up front. So I began the course. Now my first issue is that I was assigned a professor but they did not teach any class and or record any of the lectures I was watching. They were strictly there to review proctored exams by a program called Respondus. So I paid $984 to watch videos and read articles I could've found online. This is what brings me to my next issue. Portage learning does not allow any type of outside study material. You can not use any other website, book, study guide or subsequent study material of any kind. I found this frustrating since the "study" material they did provide did not work with my learning habits and to be honest just didn't have good verbiage or a good set up.
So I went ahead and did my best with what they gave me and I typically make virtual flashcards on Quizlet so thats what I did. This lead us to one of the biggest issues i had with Portage learning. When you go to take an exam you have to be in a room by yourself, nothing on your work surface, no blank paper, no pen nothing but your laptop/computer and your ID card. Before the exam they have you scan the room. Floors, work surface, your lap and anything in eye view. They then have you scan your face and do a talking segment to analyze and hear your voice. You then scan your ID and you can begin the exam. At the very beginning of one of my exams my flashcards started playing over my speaker in my living room for half a second and then stopped. I apologized to the camera and then lifted the laptop up again to show her it wasn't anything I had on me. After the exam my boyfriend apologized and said he was using my phone to look something up and didn't realize it was connected to blue tooth. Told him not to worry about it since I didn't think it was going to be a big deal.
Three days went by and I got an email stating I received a 0 on the exam for "violating academic policy" and it read "(my name) you have received a 0/100 on this exam due to a violation of course material heard during the interval 00:30-00:33". 3 seconds. It was 3 seconds. I wrote the professor an email explaining what happened where I was then told that "Use of Quizlet is also an additional academic violation on a different tier". Who are you to tell a student how they choose to study? Making flash cards is not cheating and it should not be considered an "academic violation".
Some months went by and since my school never emailed me I started the 3rd semester and just finished this course at a slower pace. We are now down to my final. I needed a 105/120 to pass so I studied the best I could and I will admit i used outside sources since like I mentioned the sources they provided were awful. When I took my final and submitted it 5 days went by and I once again received an email.
This email stated that I was being removed from the course and that I was receiving a failing grade for; and Im going to list the reasons she mentioned

1. heard rearranging the environment after the scan ( lets remember that Im being recorded already at this point)
2. heard typing on a subsequent device (there was nothing else in the room, not my phone, not a ipad, laptop nothing at all and that was seen on the scan)
3. looking off screen (???? this one threw me off because what am i looking at???? you saw the whole room during the scan and I never moved from my spot after the scan)
4. Plagiarizing the answer to one of the questions

The last one I am going to elaborate on since this was wild. The question that was asked was a this vs. that question. It was "describe the difference between A and B" A and B both have very concrete definitions since this is a Biology class so I just wrote the definitions for both. A is blah blah blah where as B can be defined as blah blah blah.
After this I wrote to their appeal board where I was found innocent of reasons 1-3 and was enrolled back into the course but was given a 0 on my final because the "plagarism" claim stood. Their message said "copying something from course material or from another source is a form of plagiarism and violates the academic integrity policy. Further, a requirement of the course is demonstrating mastery of the content, which requires being able to articulate in your own words." So because I wrote the definition for both of them and it happened to be within a few words from a website they pulled up online its plagarizing? This is an answer on an exam, not a published document. Also if you rescinded the claims that I was using a subsequent device and that I did not cheat, then you proved my answer to be from memorization therefore I did master the content.
This entire program is a waste of money and time. Study.com has 10000x better learning devices such as shorter, more focused lectures, small 5-10 question mini quizzes on all lectures to help retention and only one proctored comprehensive exam that they even provide pre made flash cards for. This program costs 260 a month and you can decide how much the credit will cost you based on how fast or slow you complete the course. Professors are hands on and even host study sessions. Dont waste your money like I did and go straight to study.com from the beginning.

I was a student in a ASN nursing program and the summer going into my second year (3rd semester) I received a call from my school stating that one of my pre requisite grades (a requirement to even be in the program) was not acceptable. This came as a shock to me since i was already in the program and you need at least a 77 in all pre reqs to even be accepted. Found out it was accidentally over looked since i had a A+ in the class but received a D in the lab. This was due to the fact I took the class when Covid hit and we transferred from in person to online and it was a struggle to figure out. Anywho now I was scrambling to get this class done and receive an acceptable grade before i had to start back up in the fall or they were going to have to hold me back. My advisor had recommended Portage learning since it was go at our own pace so i could get it done as fast or as slow as I wanted within one year of enrollment.
I did no research on other options and in hind sight I should have but it costs me an additional $984 up front. So I began the course. Now my first issue is that I was assigned a professor but they did not teach any class and or record any of the lectures I was watching. They were strictly there to review proctored exams by a program called Respondus. So I paid $984 to watch videos and read articles I couldve found online. This is what brings me to my next issue. Portage learning does not allow any type of outside study material. You can not use any other website, book, study guide or subsequent study material of any kind. I found this frustrating since the "study" material they did provide did not work with my learning habits and to be honest just didn't have good verbiage or a good set up.
So I went ahead and did my best with what they gave me and I typically make virtual flashcards on Quizlet so thats what I did. This lead us to one of the biggest issues i had with Portage learning. When you go to take an exam you have to be in a room by yourself, nothing on your work surface, no blank paper, no pen nothing but your laptop/computer and your ID card. Before the exam they have you scan the room. Floors, work surface, your lap and anything in eye view. They then have you scan your face and do a talking segment to analyze and hear your voice. You then scan your ID and you can begin the exam. At the very beginning of one of my exams my flashcards started playing over my speaker in my living room for half a second and then stopped. I apologized to the camera and then lifted the laptop up again to show her it wasn't anything I had on me. After the exam my boyfriend apologized and said he was using my phone to look something up and didnt realize it was connected to blue tooth. Told him not to worry about it since i didnt think it was going to be a big deal.
Three days went by and I got an email stating I recieved a 0 on the exam for "violating academic policy" and it read "(my name) you have recieved a 0/100 on this exam due to a violation of course material heard during the interval 00:30-00:33". 3 seconds. It was 3 seconds. I wrote the professor an email explaining what happened where I was then told that "Use of Quizlet is also an additional academic violation on a different tier". Who are you to tell a student how they choose to study? Making flash cards is not cheating and it should not be considered an "academic violation".
Some months went by and since my school never emailed me I started the 3rd semester and just finished this course at a slower pace. We are now down to my final. I needed a 105/120 to pass so I studied the best I could and I will admit i used outside sources since like I mentioned the sources they provided were awful. When I took my final and submitted it 5 days went by and I once again received an email.
This email stated that I was being removed from the course and that I was receiving a failing grade for; and Im going to list the reasons she mentioned
1) heard rearranging the environment after the scan ( lets remember that Im being recorded already at this point)
2) heard typing on a subsequent device (there was nothing else in the room, not my phone, not a ipad, laptop nothing at all and that was seen on the scan)
3) looking off screen (???? this one threw me off because what am i looking at???? you saw the whole room during the scan and I never moved from my spot after the scan)
4) Plagiarizing the answer to one of the questions
The last one I am going to elaborate on since this was wild. The question that was asked was a this vs. that question. It was "describe the difference between A and B" A and B both have very concrete definitions since this is a Biology class so I just wrote the definitions for both. A is blah blah blah where as B can be defined as blah blah blah.
After this I wrote to their appeal board where I was found innocent of reasons 1-3 and was enrolled back into the course but was given a 0 on my final because the "plagarization" claim stood. Their message said "copying something from course material or from another source is a form of plagiarism and violates the academic integrity policy. Further, a requirement of the course is demonstrating mastery of the content, which requires being able to articulate in your own words." So because I wrote the definition for both of them and it happened to be within a few words from a website they pulled up online its plagarizing? This is an answer on an exam, not a published document. Also if you rescinded the claims that I was using a subsequent device and that I did not cheat, then you proved my answer to be from memorization therefore I did master the content.
This entire program is a waste of money and time. Study.com has 10000x better learning devices such as shorter, more focused lectures, small 5-10 question mini quizzes on all lectures to help retention and only one proctored comprehensive exam that they even provide pre made flash cards for. This program costs 260 a month and you can decide how much the credit will cost you based on how fast or slow you complete the course. Professors are hands on and even host study sessions. Dont waste your money like I did and go straight to study.com from the beginning.

The following file is a document written by one of the Sharashi diplomats translated by us into English. The Sharashi (called by us, they do not have a name for themselves) use very few words for large concepts and we tried to reflect that during the translation. Their diplomats have been designed specifically for human-sharashi communication, yet they are arguably horrible at it. This is not an official document, however, it is the first draft of one. Sharashi diplomats send their text files between each other and the final version sent to us is filled with so much verbosity that it is quite frankly illegible. We are lucky, as this is the first document that we managed to intercept before it got ruined and it tells us a lot about what the Sharashi think of us.
Explanation
The universe is full of extremes. Look at any of the races and you will see them: bugs - hivemind, nobody cares about the individual; individuals - everybody cares for themselves and rarely, if ever, cooperates, that is even if the individuals cooperate at all. We are bugs, but there are few of we, we care only for the collective, and each of we (translator's note: the Sharashi do not have the concept of "us", they do not refer to themselves as they are a "singular entity", to reflect this, all mentions of this metaphorical singular entity have been replaced by "we" or "Sharashi") would die for it. We do not fight between ourselves, because we are a collective. Every "race" is a collective, it is the definition of a race - even humans. Humans are weird. Humans are both individuals and collective, they are both extremes. Somehow. They are average in everything. Take any one human and he will get beaten - sometimes even by a normal bug - not us. Any of Sharashi individuals would destroy any human. But tens of Sharashi would have trouble destroying tens of humans, hundreds of Sharashi and hundreds of humans - I do not know who would get destroyed, and thousands of Sharashi and thousands of humans - we will lose.
It is illogical (translator's note: common phrase used by the Sharashi when sharing their frustration with something) how humans can be both individuals and collective. Signs of being individuals - they care about their death, they care about their life even after breeding, they have the concept of property, and many more. Signs of being collective - any of them would die alone under harsh circumstances, they are used to working together, they like (produce positive reactions) society - most use "school" - being taught by other humans. Their individualism is illogical - on Earth there is "evolution." This "evolution," survival of the best, means that the worst die before breeding and the best get to breed and produce more humans with their genes. This does not exist in bug races nor individuals, there is no incentive to kill one's own race. Just create new, better types of bugs. With humans, there is competition and competition is encouraged. Competition is passed to their offspring - they have more competition. It is illogical. How can a creature which has a defining feature of "competition" work together? It is logical to go away from the collective to breed more and pass more genes, yet they stay in groups, where they are not guaranteed to breed. It would be for the best to kill other members of the group, but if they do, people stop "liking" them (this does many things, but mainly, they breed less). You have to be strong, but not too strong. How can that be in a gene designed to compete?
Humans do compete, but not in groups. It is illogical. They wage war among themselves - not individuals, but millions. They have no incentive - why wage war? Ask any human - we asked many cooperators (humans that tell information to we in exchange for Au) - and they will say "I do not know." We do not know why they do not know and still wage war. It is not in their genes - their genes are designed like this: be birthed, be raised, breed to produce offspring and pass genes, raise offspring, die. Humans evolved from fish, which evolved from bacteria, which evolved from air. Fish do not wage war. Bacteria do not wage war. Closest relative - monkeys, do not wage war. Only species that wage war - ants, a bug race where one colony is not yet dominant. Humans, the smartest species on the planet, wage war. Their singular purpose in life is to produce and raise offspring until they produce their own and die - why wage war and risk getting offspring killed before offspring breeding?
All their systems are flawed. Their organization is terrible, their "traditions" (repeating something illogically) stupid (translator's note: one of the few actual insults in the Sharashi language, a Sharashi being called stupid by another Sharashi is the equivalent of, forgive me for this expression, telling another human that he is a retarded parasite that would do everyone a favor if they decided to kill themselves) - for a further read, look up "religion," but it somehow enhances them. These "traditions" somehow make them stronger. We tried with ourselves and ended up stopping after 222 (translator's note: units of measure are translated into respective earthly counterparts, approximately) minutes - it was unbearable. It was illogical. Yet, groups with "traditions" last longer than groups without. It is illogical. They have fewer resources, fewer opportunities. It is stupid. It somehow works. Their organization is horrible - because of them being individuals also. They can cooperate in small groups, not in big groups. Many disasters have been caused in large groups - when humans go somewhere, there is a possibility that they will end up trampling themselves to death. Their competition with other creatures caused them to develop "panic." This "panic" makes organization worse - they become completely individual, some abandon their offspring. "Panic" is temporary though - only 37 minutes at most. Panic is irrational - it is the result of evolution. Evolution is fast at gaining features (limbs) but slow at losing them - losing is not necessary to being the best. We tried inducing stress (long, weak panic) to humans to debilitate them - they got used to it. It is a feature of humans - they get used to everything. It is not a result of evolution. Where did this come from?
Their organization is illogical, their languages are stupid. Yes, languages, not language. They have more than 6912 languages. It is stupid. They are stupid. No humans speak all languages, we cannot learn their languages. We tried - too complicated. It is illogical - as with all things human, this is also good for them and bad for us. We cannot "crack their code" (one of the phrases used by humans, do you see how stupid the phrase is - it does not mean anything). They can learn our language easily - the only thing hard is to learn all words. They spend the first 2 "years" (360-degree rotation of Earth around the Sun) of life learning basic language and 10 years to learn advanced language. They have to learn words! More than 5184 to understand well!!! They do not inherit, they learn. Do you see how dangerous that is?
We tried exploiting tradition - many die for tradition, even before breeding. It didn't work - tradition must be made by humans. Humans put themselves into groups - smaller and smaller. Humanity - the biggest group, society, state (the most illogical group), city, then many small organizations, smallest group - "family." "Family" is a modern human group - it did not exist in the past - maybe that is why this failed. It is a human with XX chromosomes, and XY chromosomes (chromosomes affect "gender" of human, 2 types - "male", "female", male breeds with female which carries offspring) which raise offspring. This offspring is their own and they show great care to protect it, even die for it. We tried replacing offspring with ours - it did not work. It is not """their""" offspring - even if XX birthed it - it is illogical. Very negative reaction - fewer cooperators. We "apologized" (admit we are wrong to them, we are not wrong). Why is offspring not theirs if it shares both their genes and ours?
They invent fast, even if they don't need it to survive. Cooperators describe it as being "lazy" (Sharashi are not entirely sure what this means, closest meaning is being more individual, it is negative). They do not want to "plow the fields" (organisms in the ground which they then "eat" - "eating" is necessary to survive) - it requires effort - they invent combine to "plow the fields" for them. We are fast at inventing - we invent extensions (translator's note: the Sharashi are known for modifying their own minds and bodies - they themselves are the machines they invent) - but extensions are not sufficient - they can only go so far. Humans invent things by accident, it is illogical, it works. Humans invent things faster during a crisis (war) - illogical, stress strengthens. It is illogical, it works. Purpose in life is to breed, not work. But (translator's note: Sharashi rarely ever use the word but or however) then what do they do in time not spent doing necessary things?
Humans have "entertainment" - things to do during free time. Not while recharging (translator's note: no one is entirely sure what recharge actually means in the Sharashi language, most likely sleep, but could be relaxing, thinking, etc.). There are many types of entertainment - visual (look up eyes), reactionary physical and not physical (translator's note: sports, video games, quizzes, etc.), auditory (look up ears) - we tried auditory (translator's note: music, but also refers to stories - the writer Sharashi refers to music here), seemed the easiest. Many sounds jumbled (translator's note: pejorative term) together - it did not work. Humans did not "like." We asked why - "Because it sounds like nails against the board." We do not know how auditory entertainment works, no human knows how auditory entertainment works, we produce 1 "good" auditory entertainment per 20735 "bad" auditory entertainments. We do not know enough about humanity to produce visual entertainment - we tried reactionary physical entertainment (translator's note: from this point forward, reactionary physical entertainment shall be referred to as sports). Some humans are better, some not. Humans like sports in teams - not individual. They love (big like) to learn, they love teams, they love competition - they love sports. We invented sports - they do not like - "Too complex." We invented simple sports - they still do not like - "Too complex." We invented primitive sports - they love. Humans like kicking the ball precisely, humans like violence (damaging other humans - they mostly heal). We invented a sport with a bouncy ball you kick precisely into humans (translator's note: dankurk, loved playing that as a child). Why do humans like this?
Question: Why appease humans? We do not like humans (translator's note: it means the Sharashi don't care). Yet, we cooperate. Why? We fear humans. Humans are faulty (translator's note: somewhat crazy, in Sharashi language it means a damaged unit), they can release all weapons at we at any moment. We fear the weapons. They are very good at creating weapons, very very good. We cannot remove contact, they would release weapons. We cannot escape, they would release weapons. What can we do? Make weapons? We did not create weapons - not necessary, now that it is necessary - we cannot create weapons - humans would release weapons. We live and hope that humans are less faulty than we know.
Humans are strong through weakness, fast through inefficiency. It is illogical, it is stupid, it is genius (translator's note: highest admiration). Somehow, it works.
That concludes the explanation.

This isn’t my story.
It’s Isaac's. Isaac was found dead in his living room on the 21st of April 2019. His death was ruled a suicide, but the state they found his body in told me and everyone else who saw it otherwise.
Isaac was smart, in every sense of the word. He was practically fluent in Python by the time he was 12 and managing a website our friend group would make shitty videos on at 14. The guy was naturally charismatic almost to a fault, he had this way with words where he could so easily talk his way into making you do exactly what he wanted which was more often than not, not what was best for him. he had this weird talent of always knowing exactly what you needed to hear and when you needed to hear it.
But there’s another side to Isaac though, the side you don’t talk about at funerals. To put it bluntly the idiotic side, Isaac was arrogant as hell. That natural intelligence he had made it so If he had his mind set on something there was no way of changing it. Which made him a nightmare at pub quizzes and incredibly hard to talk out of bad choices. Like the time he broke his collarbone when he was 15 whilst trying to hit the adequately named “ass smasher” jump at our local mountain biking range. Or the time he broke his collarbone for a second time on the same jump only 6 months later because he clearly had something to prove.
Even though Isaac could be a bit of a moron sometimes, he was still my best mate.
At Least he used to be. The last time we spoke was in 2017, we didn’t just stop being friends out of nowhere people change and our wants in life started to differ. It also didn’t help that he had started dating my ex-girlfriend Alice and even at the ever so mature age of 22 the sight of the pair repulsed me. So we went our separate ways for me that meant backpacking through East Asia and for him and Alice it meant moving to the supposedly up-and-coming city of Cardiff.
I got a call from Alice about an hour after Isaac’s body had been found. Devastated is too light of a word to describe how she sounded. It took her about 5 minutes of pure uncontrollable sobbing to even muster the words.
“Isaacs dead”
Those two little words hit me like a truck, even though it had been years since we had last spoken my mind flashed to the kid I used to know mangled under the wheel of a drunk driver; the wannabe Steve Jobs I grew up with collapsed in his living room on a quiet Sunday morning; my old partner in crime bleeding out in a mugging gone wrong. Part of me wishes it was that simple, part of me wishes he had died like so many others in an unremarkable and unfortunately common way. Maybe if he had I wouldn’t have spent the last 5 years relieving someone else's last days alive.
Which brings me to why I’m posting here. I got a flight to Cardiff a few hours after Alice called and was there to stay with her throughout the remaining evening. A few days after I arrived Myself and Alice began clearing out Isaac’s house. He and Alice had broken up two months prior which is what led him to move to the musty shit hole he called home.
Most of the day was spent in a depressing cycle: Alice picks up one of Isaac's belongings; an old hoodie or his sticker-covered rolling tray, stares silently at it, then collapses in tears and I would then rush over to console her. We got to about round 4 of this depressing routine until I finally gave in and sent her home and packed the rest of Isaac's stuff alone. It was only an hour after Alice left when I finally made my way to the last room in the house, Isaac’s room.
The room was frozen at the exact moment Isaac had died. Although I don’t remember every detail from that bizarrely warm April evening I still remember exactly how I felt. I was in this weird fugue state like my mind couldn’t comprehend what was happening but my body could. I walked in, mindlessly putting Isaac's stuff in boxes amidst the pungent sea of week-old half-eaten take-out orders and the piles of dirty clothes. At one point, I’m not sure when Alice called to check in on me.
Her words rung hollow, but I can’t blame her. I still can’t imagine how she felt. The false responsibility for her late ex-boyfriend’s so-called suicide she must have felt burdened with. I still truly admire her for being able to push through.
Our conversation was short but during this brief break from sorting through Isaac’s stash of useless techie crap, he had an affinity for collecting. I caught myself snapping out of my routine and noticing an out-of-place weathered black notebook with a golden spine amongst Isaac’s many compendiums of graphic novels.
It was Isaac’s diary. My obsession for the last 5 years. My reasoning for writing this post.
What will follow is Isaac's diary beginning with his first entry once he had moved out of his and Alice's flat up until his final entries that were written seemingly hours before he had died. I’m showing you all this as everywhere and everyone I've turned to has dismissed it as the last shreds of sanity of a deeply ill man. But I know it’s more than that.
So I’m uploading here hoping that maybe there’s something one of you might have noticed that I didn’t. I need closure, not just for my friend's death but I need some kind of way of stopping this ceaseless nightmare of reading and re-reading and re-reading his writing over and over and over.
For the sake of honesty, I will be copying the diary word for word however some areas may need clarification so I will interrupt where needed. I will also need to remove and change certain elements to ensure our privacy. Aside from that it is all accurate to how he wrote it. In addition to the actual diary there were numerous other scraps of paper slid into the pages of the book so I will attach them when they come up.
Without further ado here it is, Isaac's last days alive, written by the man himself.
31st of January 2019
Fuck that bitch Alice and the high horse she rode in on. I should’ve fucking known she was gonna kicked me to the streets for some little prick big money publisher. Whore.
Finally found an affordable place to stay at, it’s this tiny bungalow, super musty and overgrown, vines or ivy or whatever you call it growing up the wall. The garden is a jungle, everything is overgrown and I don’t think the lawns have been mowed since the place was built. There's also a side alley that's locked with a keypad I don’t have the code to. I can’t complain though, the rent is super cheap and they begged me to stay here as the previous prospective tenant dropped out last minute.
Another thing is that the entire village feels like it's stuck in the past I don’t think I’ve seen a single house that doesn’t look like it was built in the 14th century, there's no tescos or corner shop, shit the closest thing to a grocery store is this weird off-license just called “market”. It’s all just practically identical houses being taken over by the surrounding foliage. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a city my whole life but it’s just odd to me that there isn’t a single remotely new-looking place. Don’t get me wrong, it's kinda pleasant but not what I was expecting.
Oscar (1) bought some groceries and helped me unpack, which was nice of him. I think he feels bad for how involved he got with everything.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to report. I'm gonna unpack the last of my stuff and set up the PC tomorrow so I can hopefully get some work done.
3rd of March 2019
Got a terrible cold. My nose is running like a tap, I’ve got a killer headache and I can’t smell shit. I’ve been living off a diet of paracetamol, super noodles, and hot squash (2). Oscar Invited me over. I declined as I can’t do much other than sleep or respond to emails. My sleep schedule has also been completely fucked as for the last few nights there's this loud droning noise coming from outside so I’ve mostly been sleeping during the day.
I’ve been getting these vouchers from this place called Cafe Pech nonstop, they're so oddly written like they’ve been ran through Google Translate 80 times, maybe I’ll try them out if I get desperate.
Rewatched the E3 trailer for Cyber Punk, I’m so fucking hyped. It’s gonna be sick, cannot fucking wait, after Witcher 3 CD project red could shit on a plate and I’d eat it.
Speaking of eating, I’m running out of the food Oscar bought so I’ll need to pick up some groceries soon
Nothing else to report, pay day tomorrow tho.
7th of March 2019
Finally picked up some groceries from that market place yesterday, weirdly enough it is an actual grocery store.
I only picked up a few bits I knew I could cook whilst still having this cold. Pot noodles and fish fingers I did buy some chicken to make soup with but when I realized it was rancid, not expired just gross as fuck. I guess I didn’t smell it with my blocked nose. Just annoying. That noise that happens at night is a little quieter I guess.
Y’know what I’ve realized whilst I was driving, I haven’t seen a single person in the village, it’s empty. I haven’t seen a dog walker, a kid at the park, no one putting out their rubbish and I haven't even seen the postman. I just magically receive all my mail every morning alongside even more of those pech vouchers including Amazon stuff.
Maybe it’s because I haven’t been out of the house that much but it’s just eerie like everyone just left right as I arrived. My headache has cleared up a little bit so when I’m feeling a little less under the weather I’m gonna have a properly get to know the place.
9th of March 2019
I feel like absolute shit, I’ve been in bed for the entire day. Every symptom I have has somehow gotten worse. I’ve been getting zero sleep and the noise still hasn’t stopped. I might order from that pech place tonight as I can’t see myself making anything to eat, besides I'll be practically eating for free with all the vouchers I have.
14th of March 2019
Forgot to write here for the last few days but I’ve honestly been feeling better and just getting stuff done. It probably helped that the noise has gotten a lot quiter.
That pech place was really good mostly just sandwiches and pastries but it filled a hole. What’s weird is I don’t remember giving them my address but I was probably too groggy to even remember. Honestly, everything from the 7th to the 9th few days was a blur. I only really remember sleeping a lot and eating from pech.
Probably gonna order from them again tonight. It was really good.
Haven’t seen anyone yet. I'm gonna try and introduce myself to my neighbors if I can find them.
15th of March 2019
I still haven’t seen anyone, it’s getting weird. I went next door to introduce myself today, but no one answered so I went to the next house and no one answered there either. I knocked on about 15 doors in total and NONE OF THEM ANSWERED. I’m confident that's not normal. I feel like I’m going insane. What's even stranger is that I looked through a few of the windows in one of the houses and from what I could see there were signs that people lived there or at least used to. The living room was furnished, there was a suitcase and even dirty dishes on the counter it kinda looked like they had just run off.
I’m seeing Oscar next week and I’m planning on telling him about the whole situation. Maybe he can make sense of this. I ate from Pech again and they didn’t even ask for the serial code this time they just took my order and then hung up.
17th of march 2019
Not seen anyone yet, and can't stop thinking about Pech. It's so good. Been getting a lot more sleep due the fact that the droning noise has stopped all together.
Decided to start clearing up the garden to get my mind off things. Mostly de-weeding, still annoying that the side of the house is locked which means I have to carry all rubbish bags filled with weeds through the house to the bins out front. I also noticed that there’s a lock on both sides of the back door meaning you can unlock on both sides. I guess it’s for the best that no one can get through the sides.
Think I’ll order Pech again.
20th of March 2019
Fuck. This. Shit.
So I went on a walk last night to clear my head, work has been stressing me out and I needed to clear my head. I left a little before the sun was setting and just wandered the streets of the village. I got to the park, had a smoke, and then started walking back. To noneones surprise, I didn’t see anyone the entire time I was walking.
But that's not what's messing with me. As I was walking home (about 500 meters from my house) all of the lights in all of the houses turned on for 2 seconds. Then they all just switched off like nothing happened. All except one, the one opposite me. It’s been a day and the entire time their lights have been on.
There are two things I didn’t notice when doing my rounds last night. Firstly the blinds are drawn which is insane as surely whoever used to live there or still does has something to hide and secondly it’s the only house that has astro turf. I know that sounds insignificant but for the only house in a village of near identical old cottages and bungalows to have something as modern as astroturf is insane to me.
I’m seeing Oscar on friday so I’m hoping he can help me with what I should do next.

1. Alice and Isaac had a shared friend group, most of which took Alice's side when they broke up aside from Oscar. I met him at the funeral and for the funeral, he was pretty friendly.
2. Squash is a British fruit drink that is often served either cold during the summer or boiling hot as a remedy for congestion.

This feels surreal, I didn't think I would encounter people like this man but it just happened today! English is my second language to I do apologize for any grammar or spelling errors.
I like the new X-Men 97 series, I watch it with my older brothers. I've taken a liking to Gambit and decided to order an action figure of him online for pick up to add to my collection. The store I ordered him from prioritizes online orders (a lot like GameStop).
I stopped by today to pick it up, and immediately as I enter I hear a man (late 30s to early 40s?) gasp and talk loudly. He said something among the lines of "What do you mean you're all sold out??". By the time I go to the counter the dude is pacing around anxiously, looking exasperated. I don't pay mind to him and tell the store employee I had a pick up order. The employee hands it to me, and says "This is our last one before our next shipment!". I guess this statement got the man's attention, because he whipped his head around and stared at the figure in my hands.
He turns to the employee and says "You told me you were all sold out!". The employee tries to explain to him that online orders take priority and I had gotten to it first; but told him not to worry since they will be getting another shipment later on. I am standing there awkwardly between them, unsure what to say. The man then gestures to me and asks if they're really gonna let someone like me keep it. When he said that, I got really pissed, to the point I was just speechless. He stands in front of me and tries quizzing me on X-Men knowledge, but I stay silent. He scoffed and muttered "women" under his breathHe then gives me the "woe is me" speech; ranting on how I didn't grow up with X-Men and they helped him through hard times, and eBay resellers were selling the figure for 3x it's original price. He was insistent he should have it.
Eventually the employee has enough of his tomfoolery and asked him to leave because that behavior isn't tolerated here. The guy does leave, but not before turning to me and yelling "You're everything that's wrong with this world". I did not say a SINGLE word during our whole interaction. I'm honestly still shocked. I understand it wasn't a big deal, he was just a sexist prick but it was my first time ever encountering someone like him.

Pretty cringe ik, but here is my advice on how to approach Math 1131 if you have only done standard maths in the HSC. I did standard maths and managed to get 80+, however there were many times before starting the course and during the course where I felt like dropping it and not pursuing my degree in comp sci and to just do commerce. I think a lot of people would be in a similar boat to me, as UNSW makes it clear that standard maths students won't be able to do the course unless they complete a year's worth of bridging courses. Well, this is simply not true and if this course has made you consider re-evaluating what you want to pursue, don't feel like an idiot because that was me too. (So don't flame me as a sweat, just trying to encourage someone who was in my position)
If you are an incoming student and haven't done any preparation, I'd consider doing it in the term following as this will give you enough time to prepare on the side (or use the summer holidays like I did). Alternatively, you could just be an animal and rawdog it.
To prepare, here is what I did and what I'd do again. Go on Khan Academy and create an account to track your progress. If you are anything like me, I didn't know what a quadratic was or how to properly factorize, so I'd recommend completing the following 'courses' in this order.

• Algebra 1/2
• Trigonometry (even though you did this in standard maths - it is not enough of a baseline)
• Precalculus (Units 1,2,3,6,7)
• College AP/BC Calculus

You don't have to do them all to 100% proficiency every single time, but this will get you to the baseline of an advanced math student within 100 hours maximum. I'd take notes while watching all the tutorials etc, even though I didn't refer to them much, it was great in consolidating my understanding.
https://www.khanacademy.org/
The second thing I'd do is leading up to the course is to complete these revision sheets set out by UNSW. Now, don't get wigged out if you can't do them first try, I couldn't either. You've just learned this content.
https://www.unsw.edu.au/science/our-schools/maths/student-life-resources/student-services/mathematics-drop-in-centre/revision-worksheets
Now, onto the actual course itself, you will get the course material about a week before, don't get wigged out by the course pack - it seems like a lot but its not as bad as you think.
To understand the content here's what I'd do (and did do).

• Only watch Milhan Pahors lecture stream.
  • I didn't watch a single other lecture apart from this - they are online and are brilliant. He works through the problems, shows you where the traps are and how to approach them.
  • Also don't feel stupid for rewatching parts of the lecture either - nobody gets it first go.
• Go to the maths drop in center once a week.
  • They are both online and in person & are great for asking questions / reinforcing your knowledge.
• Chatgpt 4o just came out.
  • It's ability to solve maths problems is fantastic and can solve probably about 80-90% of course material. Use this to obtain worked solutions to problems since they don't give you worked solutions and also use it as a private tutor.

Finally, here's how to actually pass the course and even do well in it. The course is lobsided, you want to get a pre-exam mark 45+/50 because the final is near impossible to do. 40/50 is in line with a pass (for extension/advanced math students who didn't initially take the course seriously and can clutch it in the final - not you) so you want to score near perfect on everything.
Mobius:
These are weekly quizzes that are approximately 10%, you are able to check your answers before submitting with a week long time limit. You can easily get 100% on this.
Lab Test 1:
This is a lab test where you will get the practice questions that will be exactly the same. They just change the numbers around. So you can practice until you are basically automatic.
One thing to note - for this lab test you will only get access to a Kcalc, which is a terrible calculator and I'd go into a labroom maybe when you are in uni before the exam and try it out. You'll basically do this test completely manually/ in your head (so take that into consideration & don't get caught lacking as a lot of people underperform in this lab ). You want to aim for full marks and its not hard to do, you just memorise how to do it.
For lab test 1/2 - UNSW mathsoc discord posts worked solutions a week prior aswell & their page gives previous years worked solutions if you want a head start.
https://www.unswmathsoc.org/resources/exam-bank
Lab Test 2:
This lab test uses maple, which is great for us because it does the manual computations/calculations for us. Once again, find the worked solutions, make a cheat sheet and memorise the lab test answers. Worth 15%.
Assignment:
This is worth 10%, about 2% comes from answering questions on the mobius which you can review to see if you are correct (so its guaranteed). Then you are to write a paper on proving those answers. It's broken up into two parts, algebra and calculus. It turns out for the Algebra section they recycle the same questions every year, so go onto studocu and just get an exemplar response. For this aswell, make sure you do all the formatting correctly.
https://www.studocu.com/en-au/course/university-of-new-south-wales/mathematics-1a/1537137?origin=document-viewer
Final Exam:
If you type in Math1131 on this subreddit, you'll quickly be able to tell this exam is pretty challenging. The sheer amount of complaining about this exam has made it become somewhat of a meme - kinda why I'm hoping this post doesn't get torn to shreds.

• The Final exam is 60% seen questions from a 200 question exam bank (they only select about 8 questions). So it is a ton of questions to get ur head around and then try memorise.
  • These questions are also really difficult - which is why a lot of people absolutely wig their shit before the final. It is a huge jump from the labs so I'd get onto them as early as possible.
• They give you worked solutions via video sessions (approximately 15-25 hours of worked solutions).

So, you have to hedge your bets, what I did was make a document where I screenshotted solutions, or made a cheat sheet on how to do them. This took me a fucking minute and I didn't do all the questions - only the ones where I could actually replicate it in an exam. Once you've done that, just repeatedly do the past papers.
If you do all this - you should get somewhere between 10-25/60, I reckon. Since you've actually watched a lot of the practice questions - you'll find the unseen questions are somewhat similar and you can do parts of them.
So to recap - don't be discouraged by this propaganda set out by the engineering/maths/comp sci departments about the course. If you are anything like me, chances are you've done well to get to a position to do your course and know how to work systematically. If you do this, you not only can pass, but actually do well.
Once you get over this hurdle, all other maths at uni will be the same difficulty to you as it is to your peers. You'll have to spend a lot of time on this subject, but I still went partying during the term etc - wasn't just some incel. So, hopefully this will encourage you to give it a red hot crack.

Wanted to share my experience doing crash course studying for 7 days and passing the SIE first attempt! I never post anything on here, but others posts made a big difference for me, so here goes!
TL;DR:
I passed my SIE yesterday after only 7 days of study. Intense! I used Pass Perfect, spent over 50 hours studying total. If you only have a week or two before your test, DO NOT take a bunch of notes on everything! Read the content, take the quizzes and test, take notes on those answers and explanations!
VERY IMPORTANT: Use the two free Achievable SIE dump Sheets and watch both the S7 Guru & S7 Whisperer 60 min crash course SIE YouTube videos the day before or day of test! I’ve included links at the bottom of this post. Be sure to memorize the dump sheet tricks and formulas, and decide what’s most important to reference. The test center gives you two laminated sheets and dry erase markers you can use as soon as the test timer starts. Be ready to write down key formulas, acronyms, timeframes, etc. Mine were the Options Matrix, SLoBS & BLiSS, yield teeter totter, settlement times, and Key Open vs Closed end market notes. (All on the achievable dump sheets except Open/Closed Markets).
My Story:
In late April I was hired by major firm for a position starting May 28. I’d been a contractor doing customer service in an unlicensed position for about 10 months (no finance background before that); with the goal of getting hired in a licensed, permanent role within a year. I worked hard and got hired! The position requires SIE, S7 and S63. After my start date they pay me to do nothing but study and take exams for 9 or 13 weeks (depending on whether I’d passed the SIE prior to start date), which is awesome, but there’s a large bonus if the SIE is passed at least a week before start date.
Note: I did have a little familiarity with basic terms and what’s required for account opening, due to my contractor position).
I originally scheduled my exam for May 13. I had about a month from hire date to May 13, and my employer paid for the Pass Perfect course. I started some light studying the first week, thinking I had 3 more weeks and was on track. Then I got really sick for 2 weeks! I’m talking bed ridden, definitely no studying. So May 10 I rescheduled my exam to May 18! I had to pay $40 but figured it was well worth it not to fail, lol.
I was finally well enough to start studying on May 11, giving me 7 days. 😅 I had retained very little from my initial studying so I started over. I thought “I can do this!” I figured I’d had to do similar in college while working full time. Boy it was rough!
7 Days to PASS the SIE:
The first 3 days I had all day to study: Sat, Sun and Mon (had the day off for my original test date).
THE PLAN 45+ hours 5 practice tests, scoring at least 75%
Days 1-3 (full days) - 8+ hrs per day - Complete Pass Perfect Course (16 chapters) start to finish (reading and all quizzes, chapter tests)
Days 4-5 (Tues, Wed) - 5 hrs each day (2 before work and 3 after) - Take 1-2 Pass Perfect Final exams (1 hr 45 min each) each day, taking time to focus/take notes on anything I missed - Goal of 4 total tests, with 75% average
Day 6 (Thurs) - 5 hours - Take as many practice tests as possible, reviewing all answers, 75% average
Day 7 (Friday, day before the test) - 5 hours (2 hrs before work, 3 hours after) - Take 1 FINRA practice SIE exam before work (free on FINRA website) - after work, Review all Difficult Topics - Listen to S7 Guru & S7 whisperer on YouTube. (They each have a 60 minute crash course review, recommended for day before or day of test). - Print out Achievable Dump Sheets - Add my own notes to dump sheets - Review all notes and Dump Sheets, memorize charts and formulas
Day 8 (Sat, Day of Test) Test scheduled for 2pm (1:30 registration) - 2 hours Notes and Dump Sheets Review in morning - Leave for Test at 11:30, arrive 12:30 (45 min drive) - One last Review of Dump Sheets & Notes for 45 min, take a break before registration
Great Plan Right?! Wellll, I didn’t quite stick to it. 🤣
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: 50+ Hours Study - Not at the planned pace! 4 Practice Finals (71% average) A lot of tears, anxiety and stress!😫 A rollercoaster of Self-doubt and Self-Confidence
Day 1 (Sat): 7 hrs Completed first 3 chapters, taking tons of notes on a Google doc, color coded and highlighted. I’ll do more tomorrow I thought, my brain is fried
Day 2 (Sun): 10 hours Completed chapters 4&5 again taking tons (too many) notes, taking quizzes and Tests multiple times, worried I wasn’t getting the concepts and terms well enough. Getting really worried about my pace now, but “hey I have tomorrow. I’ll crush it and catch up”. Maybe I won’t get to tests until Thurs, but I’ll be okay..
Day 3 (Mon): 7 hrs (I was exhausted and burnt out, still not 100% from being sick) Chapter 6 OPTIONS… the death of me, soooo much to learn. Barely got through chapter 6. Full panic has now set in! I have to work full time the next 4 days! If the rest of the course is this hard, I’m screwed. There goes my bonus, how will I tell my husband? (He would not have been mad but I would feel terrible). “Children and husband, do not bother me! I need to focus!” 😅
Day 4 (Tues): 6 hrs ( 6pm-12am) Intense panic and anxiety, how the hell am I going to finish?! Screw notes, get through the chapters! Completed chapters 7-10 Whew, these chapters weren’t as bad, maybe it’s getting easier. I think I remember a good amount. Better wrap this up tomorrow!
Day 5 (Wed): 5 hrs Very worried, but I’ll finish today and take lots of tests the next 2 days! Completed chapters 11-13 😫 OMG I’m still not done with the course and I have 2 days left! I must sleep.
Day 6 (Thurs): 6 hrs in the evening - Completed remaining chapters 14-16, course done 8pm. Whew, content done. Worried about not taking any tests yet, but at least I feel like I know the content decently! Took my first Pass Perfect Test, score 71% not as bad as I thought but that’s not a lot of margin for error! (Need 70% to Pass actual SIE test). At that point I’m calculating how much each point is worth, looking up suggestions online and praying, lol 🙏
Day 7 (Fri): 7 hrs Took 2 Pass Perfect tests, reviewed missed answers carefully and took notes. Scores: 71% and 73%. Took FINRA SIE test (on their website), 69%. Omg I’m gonna fail tomorrow. 🥺
Friday night I thought “Hmm Maybe I can reschedule for Monday (the deadline to pass for bonus). Two more days and I will be ready!” So I go to the Prometrics website and try to reschedule, seeing one slot for Monday at a site 2 hrs away… awesome.. NOPE, NOT ALLOWED less than 3 days before scheduled exam! (Why did I not think of this Tuesday?) 🙄 So I called customer service, begged and told them I had been sick.. Since they said I could not reschedule the day before the test, I asked if they could cancel it and schedule a new appt for Monday? DENIED. So I took a deep breath, cried a little and came to terms with it. This test is happening, tomorrow. 😫 🤬
Friday night 9pm: As recommended by colleagues and online forums, I listen to S7 whisperer 60 min crash course on YouTube; no notes, listening in bed). Ok, learned some things, great overview/review. Maybe I can pull this off afterall. 🤔 Things are looking up. 😊
Saturday, May 18… Day of Test (2-4pm)
7am woke up, ate a good breakfast, prepared everything I needed to take and do. Now what? Should I take another practice test? Review my notes? Listen to video? I decided no more tests, I’ll listen to the other crash course (S7 Guru 60 min crash course on YouTube). 🤞
8am—11:30 Crunch time. Im determined to pass this exam!! Spent 3 hours listening to the 60 min S7 Guru video, pausing when needed, replaying as needed. Took 11 pages of color coded notes on the most important points and formulas I needed to remember, mainly on Regulations (what market does it impact, what type of product, who, timeframes). I knew this was going to be at least 15% of test (I was right) and these were the main questions I missed on my Practice Finals
11:30am Renewed Faith 🙌 DAMN I learned a LOT. I’m gonna pass this thing! I was already getting low 70s on Thursday practice tests and I KNOW I learned enough from the video to pass several more questions. S7 Guru literally saved me, pulling it all together in my mind! 🤯
12pm Went to UPS store, printed the 2 Achievable dump sheets and my 11 pages of notes from the video! I scanned them at every red light on the way 😂
12:59 arrived at test center. Spent 20 minutes reviewing dump sheets and drilling in my mind what to put on the 2 pages they give me for notes (specifically below and in links)
1:20 walk in, first one there.. registration complete at 1:35. To my surprise, they seat me and I can start test immediately!
As soon as the timer started my hands were flying on the 2 laminated sheets they gave me. I spent the first 15 min vigorously writing out things I wanted to reference. 90 minutes left for 85 questions. Watched the timer closely to stay on pace. Used the notepad on the test platform for each question to write out calculations, or break down what each part of the question meant, used critical thinking for answer, marking questions for review when I was stuck between 2 answers. Most importantly, I followed my gut. I knew this stuff! Used calculator for EVERY calculation, even easy ones. Finished all questions with 5 minutes remaining. Reviewed marked questions and changed only 3, if I was SURE my original answer was wrong.
I hit submit and held my breath. 🫢 OMG, does that say PASS?!!! Yes, I actually Passed! 😳 I cried out of happiness and relief, was on cloud 9. I will never cram like this again! S7 and S63 will be better, lol.
SO here’s how you can have a better experience than me if you’re a week or two away and wondering how you can possibly pull this off. YOU CAN DO IT! 💪
TIPS FOR CRASH SIE STUDYING (learn from my mistakes)
1 NOTE TAKING: I’ve always learned best by taking a ton of notes, color coded on a google doc. Taking notes reinforces it in my brain and helps me find ways to remember it for myself. However, if you are crash course Studying for the SIE, you do NOT have time to do this, lol. Honestly I barely looked at those notes in the end.
TIP: Read through the content quickly and only take notes when it tells you it’s likely a testable question! Take all quizzes and tests, REVIEW the quiz/test answers (in PP the answers also give you a brief explanation of the concept) and take light notes on that! Do NOT replace reading with the videos! The first 4 chapters I tried to save time doing this and wondered why I was failing the chapter tests. The reading content had way more info than the video! Don’t shoot yourself in the foot!
2 DON’T SPEND TOO MUCH TIME on EARLY CONCEPTS! The earlier (and for the most part, less valuable - less test questions) content will be reinforced throughout course. Most of the concepts build over the course, so the basics are reinforced later anyway. I wasted several hours!
3 EXPECT 20-25 hours are needed to complete the course/learn the concepts! Give yourself a day on REGULATIONS and 5 hours on OPTIONS , these comprised a LOT of questions on the test, could make or break you!
4 TAKE at least 4 PRACTICE FINALS with a goal of 75%, but if you’re not improving, use the crash course Videos, learn the content! Don’t take 5 more tests in lieu of learning!
5 SPEND A FEW HOURS on (free) ACHIEVABLE DUMP SHEETS and S7 Guru & S7 Whisperer crash course review videos on YouTube! I would not have passed without these! Reviewing them for 4 hours and using them for key points on my tests sheets saved my ass!
I’ve included links below for the FREE Achievable Dump Sheets and the 60 minute crash course videos. Feel free to message me for more help!
GOOD LUCK! It IS Possible to pass in a week! 🍀
SIE DUMP SHEETS: (scroll to bottom of the page, there are links to download them):
https://achievable.me/exams/finra-sie/overview/#resources
S7 Guru 60 min crash course
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hQRLmVspNE
S7 Whisperer 60 min crash course
https://youtu.be/_-x-RFmFAD0?si=i_ZDrrFIWuMOTK6A

Wanted to share my experience doing crash course studying for 7 days and passing the SIE first attempt! I never post anything on here, but others posts made a big difference for me, so here goes!
TL;DR:
I passed my SIE yesterday after only 7 days of study. Intense! I used Pass Perfect, spent 50 hours studying total. If you only have a week or two before your test, DO NOT take a bunch of notes on everything! Read the content, take the quizzes and test, take notes on those answers and explanations!
VERY IMPORTANT: Use the two free Achievable SIE dump Sheets and watch both the S7g.u.r.u and S7 Whisperer 60 min crash course SIE YouTube videos the day before or day of test! I’ve included links at the bottom of this post. Be sure to memorize the dump sheet tricks and formulas, and decide what’s most important to reference. The test center gives you two laminated sheets and dry erase markers you can use as soon as the test timer starts. Be ready to write down key formulas, acronyms, timeframes, etc. Mine were the Options Matrix, SLoBS & BLiSS, yield teeter totter, settlement times, and Key Open vs Closed end market notes. (All on the achievable dump sheets except Open/Closed Markets).
My Story:
In late April I was hired by major firm for a position starting May 28. I’d been a contractor doing customer service in an unlicensed position for about 10 months (no finance background before that); with the goal of getting hired in a licensed, permanent role within a year. I worked hard and got hired! The position requires SIE, S7 and S63. After my start date they pay me to do nothing but study and take exams for 9 or 13 weeks (depending on whether I’d passed the SIE prior to start date), which is awesome, but there’s a large bonus if the SIE is passed at least a week before start date.
Note: I did have a little familiarity with basic terms and what’s required for account opening, due to my contractor position).
I originally scheduled my exam for May 13. I had about a month from hire date to May 13, and my employer paid for the Pass Perfect course. I started some light studying the first week, thinking I had 3 more weeks and was on track. Then I got really sick for 2 weeks! I’m talking bed ridden, definitely no studying. So May 10 I rescheduled my exam to May 18! I had to pay $40 but figured it was well worth it not to fail, lol.
I was finally well enough to start studying on May 11, giving me 7 days. 😅 I had retained very little from my initial studying so I started over. I thought “I can do this!” I figured I’d had to do similar in college while working full time. Boy it was rough!
7 Days to PASS the SIE:
The first 3 days I had all day to study: Sat, Sun and Mon (had the day off for my original test date).
THE PLAN 41+ hours 5 practice tests, scoring at least 75%
Days 1-3 (full days) - 8+ hrs per day - Complete Pass Perfect Course (16 chapters) start to finish (reading and all quizzes, chapter tests)
Days 4-5 (Tues, Wed) - 5 hrs each day (2 before work and 3 after) - Take 1-2 Pass Perfect Final exams (1 hr 45 min each) each day, taking time to focus/take notes on anything I missed - Goal of 4 total tests, with 75% or higher on 3
Day 6 (Friday, day before the test) - 5 hours (2 hrs before work, 3 hours after) - Take 1 FINRA practice SIE exam before work (free on FINRA website) - after work, Review all Difficult Topics - Listen to S7g.u.r.u & S7 whisperer on YouTube. (They each have a 60 minute crash course review, recommended for day before or day of test). - Print out Achievable Dump Sheets - add my own notes to dump sheets
Day 7 (Day of Test) Test scheduled for 2pm (1:30 registration) - 2 hours Notes and Dump Sheets Review in morning - Leave for Test at 11:30, arrive 12:30 (45 min drive) - One last Review of Dump Sheets for 45 min, take a break before registration
Great Plan Right?! Wellll, I didn’t quite stick to it. 🤣
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: 52 Hours Study - Not at the planned pace! 4 Practice Finals (71% average) A lot of tears, anxiety and stress!😫 A rollercoaster of Self-doubt and Self-Confidence
Day 1 (Sat): 7 hrs Completed first 3 chapters, taking tons of notes on a Google doc, color coded and highlighted. I’ll do more tomorrow I thought, my brain is fried
Day 2 (Sun): 10 hours Completed chapters 4&5 again taking tons (too many) notes, taking quizzes and Tests multiple times, worried I wasn’t getting the concepts and terms well enough. Getting really worried about my pace now, but “hey I have tomorrow. I’ll crush it and catch up”. Maybe I won’t get to tests until Thurs, but I’ll be okay..
Day 3 (Mon): 7 hrs (I was exhausted and burnt out, still not 100% from being sick) Chapter 6 OPTIONS… the death of me, soooo much to learn. Barely got through chapter 6. Full panic has now set in! I have to work full time the next 4 days! If the rest of the course is this hard, I’m screwed. There goes my bonus, how will I tell my husband? (He would not have been mad but I would feel terrible). “Children and husband, do not bother me! I need to focus!” 😅
Day 4 (Tues): 6 hrs ( 6pm-12am) Intense panic and anxiety, how the hell am I going to finish?! Screw notes, get through the chapters! Completed chapters 7-10 Whew, these chapters weren’t as bad, maybe it’s getting easier. I think I remember a good amount. Better wrap this up tomorrow!
Day 5 (Wed): 5 hrs Very worried, but I’ll finish today and take lots of tests the next 2 days! Completed chapters 11-13 😫 OMG I’m still not done with the course and I have 2 days left! I must sleep.
Day 6 (Thurs): 6 hrs in the evening - Completed remaining chapters 14-16, course done 8pm. Whew, content done. Worried about not taking any tests yet, but at least I feel like I know the content decently! Took my first Pass Perfect Test, score 71% not as bad as I thought but that’s not a lot of margin for error! (Need 70% to Pass actual SIE test). At that point I’m calculating how much each point is worth, looking up suggestions online and praying, lol 🙏
Day 7 (Fri): 7 hrs Took 2 Pass Perfect tests, reviewed missed answers carefully and took notes. Scores: 71% and 73%. Took FINRA SIE test (on their website), 69%. Omg I’m gonna fail tomorrow. 🥺
Friday night I thought “Hmm Maybe I can reschedule for Monday (the deadline to pass for bonus). Two more days and I will be ready!” So I go to the Prometrics website and try to reschedule, seeing one slot for Monday at a site 2 hrs away… awesome.. NOPE, NOT ALLOWED less than 3 days before scheduled exam! (Why did I not think of this Tuesday?) 🙄 So I called customer service, begged and told them I had been sick.. Since they said I could not reschedule the day before the test, I asked if they could cancel it and schedule a new appt for Monday? DENIED. So I took a deep breath, cried a little and came to terms with it. This test is happening, tomorrow. 😫 🤬
Friday night 9pm: As recommended by colleagues and online forums, I listen to S7 whisperer 60 min crash course on YouTube; no notes, listening in bed). Ok, learned some things, great overview/review. Maybe I can pull this off afterall. 🤔 Things are looking up. 😊
Saturday, May 13… Day of Test (2-4pm)
7am woke up, ate a good breakfast, prepared everything I needed to take and do. Now what? Should I take another practice test? Review my notes? Listen to video? I decided no more tests, I’ll listen to the other crash course (S7g.u.r.u 60 min crash course on YouTube). 🤞
8am—11:30 Crunch time. Im determined to pass this exam!! Spent 3 hours listening to the 60 min S7g.u.r.u video, pausing when needed, replaying as needed. Took 11 pages of color coded notes on the most important points and formulas I needed to remember, mainly on Regulations (what market does it impact, what type of product, who, timeframes). I knew this was going to be at least 15% of test (I was right) and these were the main questions I missed on my Practice Finals
11:30am Renewed Faith 🙌 DAMN I learned a LOT. I’m gonna pass this thing! I was already getting low 70s on Thursday practice tests and I KNOW I learned enough from the video to pass several more questions. S7g.u.r.u literally saved me, pulling it all together in my mind! 🤯
12pm Went to UPS store, printed the 2 Achievable dump sheets and my 11 pages of notes from the video! I scanned them at every red light on the way 😂
12:59 arrived at test center. Spent 20 minutes reviewing dump sheets and drilling in my mind what to put on the 2 pages they give me for notes (specifically below and in links)
1:20 walk in, first one there.. registration complete at 1:35. To my surprise, they seat me and I can start test immediately!
As soon as the timer started my hands were flying on the 2 laminated sheets they gave me. I spent the first 15 min vigorously writing out things I wanted to reference. 90 minutes left for 85 questions. Watched the timer closely to stay on pace. Used the notepad on the test platform for each question to write out calculations, or break down what each part of the question meant, used critical thinking for answer, marking questions for review when I was stuck between 2 answers. Most importantly, I followed my gut. I knew this stuff! Used calculator for EVERY calculation, even easy ones. Finished all questions with 5 minutes remaining. Reviewed marked questions and changed only 3, if I was SURE my original answer was wrong.
I hit submit and held my breath. 🫢 OMG, does that say PASS?!!! Yes, I actually Passed! 😳 I cried out of happiness and relief, was on cloud 9. I will never cram like this again! S7 and S63 will be better, lol.
SO here’s how you can have a better experience than me if you’re a week or two away and wondering how you can possibly pull this off. YOU CAN DO IT! 💪
TIPS FOR CRASH SIE STUDYING (learn from my mistakes)
1 NOTE TAKING: I’ve always learned best by taking a ton of notes, color coded on a google doc. Taking notes reinforces it in my brain and helps me find ways to remember it for myself. However, if you are crash course Studying for the SIE, you do NOT have time to do this, lol. Honestly I barely looked at those notes in the end.
TIP: Read through the content quickly and only take notes when it tells you it’s likely a testable question! Take all quizzes and tests, REVIEW the quiz/test answers (in PP the answers also give you a brief explanation of the concept) and take light notes on that! Do NOT replace reading with the videos! The first 4 chapters I tried to save time doing this and wondered why I was failing the chapter tests. The reading content had way more info than the video! Don’t shoot yourself in the foot!
2 DON’T SPEND TOO MUCH TIME on EARLY CONCEPTS! The earlier (and for the most part, less valuable - less test questions) content will be reinforced throughout course. Most of the concepts build over the course, so the basics are reinforced later anyway. I wasted several hours!
3 EXPECT 20-25 hours are needed to complete the course/learn the concepts! Give yourself a day on REGULATIONS and 5 hours on OPTIONS , these comprised a LOT of questions on the test, could make or break you!
4 TAKE at least 4 PRACTICE FINALS with a goal of 75%, but if you’re not improving, use the crash course Videos, learn the content! Don’t take 5 more tests in lieu of learning!
5 SPEND A FEW HOURS on (free) ACHIEVABLE DUMP SHEETS and S7g.u.r.u & S7 Whisperer crash course review videos on YouTube! I would not have passed without these! Reviewing them for 4 hours and using them for key points on my tests sheets saved my ass!
I’ve included links below for the FREE Achievable Dump Sheets and the 60 minute crash course videos. Feel free to message me for more help!
GOOD LUCK! It IS Possible to pass in a week! 🍀
SIE DUMP SHEETS: (scroll to bottom of the page, there are links to download them):
https://achievable.me/exams/finra-sie/overview/#resources
S7g.u.r.u 60 min crash course
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hQRLmVspNE
S7 Whisperer 60 min crash course
https://youtu.be/_-x-RFmFAD0?si=i_ZDrrFIWuMOTK6A

-My husband & I have been together for 8yr. Below is a timeline of my MIL issues starting when we first began dating, to now, several years married.
Before meeting my now-husbands mother, VERY early on in our relationship and before we were even official, his mother requested to follow me on all my social media accounts. I had not met her at the time and found it way too soon & creepy. Even at this point I got the initial feeling she was the type who forces levels of intimacy that she has not made the effort to genuinely attain.
-In the beginning I did make a concerted effort w/ his family. I quickly learned his Mother asks v. intrusive questions. It’s clear her questions aren’t genuine, but for the sole purpose of having ‘intel’. As if it’s ’information gathering’ for her benefit.
-The 2nd time meeting his mother she immediately asked me what year my parents got married. I told her I wasn’t sure & she began asking me if I knew what decade.. followed by questions re: my mom’s birthdate. Then she told me what she really wanted to know was my mom’s age (always an ulterior motive..). She was beyond giddy to discover she was younger than my mom. I told her my mom was slightly older than some of my peers mothers bc she had a daughter (my sister) before I was born who passed away and she had trouble conceiving afterwards. His mom didn’t react or respond to this as she was still so giddy to over the fact she was younger than my mom. Red flag..
-When my husband and I were first dating, he lived in a house w/ several guy friends. He was 26. Whenever we’d visit his family his mom would beg him to move back home so he could save money. I found this odd behavior for a mother wanting their son to grow & flourish as an adult.
-After a year & a half dating we decide to move in together. My future MIL pulls me to the side for a 1 on 1 conversation & tells me, “if things don’t work out, don't worry, there’s always a way to break a lease & get out of living together if things aren’t going well” (..why would things not go well…?). She continues on, quizzing me ab my prior relationships and how they ended. Before reverting back to the topic of me and her son moving in together, basically letting me know she didn’t approve. The conversation leaves me feeling unaccepted, awkward and gross, and I didn’t like how she’d treated me like a child when I was an adult with a great career and a lot going for me (it’s not like I’m some lost puppy with no hope/life goals). But! It made her feel important. I immediately told my partner how uncomfortable the conversation made me. He was upset and went to have a talk with her. In their conversation- she gaslights him, telling him she feels like she’s walking on eggshells w/ us & she did nothing wrong, we are so sensitive, how she doesn’t do anything right, etc.
-She begins incessantly planning get togethers with us, telling us she never gets to see us (when we visit 1-2x/month). We don’t even live in the same city. Not to mention we’re busy in our 20’s w/ friends & establishing our own lives. Every time she sees us she leads w/, ‘oh I’ve missed you sooo much. when did I see you last? Why has it been so long? I’m soooo happy to see you. (On & on, guilt trip behavior).
-Our first Christmas dating we spent w/ his family, the 2nd year w/ my family. When we told her we planned to spend the 2nd Christmas w/ my family, his mother had a huge outburst which I’d describe as frantic/triggered/unhinged. My husband and I were upset by her reaction and left shortly after. The following day I txted her we were upset she reacted to our plan that way, we spent the prior Christmas w/ them & it was our decision.. and that moving forward we’d be splitting holidays. She played it off, said: “I wasn’t upset at all if you thought that I really wasn’t! I don’t think I came off like that, sorry if you felt that way” then proceeded to change the subject. Once again gaslighting (this being the last time I confront her on my own. My husband handles from here on out).
-She begins asking where I buy all my clothes. Nonstop questions ab my material possessions. Then starts going out and buying the same items for herself.
-She starts constantly telling my husband on the phone how she never sees him, leaving him feeling guilty (he’s improved a lot on the guilt-front, since our early dating era). When we see his parents 1-2 times a month.. and live 2 hrs away.
-Around this time, If I stated an opinion ab something (as in I would bring a topic up on my own) she’d debate everything I’d say as if I wasn’t allowed to have my own opinion.
-Pulls me to the side of a party 1 on 1 & tells me in private ‘you’re so lucky to have my son, I just want you to know that you’re really lucky.. I hope you know it’ she wasn’t being nice when she said it.
-Around this time she tells us how my partners sister is so sad he has a gf (me), yet she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Triangulating her 2 children, w/ the goal of wanting her son to feel guilt for being happy and in a successful relationship.
-Husbands mom starts getting jealous when we go on family beach trips w/ my family. We go for a week every year. She makes disapproving comments to us/ is generally unhappy her son is enjoying vacations.
-She starts making comments to my partner ab how I’m so closed off and won’t open up to her (making me look bad while playing the victim) and crying to him about never seeing him and how he doesn’t make enough effort..
-Begins incessantly micromanaging my husband: texts him reminding him of this and that, tells him my (as in me…) birthday is X days away, to make sure to get me something, to get his sister something, reminding him he should ‘make plans with his dad soon or go see his dad soon’ or ‘have you called your sister recently? You need to call her it’s your job as a brother’
-Begins generally undermining how we live our lives and casting judgement on any and every decision we make unless we do exactly as she sees fit/what she believes is ‘the right way’. It feels like she believes we were put on this earth to obey her and there is only one way, her way. She does out of her way to show us she thinks she is smarter and more savvy than us, in this game of life.
-Around this time his sister who is only 2 years younger begins acting bratty- we give her furniture, tvs, clothing large items she says she wants and she is super ungrateful, complains about the items we give her, tells us they’re too heavy for her & that we need to carry it for her and put it In her house for her. Only calls or texts us when she needs something, wants advice, or wants to complain to us. Never any other times. It’s always all ab her.
-His sister then keeps our dog for us when we are out of town for a few days (which we were shocked she even agreed to since isn’t exactly supportive or helpful). We stocked the fridge w/ 7-8 bottles of wine for her and made our home lovely/ special for her stay. Her new boyfriend even came to stay at our home with her (they both have roommates so this was also an opportunity for the 2 of them to be alone together). After our trip we were over the top grateful, thanking her many times. She then pitched a fit to my now husband telling him we bought her cheap Trader Joe’s wine and she can’t believe we didn’t bring her back a tshirt from our trip or pay her money for the sacrifice she made, complaining on and on while yelling at him. I would personally never keep my siblings/family members pets for them and expect payment. I would however pay a friend.
-My partner and I get engaged and his mom/sister begin trying to force get togethers, my husband sister starts asking me to go to workout classes with her, painting classes, massages, etc.. which is v. out of character for her. It continues & becomes apparent this is happening only bc I’m now engaged to her brother. It feels disgenuine as she never made these efforts in the 5 years before we were engaged…
-My bridesmaids are my closest, nearest dearest friends who I’ve known for 10+ years. My husband’s sister cried when she found out she wasn’t a bridesmaid and started calling my husband weekly crying / begging him to be a bridesmaid. Then my MIL starts calling, telling him how disappointed she is. He tells his mother, I’m not sure why she’d expect to be a bridesmaid, she’s never made an effort, they aren’t close, she gets to select her closest friends to stand by her side. This has nothing to do with not liking or leaving anyone out on purpose. His mom cries, repeats how deeply disappointed she is, how wrong this is, etc. My husband tells his mother he plans to ask his dad to be his best man. Disclaimer: neither of my brothers were by husbands groomsmen, they couldn’t have cared less…
-My husband asks his father to be his best man. His father declines and says ‘no, not unless your sister can be a bridesmaid’………………….
-My MIL creates her own wedding hotel block for her friends and family, sending out a mass email to them. This is outside of the 4 hotel blocks we already have on our wedding website.
-I start hearing my MIL is saying to friends/family, ‘As long as my son is happy that’s all I care about, I just really hope that he is. All I can do is hope’ and telling people how devastated she is that her daughter isn’t a bridesmaid and how messed up and wrong it is and how weddings are a family celebration for the family. No one ever confronts me once about the bridesmaid situation.
-My husband ends up telling his mother to never mention the bridesmaid topic again, how he won’t tolerate it and is done hearing about it.
-We ask my SIL to give a reading at our wedding. Her response: ‘if I have to’. She is a pill our entire wedding, in almost every photo she is scowling.
-When we receive our wedding photos & upload online, my SIL/MIL text and ask me where all the photos of them are (there were plenty…). I told them I uploaded every photo our photographer sent. They told me this wasn’t true, were extremely disrespectful to me, basically told me I was lying when I wasn’t. I uploaded every single one. I even reached out to my photographer to ask if she’s deleted any of the photos before sending…
-My husband & I got into a disagreement with my SIL where we had a huge argument resulting in a 6 month period of no contact. This arises after we confronted her, calmly & maturely about an issue we had to which she cussed us out and called me every terrible curse word you can imagine. My husband was livid- told her she would not talk to/ab me that way & how childish she was behaving, how we should be able to confront her when we are upset about something she’s done, etc. After several months of no contact w/ my SIL, my MIL begins calling my husband saying: you ‘will/must’ resolve things w/ your sister. He says no & it’s not her business. My husbands father then calls him, clearly deployed by MIL (as he’s very chill/no-drama). The situation becomes even more stressful due to my MIL pressuring my husband re: a topic that doesn’t involve her. I too become stressed, seeing my in laws trying to control him. My in laws then have my SIL’s bf text my Husband saying, ‘I really hate seeing this for the family I want everyone to be ok’ (although once has my SIL attempted to reach out & apologize for calling me a bit** cu**, etc). When his attempt doesn’t work on my husband, my MIL then sends my husband & me a joint text message ab How she wouldn’t be intervening if her daughter could handle this on her own & how we need to fix it. My husband responds & tells his mom off, essentially saying: This isn’t your business. My wife is owed an apology, you guys also have never apologized for how horribly you treated us during our wedding.. the happiest time of our lives, a day we get to have exactly how WE want. My sister can handle her own problems she’s an adult, shes never going to learn bc you meddle in every problem she has bc you want things your way. Then when you don’t get what you want, you get everyone to do your dirty work for you in hopes you can bulldoze & get your way. You make everything ab you, what you want, when & how you want it. Those days are over (this is a summary of his response).
(hmm wonder why my SIL doesn’t know how to handle adversity, bc you handle everything for her even though she is an adult)
-SIL reaches out to my husband and says she wants to talk. He says no, you treated my wife poorly. You will reach out and apologize to her, not me. You won’t disrespect my wife. And she does do this although it takes her a week or so. And it did seem genuine.
-I think this all stems from drama my MIL creates, and when things don’t go her way she pulls others in to manipulate them & do her dirty work for her.
-husband and I lived 2 hours from his parents. We end up moving 10 hours away to create distance from his family. They disapprove and generally disapprove of any and every decision we make, as they don’t act with love and support our decisions as loving parents would.
-In laws announce they are starting an annual family vacation…to the private beach MY family has vacationed at since I was born (it’s not a mainstream location…it’s rather obscure). My in laws have never even been there before. I tell my husband I absolutely refuse to go & will not enable the intrusive/copying behavior.
-My husband & I take a trip just 2 of us. We stay in an airbnb. 3 months later his parents tell us they planned a trip to the same location for the 2 of them & they’d also found & booked the exact same airbnb we stayed at so they could experience the same exact trip my husband & I went on….
-Additional overstepping, intrusive, creepy behavior like above persists. They start buying many of the same exact material items, or furniture we own (obscure antiques, designer items, etc….), essentially copying everything we do. We want to have our own life and individuality & per their behavior it seems they refuse to allow us to have that for ourselves under any circumstance. Almost like, if they aren’t entitled full access to our lives, they will bulldoze and access our lives in their own ways in order to feel in control.
-There’s no major animosity now but we have majorly pulled away from them. My husband calls his parents once a month or so. We now see them 3-4 times a year.
-Things will be nice & relaxing for a month or 2 then out of the blue my MIL will blow up out of nowhere calling my husband 8x in a row telling him he will speak to his mother he will do this and that. Often he simply ignores her or waits several days to respond. She likes to tell him ‘you need to call your father and speak with him’ ‘hey it’s dads birthday make sure do this and that’ (obviously we know when their birthdays are… we are pretty on top of things, still she cannot stand not being in control).
-MIL just flipped out on my husband for not calling her on Mother’s Day, though we send a gift, card, and send multiple texts first thing in the morning. My husband received multiple messages from his dad : why have you not called your mother??? Did you forget? Call your mother now. We’re skeptical the texts were actually from his dad..
-Although we’ve distanced ourselves, the every 2 mnth outbursts are exhausting. I am now 6 weeks pregnant. So excited! BUT Dreading telling them as I envision MIL & SIL making it all about them, freaking out ab how we aren’t involving them enough.. I imagine my MIL starting to disgeuninely call/text me constantly, demand to be involved at the level she expects & believes she deserves, will probably buy high chairs, cribs, etc for her own home.. and make it about her In any way possible.
Any advice on how to deal with a woman like this? I feel like I have to constantly prepare for her actions, outbursts, or things she might say. She’s draining, the pressure she puts on my husband is absurd, her expectations are outrageous, she’s judgmental and controlling, everything is about her, and she is emotionally immature in every way. I feel protective over my husband and our marriage and can’t stand them constant trying to order him around with their high expectations and demands. Help!

I've recently completed my third year of computer engineering at UofT, and I wanted to share my thoughts on the courses I've taken. I hope this will be beneficial to incoming first, second, and third-year engineering students. My area of depth is 6 (Software) and my areas of breadth are 4 (Control) and 5 (Computer hardware/networks).
Difficulty: How hard it was to comprehend course material and/or complete practice problems accurately. Keep in mind that difficulty is subjective but I tried to eliminate personal bias and be as objective as possible.
Workload: The amount of work to complete outside of lectures (labs, assignments, homework, studying for tests/exams).
All engineers take the exact same courses in their first year first semester and similar ones in second semester. I took these courses in 2021 during covid so some information might be outdated.
First Year Semester 1:
APS100 Orientation to Engineering:
Difficulty: 1/10 Workload: 3/10 Course Average: N/A
There is no technical material in this course. All coursework consists of Ethics analysis, creating a schedule for time management, creating your resume, and discussion board participation. During tutorials, the TA typically asks behavioral questions to the class and covers slides pertaining to engineering principles, the learning environment, test readiness, and related topics.
APS110 Engineering Chemistry and Materials Science
Difficulty: 6/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: B
This course blends elements of chemistry, physics, and mathematics, requiring lots of formulas and memorization. The assignments and online quizzes were moderately difficult. Not sure if he’s still teaching but Scott Ramsay was a really good professor. Really enjoyed watching his video demonstrations.
APS111 Engineering Strategies and Practices I
Difficulty: 3/10 Workload: 6/10 (Variable) Course Average: B
Students are organized into groups of 5-6 and are assigned the task of developing a solution for a client, following the engineering design process. Success in this course heavily relies on your team. Throughout the semester, there are several milestones where you need to submit large reports with your team, making it crucial to have capable teammates. Many teams resorted to last-minute cramming the night before each milestone (not a good idea). Additionally, there are two peer reviews, so make sure you contribute to avoid being perceived as an unproductive member. In most cases, you don’t need to worry about this though. You’d likely all be good friends by that point (and give each other a perfect review).
CIV100 Mechanics
Difficulty: 9/10 Workload: 9/10 Course Average: C+
The consensus among most students in my year was that this was the toughest first year course. It's incredibly calculation heavy, with questions that may appear straightforward in theory but require multiple steps to solve. Even a minor error can screw up your entire calculation process. The assignments are extremely time-consuming, and the quizzes pose significant challenges. I suggest you work in a group for the assignments. Furthermore, both the final exam and midterm were exceptionally difficult.
MAT186 Calculus I
Difficulty: 4/10 Workload: 4/10 Course Average: B
If you’ve taken IB or AP this course will be a breeze. Even without that background, it's still relatively straightforward. Very little on integrals, mostly derivatives, rates of change, and graphs. PCEs and WebWorks were trivial, and the midterm and exam were easy.
MAT188 Linear Algebra
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 7/10 Course Average: B-
The majority of the course revolves around relatively straightforward operations on matrices and vectors. However, it does introduce abstract concepts like higher-order dimensions, which may require some deeper thinking to fully grasp. Webwork assignments were slightly more challenging compared to MAT186's, and completing assignments took a while. Once again, you should work with a partner or as a group. Pay attention in the MATLAB practicals because you’ll be using MATLAB pretty often in future courses.
First Year Semester 2:
APS105 Computer Fundamentals
Difficulty: 6/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: B-
If you’ve taken programming in high school, you will likely find this course very easy (2/10 difficulty). The course covers simple programming syntax, along with basic sorting algorithms, without delving into more advanced concepts beyond linked lists and binary trees. I do know many people who struggled though. I think that this was one of the more enjoyable courses of first year. Edit: perhaps not as easy as I described. Make sure to get programming experience in the summer before first year if you don’t already have it.
APS112 Engineering Strategies and Practices II
Difficulty: 5/10 Workload: 7/10 (Variable) Course Average: B+
This course is essentially a continuation of APS111, but with the added component of being assigned an actual client with a real-world problem statement. Each group works with a unique client, and at the end of the term, you present your final report directly to them, along with your supervisors. As with APS111, the quality of your team plays a crucial role in your success. Another thing to note is that unlike APS111, there were multiple individual assignments to complete on top of your team reports.
ECE110 Electrical Fundamentals
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 6/10 Course Average: C+
Definitely one of the harder first year courses. This course marks your introduction to circuits. Topics covered include capacitors, Ampere's law, Ohm's law, Kirchhoff's laws, AC/DC circuits, magnetism, Thevenin and Norton equivalents, and more. The material is extensive and requires thorough understanding, as many future courses will build upon its concepts. Make sure that you understand the content well, given its foundational importance in subsequent courses.
ECE191 Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering
Difficulty: 0/10 Workload: 1/10 Course Average: N/A
Seminar course. You just need to show up to the lectures (one per week) and submit a 100-ish word report about what you learned.
MAT187 Calculus II
Difficulty: 6/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: C+
The workload in this course is comparable to Calc I, but the content is more challenging (obviously). It delves deeper into integrals and introduces concepts like ordinary differential equations and polar coordinates. But again, you’ll manage just fine if you did decently in Calc 1, and especially if you’ve taken AP math or IB HL math.
MIE100 Dynamics
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload 4/10 Course Average: C+
I personally found this to be the most challenging course in first year, but it seems that most people disagree with me. It shares similarities with CIV100, but you’re instead dealing with dynamic systems (moving) rather than static ones (not moving). Some concepts may prove difficult to grasp initially. However, if you focus on memorizing the relevant formulas and understanding when to apply them, you should be okay. Expect an emphasis on physics in this course.
Second year was the worst (for ECE) and a very big step up from first year. If you struggled in first year, you better lock in for second year.
Second Year Semester 1:
ECE201 ECE Seminar Course
Difficulty: 0/10 Workload: 0/10 Course Average: N/A
Another seminar course, except you just need to attend 7/10 lectures to pass. Most students just scan their Tcard at the entrance then leave right after. The lectures are pretty useless except the Magellan one where they show you how to choose courses for 3rd and 4th year.
ECE212 Circuit Analysis
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 8/10 Course Average: B+
This course provides a deeper exploration of circuits, extending beyond circuit solving to include frequency and sinusoidal analysis. Questions tend to be long so careless errors will cost you. Personally, I found the labs challenging, particularly because they required working with oscilloscopes at a higher level than I was used to, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to use that thing.
ECE241 Digital Systems
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 8/10 Course Average: B-
This hardware course focuses on the foundation of hardware. A lot of the content is at the fundamental level so it’s not too hard to comprehend. However, the main challenge lies in learning Verilog, a hardware description language. I hate Verilog. All the labs are done using Verilog, and frustratingly, the course provides no instruction on the language, nor are there many helpful resources available online. This lack of guidance made what should have been straightforward labs much more difficult. Thankfully if you are in CE, you’ll never need to take another course with Verilog again. The midterm was easy but the final was borderline impossible.
ECE244 Programming Fundamentals
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 7/10 Course Average: B-
This course is the sequel to APS105, delving into more advanced concepts like pointers, constructors, polymorphism, and inheritance. Many of these topics may feel familiar if you have prior programming experience, particularly from high school. Consequently, if you're already proficient in programming, as many computer engineering students are, you should be able to navigate through this course well. The labs were generally manageable, although a couple of them were time-consuming.
MAT290 Advanced Engineering Mathematics
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload 8/10 Course Average: B
In this course, you’ll learn a lot of miscellaneous mathematical concepts that will be relevant in future courses. The goal is to establish a strong foundation to facilitate understanding in third and fourth-year courses. There is also a quiz every week. They were terrible from a time management standpoint, but as long as you spent 3-4 hours per week completing the assigned textbook questions, you should be alright since one (out of two) of the questions on the quiz is guaranteed to be an assigned textbook question (at least, that was the case when I took the course).
MAT291 Calculus III
Difficulty: 9/10 Workload 9/10 Course Average: B-
The entire workload comes from studying for those damn weekly quizzes, much like MAT290. Personally, I found it to be one of the most difficult courses I've ever taken. Think of calculus 2, but now everything is in three dimensions, encompassing concepts like surface integrals, flux integrals, and more. Additionally, the course introduces abstract topics that I still struggle to grasp. Balancing the demands of this course alongside everything else was an incredibly stressful experience.
Second Year Semester 2:
ECE216 Signals and Systems
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload:7/10 Course Average: C+
I think everyone hated this course. It was so poorly taught and the midterms felt haphazard and unpredictable. I relied on the power of BS to pass (worked surprisingly). Other than working with many graphs and MATLAB, I don’t remember much about this course because it was so uninteresting.
ECE221 Electric and Magnetic Fields
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: C+
This course serves as an introduction to fields, while also expanding on the principles covered in ECE110. Many concepts build upon intuitive ideas, such as the repulsion of identical charges and attraction of opposite charges, which can make seemingly complex topics less intimidating. There are also many procedures that you need to know to solve specific types of questions. The labs are generally straightforward. You just need to follow the steps on the lab worksheet and answer a few simple questions from the TA.
ECE231 Intro to Electronics
Difficulty: 9/10 Workload: 7/10 Course Average: C+
This course is basically circuit analysis but significantly harder. It combines everything you've learned about circuits thus far, introducing new topics on top of that foundation. There are so many new concepts to learn and the final pretty much tests you on all of them. I’ve encountered multiple scenarios where I saw two concepts that I thought were completely separate from each other being integrated into a single question on an exam. Also very calculation heavy. Despite my experience in this course, I must admit Khoman Fang was a great professor.
ECE243 Computer Organization
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 6/10 Course Average: B
This course is a direct continuation of ECE241, and surprisingly, I found it a lot more enjoyable than its prerequisite. The focus is on Assembly language programming, which I found to be way more understandable compared to Verilog. Assembly operates at a fundamental level, so you’re technically working with the most basic building blocks in programming. The labs often involved seemingly simple tasks like counting to 10 on a HEX display, but the nature of Assembly meant that achieving this could require hundreds of lines of code. I appreciated these labs as they provided a refreshing change from the usual programming tasks. Final and midterm exams were relatively easy.
ECE297 Software communication and design
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 9/10 (Variable) Course Average: B+
Despite the demanding workload, this course was one of my favorites. The main project involved collaborating in teams of three to develop a geographical information system (similar to Google Maps). Unlike other courses where teams are assigned, here you have the freedom to choose your own teammates. Starting off, your team is given only the OpenStreetMap database, and the APIs, granting you complete control over your project's design, functionality, and optimization. Performance enhancement and pathfinding algorithms were key components of the project. It's crucial for all team members to contribute effectively for success in this course; And trust me, this is not a one or two person project. To succeed in this course, all three members must be doing their share.
Third Year:
They say that third year is the easiest year for ECE, but that depends on what courses you choose. For me, it was only slightly easier than second year but still significantly harder than first year.
APS360 Fundamentals of Deep Learning
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload : 8/10 Course Average: B+
This course felt fundamentally very different compared to the other programming related courses. If you’re unfamiliar with deep learning, the content can be overwhelming but the inner workings behind AI are both fascinating and challenging to grasp. Fortunately, much of the coding in the course revolves around preparing data, setting up AI architectures, and training/testing models, rather than building an AI from scratch. While the labs are manageable, the final project can be very time consuming, particularly as training a single model can require hours or even days. Regarding this aspect, make sure you start early. Both the midterm and final exams were quite difficult.
ECE302 Probability and Applications
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 3/10 Course Average: B-
The first half of this course is very straightforward. Just an introduction to probability. The second half is where the difficulty quickly ramps up. Make sure you don’t underestimate the second half of the course. I made the mistake of assuming the material was easy after performing well on both midterms (midterms were very easy), leading me to neglect the final third of the course so I flunked the final. FYI, our marks were determined solely by the 2 midterms and the final.
ECE344 Operating Systems
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 10/10 Course Average: B
This course had the most difficult and demanding labs I’ve ever seen in my life. They are due every two weeks and some of them took most students more than 15 hours to complete. I’ve seen people staying up all night in the GB computer rooms to finish these labs. One positive aspect of the course if Jon Eyolfson is your professor, is that all lectures are both recorded and live-streamed, allowing attendance in person, online synchronously, or asynchronously. But if you have Ding Yuan, good luck. I heard he is not only bad at teaching, but also makes you program an operating system from scratch. The course content is quite interesting and the Midterm and final exams were fair.
ECE345 Algorithms and Data Structures
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 7/10 Course Average: B+
If you're one of those programming geniuses who have been doing Leetcode since like 3 years old, you’d have likely already learned all course content before you’ve even started the course. You could probably write midterm and final exams without attending any lectures. However, if you're not as experienced, attending every lecture, taking detailed notes, and staying focused is crucial. Personally speaking, some algorithms were incredibly difficult for me to grasp, while others were simple. Assignments typically include both coding and long-answer components, which can be time-consuming, but you can work with a partner.
TEP444 Positive Psychology for Engineers
Difficulty: 1/10 Workload: 3/10 Course Average: A-
This course overall was very enjoyable and a nice refreshing experience from the other technical courses. You go on excursions to various locations with your group and write reports. It's an excellent opportunity to expand your social circle and make new friends. If you aim for an A- grade (80-85), you can breeze through with minimal effort. However, achieving a higher grade (A or A+) would require significantly more work (like 5 times more, no joke), which is not worth the extra effort in my opinion.
CSC343 Introduction to Databases
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 10/10 Course Average: Unreleased
The content of this course is actually pretty interesting and is taught well. But the assignments were excessively time consuming. There are only three in total, but each one demanded such a significant investment of time to the point where I contemplated dropping the course altogether. You do work with a partner (going solo isn’t even an option if you want to complete the assignments) but even so, be prepared to invest 15-30 hours per person, per assignment (they also mark hard). Despite the workload, I do recommend taking this course because knowing SQL can substantially benefit you in the future. Just start the assignments early. On a positive note, the midterm and final were relatively straightforward.
ECE311 Introduction to Control Systems
Difficulty: 10/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: C+
This course didn't come with a heavy workload, consisting only of three labs and two midterms. However, I found the content to be very challenging. It felt like they condensed and combined every concept from every engineering math and physics course into one. Topics ranged from circuits and dynamics to Laplace transforms, matrices, Bode plots, and more. It didn’t help that Prof Scardovi didn’t record any lectures, has messy handwriting, and uses a damn chalkboard instead of modern technology like other profs do. The midterms and final were somewhat lenient compared to the lectures, but this course still ended up being my lowest mark.
ECE361 Computer networks I
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 9/10 Course Average: B
This course requires a lot of memorization compared to other courses. You’ll have to understand calculation processes but also memorize a lot of general knowledge about networks. A problem with this course is that some concepts that show up in tests are not adequately explained in lectures. By far the best way to study is to do past exams. Professor Valaee often recycles questions, sometimes even directly copying past midterms and finals (like he did in my cohort). Unlike other courses, there is no big assignment/lab for this course, but it makes up for it with quantity. There’s a quiz every week, a wireshark lab every 2 weeks, a programming lab every 2 weeks, and a midterm. The programming labs are already difficult by themselves, but this cumulative workload felt very overwhelming.
ECE472 Engineering Economics and Entrepreneurship
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: B+
This is straight up an economics course, no engineering at all. You’ll learn about investments, equity, financing, and related areas. There are 4 quizzes throughout the semester, with quiz 3 (quiz 3 specifically) being by far the hardest (average in the 50s). Since you're able to bring your textbook to the quizzes and exam, my biggest tip is to write past quiz and exam solutions in your textbook, as there's a limited pool of questions, and new questions often resemble some kind of variation of past ones.
ECE421 Introduction to Machine Learning
Difficulty: 9/10 Workload: 7/10 Course Average: unreleased
While the course content itself may be challenging, surprisingly, the midterm and final exams were pretty easy. There's a slight discorrelation between the lecture material and what appears on the exams, but relying on past exams for preparation should be enough. The course leans heavily on mathematical concepts, much more so than APS360. The assignments were difficult and tedious but I recommend you work with others to complete it.
With that, I've covered my thoughts and tips for all the engineering courses I've completed. Transitioning into your next year in engineering, particularly if you’re transitioning from high school, can feel daunting. However, remember that you're not alone in this experience – many of your peers are facing similar challenges. If you need any more advice or have questions, feel free to reach out to me via DMs!

Passed about two weeks ago (AT/AT/T) and wanted to share some tips. The majority of mine have to do with testing center etiquette, because I’ve never been to a Pearson Center and would have loved to know more before going.

• What did NOT help me pass: PDU courses were borderline useless and so was the book. I did a Udemy course through Sorin (last name escapes me). His material was so dry and awful I didn’t realize what he was going on about were the different Proceses until I tried AR’s course. His didn’t help me understand the material, either. I just wanted to give it a shot because this sub recommended him. For studying, I tried to memorize the book for months (ouch) before I found this sub.
  
• What DID help me pass: 100% Study Hall and David Mclaughlin’s vids. SH I kept retaking exams and quizzes. I was getting very discouraged thinking “Yeah, so my percentage is going up but isn’t that just because I’m memorizing the right/wrong answers??” After watching DM for a while, I would read the SH questions in my mind in his voice (lol) and talk through the answers like he did.
  

Smack dab in the middle of my exam I realized It wasn’t about memorizing answer A,B,C,D. It was about memorizing why PMI wants a specific answeconclusion to a scenario. Because at least for me, the same type of questions from the quizzes/practice exams were repeated in the exam.
They asked about things like “What would you do if this critical part were late?” Or “How would you resolve this conflict?” Drawing from what I had technically memorized as the correct way to answer (otherwise known as mindset), and also reading my exam questions/eliminating answers in DM’s voice in my mind (otherwise known as mindset) helped me pass. Every morning I would do one of his vids. I’d pause before he said/wrote anything and try to figure it out without him explaining (he has perfect PMI mindset, if you emulate how he thinks and approaches the questions then you’ll pass).
Don’t stress about Expert questions! If I could go back I would memorize every single Moderate/Difficult scenario: The right answers, the wrong ones and the why’s and forget the Experts. Maybe it was just me but it felt like the exam barely went harder than Difficult level - Please note, this does not mean it was easy - I just never felt the strain of Expert.
Testing Center Tips: - Just leave your phone in the fucking car. Trust me. Just do it.

• Take your bracelets off at home, I watched someone have to cut hers off because you can’t wear them. If you have anything sentimental that’s hard to remove quickly then take it off while you have time.
  
• You do NOT have 10 min breaks. At most like 4 of those mins are yours. You will have a check in/out process every.single.time. you enter the testing room. For exiting, there’s a checkout process that someone has to manually do. Both the full security check in and check out eats at your time (especially if there are multiple people checking out or if they’re training someone). Depending on where the bathrooms are this means you have enough time to: Check out, walk briskly to the bathroom, cry a wee bit (lol), and march right back before being frisked again by security. By the time I sat down again the timer was down to mere seconds.
  
• Locate the bathrooms before you take your test!!! I can’t imagine having that clock ticking down, while trying to find the bathroom, while being scared witless about my exam.
  
• For the ladies: Wear comfy pants with pockets!!! You’ll have to carry a key for your locker and your ID always. Pockets help, especially if you’re prone to leaving things (when going to break/the bathroom) because your mind is elsewhere. Comfy pants (like sweats) are ideal because they’ll ask you to turn out your pockets.
  
• Hammering the above: You’ll always need your ID on you. It’s not a one-and-done at the door initially. For every break and check in/out that is your ticket.
  

These are all I can remember. Good luck out there, you got this!!

MAT246 (Concepts in Abstract Mathematics) is a proof-based course in number and set theory.
TLDR: The course is irrationally structured and poorly taught. Make extensive use of the textbook and chatGPT as they are better at explaining the material than the prof.
This is a very long review but I think it will prove useful to future students of this course.
Structure:
When I took the course, both sections followed the same syllabus, which was set out by Soheil. The structure of the course was terrible and bizarre. The course is out of 108% meaning it has 8% bonus marks, but according to the syllabus itself, more can be arbitrarily added without notice, at the prof’s whim. For example, after the low scores of the first test, a quiz was administered during the last twenty minutes of a tutorial (this quiz was never mentioned in the syllabus) and the quiz was counted as a bonus, with a 10% weight to the final test mark. Such a boon was not given after the second test. There is also an 800 word essay due at the end of the course worth 4%. It is does not have a rubric and can receive bonus marks for “thoughtful responses”. As the course progressed, weekly assignments had increasingly more bonus marks. In the problem sets, some questions were not worth any marks while others were bonus, and it was not known what questions counted for what prior to receiving the set back. In addition to bonuses, this course is known for curbing grades. These two features are mentioned in some reviews as positives: they in fact should be viewed as a tacit admission of the prof’s inability to create an objective, upfront grading scheme, where marks are not adjusted or added according to class performance, caprice or whatever else.
Some material was taught without ensuring the necessary background was covered or the material was outright irrelevant. Hilbert's hotel problem was brought up before discussing sets, the prof, after having this pointed out to him, replied that anyone lacking in knowledge of set notation or concepts of set infinite (which he would later teach any way and which had no relation to the concurrent material, zero had not yet be defined) should take their complains to their previous calculus prof. And in another strange turn, while he said Hilbert's hotel will be in tests or problem sets, it never was. Thus, it was mentioned, said that it would be tested on, but never covered nor tested. Soheil introduced puzzles, unrelated to the material, to train logical thinking. Can doing problems related to the course not do the same and improve your mark at the same time? His planning was utterly unintegrated.
He also tends to be evasive to questions. A student asked if RSA protocol would be on the test four or so days before the test. He responded the night before, casually mentioning he forgot to include it in the study package. At one point, many students complained on piazza (first time I have witnessed such a thing) on the difficultly of the course and lack of aid. The prof's response was nil.
Lectures:
In two words: confusing and useless. Soheil constantly made analogies with math concepts to real world things which were unnecessary and convoluted (he once compared the expansion of the rationales with field extensions to the fact that, after 9/11 it was discovered that the area underneath was once on water, thus the land was “expanded”). Mostly, the lectures consisted of him reading from the textbook, adding some contorted explanation or analogy. He was often ungrammatical and it was difficult to understand what exactly he meant by what he said. Also, he was sometimes passive aggressive in his Piazza responses.
After each lecture there is a quiz. For me, this was terribly inopportune as I had to do it at 8pm while rushing to catch the train. Similarly, other students had to commute, possibly without wifi. I found the timing of these quizzes to be very inconsiderate toward the students.
Soheil stated that the content in the earlier chapters will not follow that of the textbook and that the style of proofs demanded in this course are to be formal whereas the ones in the book are informal. Given this, I at first, avoided using the book which was a grave mistake as it is like the Rosetta stone compared to the lectures which are like Sumerian cuneiform.
And I feel that Soheil gave misleading advice on how to study and learn. He rarely took up problems or proofs in the lectures (and few were done in tutorials), which, as I came to learn, is a major failure give that this course is introductory and a major part of math is repeated problem solving. He emphasized rote memorization of many theorems and lemmas, saying that tests mostly require "passive knowledge" when in fact only two or three theorems were relevant and needed citing.
Advice:
With exception to the first part of the course which does not at all follow the textbook, use the latter for the rest of the course. Invest in chat GPT-4 (or whatever is the current version). It explains the concepts incomparably better than the prof and can help in understanding proofs (by giving it a screenshot/picture of the textbook). I suggest looking over the workbook slides and doing the problems. They do not explain the material well and are often ungrammatical but they will contain any material in the course which is not in the textbook. Use the time during lectures and tutorials to read the textbook and work on problems. It is a much better use of time than carefully listening to the prof. Perhaps check in time to time to make sure you are on the right drift. In learning a chapter, I suggest this approach: first taking note of all relevant definitions (this is bedrock of any future knowledge), then read through the lemmas and minor theorems (this helps in learning what a good proof consist of and they may reveal some techniques or tricks), commit to memorize and take note of a major theorem (it is much easier to establish the context of the theorem when you know how its derived than just committing it to memory) and finally, do many problems. It is impossible to over emphasis this. Your motto in mathematics must be: repetitio est mater studiorum. That is, repetition of problem solving. Rote repetition or memorization, is worth little outside of knowing the definitions and major theorems.

I wish you luck in this course. Writing proofs is an excellent way to develop logical thinking skills. This course could really be excellent if only the prof was not this awful (the worst I’ve ever had in fact).

On the road to London, my feet had buckled under the stress of the endless march.
I came across a drunkard, placidly unfurled on the side of the road, yet, gawking at my presence as I approached.
His face was the mountain from some range across the ocean.
How goes it, says I, does this road lead to London, I enquired.
The word "aye" slowly escaped from his moist-less mouth, eking out like a streak of smoke.
He was dressed neither as a tramp nor a vicar, and had no possessions that hinted to anything, yet, his eyes had a colour that resembled everything.
What else is it that you know, I enquired.
The drunkard, without moving anything but his lips, carefully replied, Everything.
I'd never before expected to cross paths with such bold arrogance in my life, so I decided to push this man to his wit.
What lies beyond the sea, I asked.
More sea, he replied.
And what of the land, I chirped.
More land, he replied, with the same dissatisfied grunt as the last.
Have you beheld the jaw dropping mass of mountainous peaks those of which the likes of me have only but heard stories of, I dramatically queried.
Yes, he murmured.
And what of those golden sands, that seem to outstretch that of the thickest ocean, which hold in their blankets of dust, treasures beyond compare, I quizzed.
Yes, he mummed.
Stricken with envy, urged to press his claims of cleverness further, I bit my tongue.
Then, his stench began to putrify in my presence and I was beckoned by myself to leave.
He sat with the same indifference as before.
About to bid the man farewell I ended our strange and futile meeting by asking: and how do you feel about having all this knowledge.
He replied, quickly, confidently and rather gruff: Cover me in cultish ideologies, embrace me tightly with the warmth of ignorance, I fancy dying with a smile on my face.
His eyes then gently closed.
I stayed a while, but left him and continued down the road to London.
The pain in my feet had not eased at all.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be dead in the next 24 hours.
Whether that's the Costella family, or whatever this is, I'm not sure.
The police are taking forever, and part of me knows they're either refusing to believe me, or RC got them too.
I'm holed up on our school bus, so I've got nothing better to do.
I want to tell you about my team.
We met in our sophomore year.
Strangers standing outside the club room.
Levi was the freckled brunette who wouldn't stop talking about Game of Thrones.
Sunny, a pretty redhead, told him to shut up.
Tom, a sandy blonde, nodding his head to music corked in his ears.
I just wanted to be part of a club, and get away from my overbearing mother.
I won't say it was a perfect start. Our school was lacking in funding, so anyone could join, which made us more of a Quiz Club. I had some serious anxiety, so I stayed on the sidelines for a while, watching, rather than taking part.
It's not like we actually talked to each other initially. The first few weeks, we played Jeopardy, and attempted to find more members to cement us as an official Academic Decathlon club.
Unfortunately, though, it was just the four of us.
Which made it extremely hard for us to be taken seriously.
According to Google, Academic Decathlon teams were made up of nine members, placed by their GPA.
Our principal laughed at us, but he did let us become official.
Which was out of pity, I assumed.
The club was assembled, and we started meeting up after school.
Sort of.
Sunny barely showed up, and Levi didn't take anything seriously, preferring to spend the time telling us about his weird family turf-war.
Our principal dumped us in a tiny classroom with a resident rat living under the floorboards.
There was barely enough room to move, and the four of us crammed together for three hours was less than appealing.
Still, though, I wanted to be part of a club.
I had grown up with parents who were obsessed with board games, so I was pretty good at general knowledge questions. Our club room was too small for anything else but three desks (Sunny and I shared one) and a whiteboard we had to shove through the door.
But, again, we didn't start as an Academic club.
It was more akin to Story Time Club.
Arriving late on my third day, armed with quiz cards from home, I found Tom and Sunny completely mesmerised by Levi’s storytelling skills, drowned in shadow.
They didn't even turn the lights on.
I strictly remember squeezing next to Sunny, and hearing the words, “But there was so much blood all over the floor, and my Mom told me to go upstairs and hide under the bed…”
Sitting in front of them was Levi, perched on a desk, his legs swinging, a whiteboard marker between his teeth.
Sometimes he'd get up, and illustrate parts of his story.
It sucked that his drawings were all stick people.
I won't go into full details of his life, but Levi grew up as part of a family who had… interesting methods of making a living. I had seen the guy’s father multiple times when we hung out at his place, and, yeah, my friend’s family definitely had Soprano vibes.
Levi’s Draw My Life was nothing to do with the club, but it did bring us closer.
Even if, at that point, I was considering leaving.
But it's not like it was easy to walk away from these guys. It's like finding your soulmates. Levi wasn't the only one with an interesting life. Sunny Lang was an ex kpop trainee, who was kicked out for being too fat, which led her to develop a severe eating disorder, and a hatred for her own body.
Sunny explained her family were originally from Boston, her mother growing up in Korea.
She signed up for an idol agency focusing on creating a new girl group, and had gotten all the way to the final stages, before being kicked for her weight. Sunny told us her story with a smile, though there was a hollowness in her eyes I couldn't ignore. The other girls were judgemental bullies, and the idol diet and brutal regime almost killed her.
Sunny lived in a tiny apartment with 9 girls, who would tear each other apart for a chance to debut. Sunny said all the other girls debuted, and when we (not so patiently) asked for names, she shrugged, admitting she signed an NDA that prevented her spilling the beans.
What she did say, was the K-pop idol is a product, not a person– and are made and moulded into a product.
She had zero interest in throwing her humanity away to become a manufactured doll.
So, one of us was the son of an underground family, and the other was an ex idol.
Tom was an aspiring horror writer with a famous older step-brother.
His story times were usually, That one time I went to the Met Gala.
When it was my turn to reveal my story, I told them the only interesting thing about me.
I could smell when something bad was going to happen.
They laughed, but I was being serious.
When I was a kid, I smelled my mother’s brain tumor.
I remember it smelled like curdled milk.
I asked Mom why her head smelled of mouldy milk, and Mom laughed and said it was her shampoo.
It was actually a grade two tumor growing inside her brain.
Thankfully, the tumour was found quickly and removed.
Growing older, I became sensitive to smell. The little girl choking on the bus smelled of singed wood, and the old man crossing the road stunk of gasoline.
In the fourth grade, my classmate Alex Castor smelled of lemons all morning.
I sat behind him, choking on the stink all the way through class.
Ever since I met him, Alex had always smelled… off.
It was a distinct smell I could never understand, and as the days and months and years went by, that smell morphed into a subtle orangey musk that was so strong I had to cover my mouth and nose. Then, he smelled like lemons.
During Recess, I watched Alex fall off of the jungle gym, straight onto his head.
Alex Castor was dead before the paramedics arrived, my panicked teacher attempting CPR when his brains were leaking out of his ears.
The school claimed it was an accident, but Alex would have been fine if the jungle gym wasn't built on solid concrete.
I told my team members this, and Levi was sceptical.
“You can smell bad things?” He said, his lips curved around his milkshake straw. In the early days, we hung out in the local bar. It's not like we were allowed inside, but Levi could get us in anywhere.
I was squeezed between Tom and Sunny, while Levi took the seat opposite us. I couldn't help noticing our waitress was insisting on free milkshake refills, her frantic eyes glued to Levi.
I had zero idea why. Levi Costella was about as intimidating as a fruit fly.
Wearing a white shirt with a popped collar, a leather jacket thrown over the top, Levi was giving rebellious Harvard student, rather than son of a crime family.
Leaning forward, he raised a brow, clearly not believing me.
“So, you're like a stink psychic?”
I shrugged, sipping my own shake.
“Sure.”
I wasn't planning on telling him the club room smelled off on our first day.
Once we actually started the club, Levi surprised us as the smartest member, and getting to know him further, I came to the realization his family were infamous in our town.
However, his parents hid it well. Lucy and Michael Costella were the owners of a popular ramen store in our town, hiding under the facade of two successful business owners. The Costella’s were an attractive family.
Lucy was a sophisticated brunette with a lipstick smile, Michael, a handsome fluffy haired man who looked like he modelled glasses.
The two were fiercely protective over their youngest son, not so casually reminding us behind grinning smiles, that if anything happened to Levi, we would automatically be involved in the family.
I mean, they did laugh and say, “We’re joking! Look at your little faces!” when Sunny went deathly pale. But there was definitely truth behind their words.
Being Levi’s friend was… challenging at first.
Tom and I were in his room studying for finals, and an alarm went off, flooding Levi’s room in red light.
I had zero idea where it was coming from, but it locked all the doors and windows, forcing the Costella residence into temporary lockdown. Levi didn't seem fazed, casually mentioning his parents were taking care of it.
He had a whiteboard set up in his room, and was standing in front of it, cramming all of our textbook notes into one easily digestible drawing.
Levi wasn't just smart.
He was Ivy League smart, so we had struck gold with him.
His family were questionable, and yes, sometimes I did fear for my life, but as the more time we spent at his house, the Costella household became a second home. We got used to the alarms.
I just brought along ear plugs.
I wish I was writing this post about Levi’s family, and sure, they are a factor in what is going on right now, but I want to preface this by saying the events below involve the 2024 scholastic decathlon final in our town with the school’s listed:
Starbrook High School.
Ratcliffe High School.
Please note, the incident that took place last night was immediately covered up, and all phone footage was destroyed. Our town is mostly out of the way, and does not show up on Google searches.
We also have our own version of the academic decathlon, which is a more town-level competition, due to lacking funds. The four of us were desperate to start competing with our schools.
So, we started taking things a little more seriously.
We got a coach.
Mr Hanes, who was hesitant at first.
In his words, “You will hate me as your coach.”
He started by recruiting more members, announcing, “If you want to be taken seriously as an actual club, then I'll be taking the reins from now on.”
He did, and with our teachers guidance (and sometimes brutal honesty), we reached a level where we could start competing with other school’s in town. Now, none of us knew this, but Mr Hanes was obsessed with winning.
So, club meetings were twisted into two hour study sessions with no talking, followed by Mr Hanes Jeaprody, which was Jeaprody, without the actual fun.
We were quizzed multiple times, answer cards and practise questions quite literally thrown directly in our faces.
I hate to admit this (I really hate to admit this) but Mr Hanes’s tactics worked. Sure, we had been mildly brainwashed by our slightly unhinged coach, but with Levi Costella, we destroyed our competitors. Like I said, our town held their own version of the academic scholastic decathlon, but it was pretty much the same, with some changes.
Ten subjects. Language and Literature, Math, Social Science, Economics, Art, Music, Interview, Speech, and Essay.
Unlike the official Decathlon, ours was more like a game show, with the ability to be knocked out if a team member answers a question wrong. Whoever answers the most questions correctly wins. Team meet ups were either tests, study sessions, or quizzing each other.
Which leads me to last night.
The finals were held in the reigning champions, Ratcliffe High School’s, auditorium.
And we were about to win our town’s Scholastic Decathlon 2024 Championships.
Well…I was knocked out in the music section. Standing next to my coach who I was sure was going to asphyxiate from excitement, I could smell the sudden potent stink of lemon. I tried to ignore it at first, but the more questions my team were answering correctly, the smell got worse, suffocating my senses.
This wasn't just lemon. The stink was like a burning, singing smell trickling into my nose and the back of my throat.
It was stronger than what Alex smelled like.
This was suffocating, drowning my thoughts.
“Are you okay, Cassandra?”
Mr Hanes nudged me when a Ratcliffe girl was struggling to answer a question, only for Sunny to jump in with the answer. “You look quite pale.”
I nodded, forcing a smile.
My gaze was on the Ratcliffe coach, a scary looking blonde woman, whispering in one of her student’s ears.
The Ratcliffe kid freaked me out. He was way too tall, dark blonde hair, and bulging eyes I swear were not blinking.
His gaze was glued to Levi, who wore a smug grin.
There was a smaller girl next to the Ratcliffe kid, a Macbook balanced on her knee. Every so often, he leaned into her, the two of them in deep conversation.
“I'm just nervous.”
I jumped when Ratcliffe scored a point, their side erupting into cheers.
During the break, we had a mini team meeting.
Sunny rushed to the bathroom to freshen up, and I noticed a Ratcliffe girl with a bouncing ponytail following her.
Ignoring our coach’s speech, I joined the two girls in the corridor, that lemony scent hanging thick in the air.
I caught them in an awkward position.
The Ratcliffe girl had her fingers pinched between the material of Sunny’s dark blue shirt bearing our school’s name.
Sunny looked confused, her lips parted like she was going to yell.
Ponytail dropped her hand, suddenly, with a nervous laugh. “Oh! I'm so, so, sorry,” she gushed. “You had, like, the biggest spider crawling on your back.”
Sunny caught my eye, shooting me a reassuring smile.
“Thanks.” She made sure to keep her distance. “Uh, where's your bathroom?”
The Ratcliffe girl nodded down the hallway. “It's just down there. I'm going there too if you want me to show you?”
Sunny motioned for me to go back to the auditorium. “Uh, sure! That'd be great!”
I did try to follow them, only for Sunny to cough loudly.
I took the hint, reluctantly heading back into the auditorium.
My team was hyping each other up, Levi in the centre, sweating through his team shirt. He ran a trembling hand through his hair. “I can't do this,” He groaned. “Ratcliffe High is known to play dirty, man. They're unbeatable.”
“In what way do they play dirty?” I asked, joining them.
Levi gulped down water, shrugging.
“I dunno! They're already trying to distract me with the stink eye.” The boy narrowed his eyes at a grinning Ratcliffe kid who, after noticing our stares, jumped to his feet, waving at us.
“Hey guys!”
“That's Harry Cartwright, the son of the Cartwright family who tried to kill my parents in the third grade.” Levi mockingly waved back. “As you can see, their kid is a fucking sociopath.”
Huh. I wasn't expecting the smiley kid to be the mobster’s son.
Harry Cartwright was not what I expected.
Unlike his team members, he was the only one in casual clothing, a short sleeved white shirt and jeans, a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his head.
Tom went pale.
“Fuck.” He hissed. “He’s one of you? Then those bastards will have a reason to play dirty, right?”
Levi shrugged, averting his gaze. It was the first time I saw his eyes darken, like he was subtly telling the boy to back off.
“The Cartwright’s have been trying to buy our land for a while,” he muttered. “I wouldn't put it past them to use the Decathlon as a way to attack.”
“Attack?!” April, another member of our team, hissed. “Like, attack attack?”
Mr Hanes grabbed the boy, resting his hands on Levi’s shoulders. “Ignore them,” he said. “Hey. Look at me.”
Levi did, raising a brow.
“You're losing that spark in your eye, young man.”
“Spark?”
Our coach nodded. “Look at me, kid.”
Levi rolled his eyes. “I am looking at you, Mr Hanes.”
The man was shaking. I was guessing his whole career (or coaching career) was on the line.
“They know they're losing, Mr Costella.”
Hanes shook the boy, squeezing his shoulders. “You are being positive and Ratcliffe doesn't like that. They want you to be nervous. They want to make you second guess yourself and lose confidence. Don't let them get into your head.” he smiled, giving the boy a playful shove. “Kick their asses.”
“Exactly!”
I didn't realize Sunny was back from the bathroom.
The faint smell of lemons had followed her. I noticed a wet patch on her shirt collar, though she was quick to smile at me, admitting she'd spilled water down herself. Sunny wrapped her arms around Levi, squeezing him into a hug.
She hung on for a little too long, Tom dragging her away with a laugh. “Good luck, all right?” she backed away, ruffling his hair. “We’ve got this!”
When I hugged Levi good luck too, I had to resist covering my nose.
The smell of lemon was unbearable, just like fourth grade Alex.
But it wasn't as potent as earlier.
I vaguely remembered the smell starting to fade once Alex’s body was being carted away on a stretcher.
Following my captain through the crowd, I was right. The smell was less suffocating. Before he went back to the stage, I grabbed the back of his shirt.
The material was soaking wet.
“How are you so wet?” I said, swiping my hands on my shirt.
“Huh?”
I shook my head. “Never mind. Do you remember what I told you in sophomore year?”
Levi settled me with a confident, but nervous smile. “Thaaaat you're scared of clowns?”
“No. I mean the boy who smelled of lemons.” I gritted out.
Levi surprised me with a laugh. “What are you talking about?”
Something ice cold trickled down my spine.
Levi did know what I was talking about. He brought up my stink sense a day earlier in front of his parents, and I had to cover his mouth to shut him up.
Leaning close, I whispered in his ear. “You stink of rotten lemons.”
He nodded slowly, pulling away. “Uh… thanks?”
I bit back a hiss of frustration. “No, you don't understand what I'm saying–”
“Starbrooke High School,” The host announced. “Can all members please return to the stage.”
Levi held up his hand for a high five.
“Can we do this later?” He winked. “I'm kinda busy carrying this spelling-bee on my back right now.”
I nodded shakily, high fiving him, and letting him jump back onto the stage.
Before his words hit like a tidal wave, ice cold water slammed into me.
Spelling Bee?
Slowly making my way back to the stands, Levi’s mistake was circling around my head. He did win a spelling bee, but that was in middle school.
Thankfully, the smell of lemons was gone when I returned to my seat.
Mr Hanes handed me a soda. “Chill out, Cassandera, it's just a game.”
He could talk. The guy was on his fifth coffee.
Mr Hanes was not chilled out in the slightest.
Surprisingly, the event went well. I was half expecting my team to be crushed by the rafters, or caught in a blaze started in the crowd. But we were doing well. No, we were winning.
Reaching the climaxing round, Sunny choked against a smug Ratcliffe boy, joining me on the sidelines.
Levi answered the next question with a confident smile.
We were winning, but Ratcliffe could still catch up with a miracle.
The second to last question was to Ratcliffe, and it was general knowledge.
”Where on the human body would one find the *orbit?*
I knew the answer, and so did Levi, his lips breaking out into a smile when the Ratcliffe boy was hesitating, eyes wide.
Our school’s buzzer went off, Levi slamming his hand down.
Bzzz!
The host turned to our team. “Starbrooke, can I have your answer?”
Levi nodded, shooting our team a victory grin.
“It's…!“ He opened his mouth to answer, his jaw slackening suddenly.
The boy’s shoulders slumped.
“Uh… “
“Um…”
“Huhhhhh…”
Levi inclined his head, blinking, his eyes glazing over. There was a sudden, hollow vacancy that sent chills down my spine. It was like someone had reached into his skull, and yanked out his brain, leaving a shell in his place.
To my confusion, our team captain frowned at his buzzer like he'd never seen one before. He pressed it, exploding into child-like giggles.
Bzzz!
The audience laughed along nervously.
Tom nudged me. “What the fuck is he doing?”
Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz!
Levi’s entire body was slumped, his hand slamming down on the buzzer.
I caught something pooling down his chin.
“Is he… drooling?” I whispered.
Mr Hanes looked mildly horrified. “Has he been drinking?
“Levi?” Tom spluttered. “Drinking?!"
Whatever we were watching, however, was definitely influenced by… something.
Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz!
“Young man, that is not a toy!”
The host wasn't amused. “Starbrooke High School, I need an answer from you,” He nodded to Levi, who was pressing the buzzer, his smile growing.
“Once again,” The host backed away, like Levi was contagious. “Where on the human body would one find the Orbit?”
Levi cocked his head, lips parted.
His gaze found the overhead lights, and he winced, his lips curling into a frown.
“Starbrooke High School!”
Levi jumped, tipping his head back and blowing a raspberry. “Palm tree?”
The audience laughed, and I started feeling nauseous.
Across from us, I could see the twist of a smirk on the Ratcliffe coach’s lips.
Bzzz! Levi slammed the buzzer again giggling.
“Starbrooke High School, if your team member continues to act like this, I will be forced to disqualify all members.”
Our captain stopped, gaze glued to the host, his hand creeping towards the buzzer, like it was a big red button.
The audience loved it, laughing like they were watching a sitcom.
“He wouldn't.” Tom whisper-shrieked.
The auditorium was silent for a moment, awaiting Starbrooke’s response.
Levi stuck out his tongue, slamming his hand down.
Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz–
When Tom dragged Levi away from his podium, a Ratcliffe girl hit her buzzer.
“Starbrooke High School, you are disqualified,” the host announced. “Ratcliffe High School, do you have an answer?”
It was Ponytail who nodded with a grin.
“The answer is the eye socket! The Orbit is part of the eye socket!”
“That is the correct answer.” The host was distracted, his eyes glued to Levi.
“Ratcliffe High School wins.”
Levi jumped when the Ratcliffe wide erupted into cheers.
His eyes were wide, clinging onto the buzzer for comfort.
Next to me, our coach looked like he was going to faint.
I barely noticed Ratcliffe’s victory, too busy watching our team captain, who was Harvard bound, tipping his head back and smiling at the ceiling like a new-born baby. Tom dragged the stumbling boy over to me, his mouth twisted.
“This was Ratcliffe, right?” He hissed, shaking our captain, who was struggling, squirming in his grip.
“Did they put something in his drink?!” He prodded Levi. “Hey! What did they do to you?!”
Still, though, drugging his drink didn't make sense.
Levi never left the auditorium, and kept his water bottle with him the whole time.
How did they even manage to slip something into his drink in the first place?
Did I smell our competitors drugging him?
Sure, intentionally inebriating my teammate was morally wrong and illegal, but why could I smell lemon?
“I doubt it was Ratcliffe.” Sunny squeezed next to me. “I've been watching them. They're harmless.”
“Then how the fuck do we explain this to his parents?!” Tom whispered, grappling with Levi, who was fighting to get back to the buzzer.
When Tom let go of him, he dropped onto the floor, crawling over to his podium. It was like watching a child.
Who was determined to piss off the adults.
Levi jumped back to instead feet, his gaze was glued to the host, a smile curved on his lips, when he slammed the buzzer again.
Bzzz!
“Someone, please remove the Starbrooke boy from the stage!”
I was embarrassed, our whole team ducking our heads as our captain was forcibly removed from the podium.
Mr Hanes grabbed Levi, pulling him off of the stage.
I expected our coach to be mad at him, but I think the teacher was more worried, a phone pressed to his ear while he forced the boy into a sitting position.
No, I don't think it's influence from alcohol, I could hear his conversation.
Levi kept trying to get up, mesmerised by the buzzer. The teacher was firm but gentle. “Hey. Sit down, all right? Keep still.” He went back to his phone call, gently prying Levi’s eyes open.
From what I can see, there's nothing wrong. He's just kind of…
Mr Hanes swiped his own hands on his jeans. ... wet?
Team Ratcliffe came over to rub it in our faces, though I was still tuned into our coach’s hissed whispering.
Water? No, I don't think it's water. It smells… no, I haven't told his parents…
“You guys did awesome!” Ponytail's voice was sugary sweet. Too sugary.
She held the 2024 trophy, bearing a satisfied smile. I noticed the Ratcliffe members were surrounding Harry, like guards.
“Better luck next time, okay?” She held out her hand, her eyes twinkling.
“No hard feelings?”
“Control your dog.” Harry said, amused eyes flicking to Levi, who was once again sprinting back to the fucking buzzer. His eyes had visibly darkened, lips curled into a triumphant smile.
Harry Cartwright was watching Mr Hanes chase our team captain like it was his own personal entertainment.
I had to look away before I died of second hand embarrassment.
“What did you put in his drink?” Tom demanded. “Weed? Edibles?” the boy attempted to shove Harry, only to be pushed back. “What the fuck did you do to him?”
Harry’s smile didn't waver. “Like I said. Control your mut.”
When the Ratcliffe team walked away, our red faced coach struggling with Levi, who was behaving progressively more erratically, informed us we were longer welcome inside the school.
Tom suggested calling an ambulance, but our coach was hesitant.
We all knew who Levi’s family were.
On the way out, Tom matched my stride. He was frowning at our team captain struggling to walk.
The way he was acting was already eyebrow raising.
But walking at an angle and being unable to stand up straight was worrying.
“I don't think they drugged his drink.” Tom muttered.
We pushed through the doors out of the school, and I revelled in the cool night air grazing my cheek. “If they did, he would be acting out of it, right? So, what's the deal with him acting like–”
“A child.” I finished for him.
“Yeah.” Tom leaned closer. “Do you think this has something to do with their turf war?”
I slapped at a bug creeping across my cheek.
Levi fell over again, this time bursting into giggles.
“Almost definitely.”
Levi was right about Ratcliffe playing dirty. I didn't realize how dirty until we were on the losers bus home. Levi was in the seat next to me, and the kid hadn't moved since we left Ratcliffe, his eyes wide, lips pulled into a dazed grin.
Bzzz!
The noise startled me from slumber. I was drooling, my head pressed against the window. Outside, the sky was pitch dark, and squinting through the glass, I couldn't get a bearing on where we were. I thought I was hearing things, but when I sat up, I heard it again.
Bzzz!
It was close.
Leaning over the boy, I glimpsed a smear of scarlet on his headrest.
I choked on my next words.
“Tom.”
Tom was in front of me, listening to music.
He didn't reply, his head of dark blonde curls nodding to the beat.
“Levi.” I managed to get out. I prodded him, and his head lolled into his shoulder. “Hey. Can you… sit up?”
Bzzz! Bzzz!
When the boy didn't move, I gently grabbed his shoulders and pulled him forward myself, something contracting in my stomach.
I don't know how long it takes for your mind to fully register something, but my body was already reacting.
Levi’s seat was infested with bugs, eating their way through the upholstery. I was aware of my body moving back. I threw up, instantly, screaming into my hand.
The back of my best friend's skull resembled a deflated soccer ball, what was left of his brain leaking from his skull where a swarm of skittering bugs chewed their way through brain tissue, metallic legs scratching the curved, pearly white of the base if his skull.
Levi’s head hung, his body flopping into mine.
But his eyes were still open, lips still stretched into a smile.
Blood ran in thick rivulets from his nose and ears.
Bzzz!
I could see them, black writhing dots alive in his eyes, wriggling movement under his skin.
“Tom!”
I jumped up, stumbling into the aisle, my stomach heaving.
And it was only when I was on my knees, swiping bile from my lips, when I realized the others weren't reacting.
Tom wasn't moving.
I pulled an Airpod out of his ear, a long, slithering string of pink attached to the end.
There was a stray bug skittering across his hand, his face starting to twitch and writhe.
Moving back, I checked myself over, my hands shaking.
Head.
Shoulders.
Hair.
Clawing through it, my breath was stuck in my throat.
Arms.
Legs.
Feet.
Mr Hanes was slumped against the window, a reddish froth bubbling from his mouth.
Sunny.
I started towards the back of the bus, but all I had to see was her bowed head, half of her skull chewed through.
Sunny was in a far more deteriorated state, her face had been ripped through, a skeletal smile glinting in the dim.
The thick black smear on the window next to her was moving.
When I screamed for the driver to stop the bus, he ignored me.
If anything, he stamped on the gas.
I moved forward to shake him, before glimpsing a bug creeping down his face.
Calling 911, the operator laughed at me.
“Bugs are eating your friends.” He said. “Do you know the penalty for calling with bullshit pranks?”
The bus didn't stop, so I stayed at the front, while the bugs took over the back, eating through my teammates.
After four hours, I risked leaning over the seat next to Tom to check on Levi.
They were eating him.
Chewing all the way through skin, muscle and bone.
I tried to stop the bus, but the driver’s hands were tightly wrapped around the wheel.
Another hour, and blood was seeping down the aisle, crawling with bugs.
Levi was gone, and in his place, a buzzing skittering pile of bugs, that I thought were going to move to a second victim, maybe burrowing into the seats.
But, no.
These things began to tremble, replicating.
Building.
Slowly, nothing became static, and static became muscle.
Then bone.
Then flesh.
When a body began to slowly form, moulded from the dead boy, I stumbled back.
These things weren't eating Levi Costella.
They were rewriting him.
…
Edit: I'm still on the bus. I'm 99.9% sure that I'm infected with whatever this thing is. I can't stop fucking itching.
I keep picking them off me but they won't stop. This bus isn't going to stop until I'm like the others.
…
Edit 2:
I can feel them chewing into my skull. They're in my ears. I keep spitting them out. Please, someone get them off of me. Help me. I don't want to die at 17.
Edit 3:
Still alive. Still breathing. Maybe they're leaving me alone????? I think I'm okay. There is a pile of bugs at my feet, but they're crawling off of me.
Edit 4:
Levi really wants to go home. Like, he just told me he REALLY wants to go home. He's got a gift for his parents.
~~Edit 5 :) ~~
Levi is next to me right now, an odd smile on his face.
The bugs are not finished building him yet, but he'll be ready soon.
We will be ready soon.
Your son says hello! He is a wonderful boy, is he not?
Mr and Mrs Costella, I cannot wait for you to meet him.
He is our greatest achievement, and rest assured, you will give us what we want.
Warm regards.
The Cartwright's.

Wasn't able to find one post that summarized 2nd year ELEC before I did it so I thought I'd make one. This is my personal opinion and an average student's perspective (sometimes even below average lol). 2nd year is a lot of mixed opinions about everything.
You want to have MATH 101, PHYS 158, APSC 160 and MATH 152 completed before starting 2nd year. Standardly you'll be taking 39 credits in the winter session. Although it's very common to take fewer (in fact I'd recommend it) credits.
Term 1 looks like: ELEC 201(4), CPEN 211(5), MATH 253(3), MATH 256(3), CPSC 259(4). Term 2 looks like: ELEC 202(4), ELEC 211&MATH264 (3), ELEC 221(4), ELEC 281(3), ELEC 291(6). You could take MATH 253 in the summer before 2nd year, take ELEC 281 before 2nd year after you've been placed in ELEC or also take it the summer after 2nd year. Utilize your summers to complete as many complimentary studies, free, impact requirement electives as you can. There is an option to take ELEC 291 in the summer after 2nd year as well but I wouldn't recommend that as it's a very time consuming design course and I've heard it's run differently in the summer and isn't as worthwhile in terms of what you learn.
ELEC 201: One of the harder courses in term 1, isn't very time consuming but isn't easy either. First time you'll be giving WebWork exams so the average is low but you'll be fine. Do the homework and attend class. I took it with Alireza Nojeh who was a good prof. Lectures were very organized and he writes and explains everything as he goes which is nice. Isn't scaled or scaled very slightly. Practice the WebWorks and lecture notes and also follow Linares's YouTube channel regardless whether he teaches it or not. Difficulty: 3.75/5.
CPEN 211: Hardest course in term 1 imo. Very time consuming, especially the labs, which would sometimes take entire weekends and eat time out of other courses and aren't even worth 2% each. So find a good lab partner. There's a lot to cover so be up to date. Although the lectures aren't very helpful. I'd suggest keeping up with the slides and making notes and GOING TO ANY TUTORIAL AND LECTURE where he/the TAs solve problems. Took it with Tor who teaches it almost every year. Too much content to be covered in lectures but he is helpful in office hours/after lectures. Do as many problems as you can find and try and understand every concept. Difficulty 4.5/5.
MATH 253: One of the easier courses in 2nd year. In a non-ideal situation can be done in a short time as well. Easier compared to MATH 100 and 101. In math practice is very useful so try and do as many problems be it before the exams or throughout the term. The course is taught online so is easily procrastinated but Professor Leonard and Alexandra Niedden on YouTube are very good resources. Took it with Mark MacLean who is a GOATED math prof. Clear communication from him about what's expected and needs to be done. Difficulty: 2.5/5
MATH 256: Easiest course in 2nd year imo (partially because of the prof). Cannot be done in a short time but is easily followed throughout the term. As usual practice is key. Took it with Neil Balmforth who is also GOATED. He makes the course much easier, the other section didn't have as nice of a time. His midterms and finals were basically identical to the sample midterms and finals. Difficulty: 2/5
CPSC 259: It's a much more theoretical than APSC 160. The only nice parts were the labs because they were coding and not theory. The quizzes and final were mostly theory and on PraireLearn so limited attempts (usually 2) which made the tests very very hard. Took it with Geoffery Tien who usually teaches it. He's a nice guy but okayish at teaching. Very monotonous. I read the textbook and did it's problems which really helped. Difficulty: 3.5/5.
ELEC 202: A hard course but Linares makes you spend so much time on it, it doesn't feel as difficult as the other courses by the end. Another course graded by WebWork so marks aren't easily obtained. Make sure you understand all the WebWorks, TopHat and questions from the slides. Linares imo is one of the best teachers I've had and is very knowledgeable about EE. But his personality takes a lot away from him as a professor. This course will solidify a lot of basics for you, some that you might have overlooked in 201 but they way he runs the course does make it unnecessarily time consuming and challenging. I'd say do take the course with him regardless of the horror stories, you'll be glad you did later on but be ready for having a weird time in this course. And yeah follow his YouTube channel like your life depends on it. Difficulty: 4/5
ELEC211 & MATH264: These 2 are run together as a one 3 credit course ELEC 211(2) and MATH 264(1). I pretty much had to do this course on your own. It isn't very time consuming but the term that it's in and the way it's taught will make it feel challenging. Took it with Carol Jaeger who taught the 211 part and Professor Demirbas who taught the 264 part. I don't mean to be rude but both were basically useless. I don't know if Professor Jaeger tried to teach because I stopped going after a few weeks that's how bad it was. It felt like she was just there because she has to be. For Professor Demirbas the way he teaches was very weird. Read a few nice things about him but didn't have the same experience. He speaks and teaches too fast for anyone to be able to learn anything but that might be because they're making him teach most of a 3 credit course (MATH 317-Calculus IV) as a one credit course in about 6-7 lectures all this along with a theory driven electromagnetics course. I'd recommend watch the last 4-5 lecutures of Professor Leonard's Calc III YouTube playlist right in the beginning of the course. That'll cover the MATH portion. Then follow the math lectures to practice and use that math you learnt to understand the ELEC portion. Wasn't able to find a goof YouTube resource for the ELEC part but just watch a bunch of different videos for each topic I guess. WebWorks are good practice. Difficulty: 4/5 (should've been 3 but the way they run it).
ELEC 221: A hard course depending on your proclivity for mathematics. It's a whole lot of new concepts so it's reasonable it'll be difficult. If the concepts of Fourier Series, Laplace Transforms (also in ELEC 202) and Differential Equations that you learnt in MATH 256 are really clear, that'll help. Took it with Joseph Yan who is a very kind and helpful person, but he just refuses to teach for some reason. He'll ask you to watch 1 or 2 20-30 minute videos before the week and the lectures will basically be a slideshow of previously annotated slides from a few of years ago and him just repeating "any questions?" without really explaining anything. His pre-week videos were helpful but they were only there for the first part of the course. I'd say watch his videos that are there. The examples in his slides are good for theoretical understanding and WebWorks are good practice for exams. Difficulty: 4.25/5
ELEC 281: It's a technical communication course, supposedly like WRDS 150B. Dropped it, taking it in the summer will update this here once I've taken it.
ELEC 291: Probably my favorite course from 2nd year. You actually get a sense of what it might be like being an engineer because this is a project course and you do hands on work. You get to work in teams which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. The only downside is it'll eat up A LOT, sometimes ALL of your time. First of all there are 6 labs that are due weekly which can take anywhere from 1-6 hours, depends on the amount of debugging you need to do. There's 2 projects which are much bigger than the labs. You have to spend a lot of time (can't put hours because I couldn't keep track even if I tried to) on the projects. There's no studying but a whole lot of doing. Professor Fraga is very helpful in the lab. Right course, wrong timing. Difficulty: 5/5 (60% because of the time it takes and 40% because of the actual work).
Hope this helps! Again these are just my opinions and everyone has a different experience. Let me know if anyone has any questions or if you feel I wrote something that isn't a valid description.
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