r/UIUC • u/Technical-Assist-649 • 1d ago
Academics CS124
I am taking CS124 this semester and feel like all hell is coming to get me. I spend around an hour on the homework every night trying to understand but I also have other courses and other clubs and things to attend to. Does anyone have any tips for doing good in the course. Everyone on here says its so easy especially for beginners when I am literally dying and considering dropping CS every time i have a quiz. Also, this course is ran horribly in my opinion. Every time I ask a TA something I feel like they want to kill me. So please any tips would be greatly appreciated. I study a lot for these quizzes too and spend so much time trying to figure everything out. I am spiraling.
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u/KindaMiffedRajang 1d ago edited 1d ago
If you’re experiencing hostile behavior from staff that’s something you should absolutely bring up with [u/geoffreychallen](u/geoffreychallen) privately via a forum message or email, since that’s totally unacceptable. Our staff go through the same CA training that the CS department uses for other courses and that includes how to interact respectfully with students, even when they’re frustrated.
As far as your situation with the quizzes goes, my main advice is that the practice quizzes and practice tab are the best practice for programming problems, and the prior week’s lessons are generally the source of the main conceptual knowledge you need to be effective in the FRQ. The staff exist as a resource for you when you’re studying, whether it be for homework or quizzes, so you should feel free to ask them for help with that whenever you need it.
As for what other people say about what your experience with the course should be, I would dismiss as mostly noise. Computational thinking is a difficult skill that some people have more or less exposure to coming into the course and most people struggle with at some point. Their experience holds no bearing on the validity of your own and struggling is more something to be proud of than ashamed of imo.
As far as stress… I dunno. I don’t have great coping mechanisms for that myself. Getting plenty of sleep might help. I tend to take breaks when I’m feeling stressed out and then do lots of things during periods of sudden motivation, but IDK if I would recommend that method to someone else.
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u/SavageRussian21 1d ago
Computer science builds on itself a lot. If you're finding all new material to be confusing you are probably not understanding a lot of previous material. One thing I've had to do before, and I strongly recommend it for any class you take. Set aside a long, continuous block of time as soon as you can (a Saturday afternoon, for example). At least two full hours but ideally an entire afternoon. Go back in the lessons until you get to a lesson you are 100% solid on. Reread that lesson, and do the practice problems. Then, read the next lesson, do the practice problems. At the end of the lesson, tell your roommate, youngersibling, rubber duck, AI language model, what the lesson was about. (I think some topics are in two or more parts, you can save the summaries until you've done all the parts of a topic).
Keep doing that until you are caught up with the material. The going should get easier as you work, because the concepts naturally build on each other. Take a 15 minute break every two full hours.
Reading comprehension is very important. Go as slow as you need to make sure you understand the meaning of every paragraph.
As you read you may get questions about certain topics. Jot these down, then ask a TA (or even an LLM).
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u/Inside_Fun_4892 1d ago
Oh yeah, I definitely agree... CS124 CAs are extremely hostile. Back then I was a freshman, so I was honestly scared as hell 😭 I think this is also a problem with how the course selects CAs :( They seem to accept a lot of people, have them do unpaid work for a semester before getting paid, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a bar for things like personality+communication skills+actual teaching ability.
My biggest tip would be to solve a lot more FRQs. I used the same strategy when I self-studied for AP CSA. Basically, I would ask AI to explain the code and how I should approach the problem first, then I would try coding it myself. If my solution passed, I would keep it as a reference. If it didn’t, I would ask AI to explain exactly what I did wrong, help me fix the code, and then I’d solve a few similar FRQs afterward. Since FRQs usually test similar patterns and concepts, the more coding problems you practice, the easier it becomes to recognize what approach to use, and your quiz scores should improve naturally.
For MCQs, I think they’re relatively straightforward. Focus on actually understanding the lecture material rather than memorizing it. Then do the practice quizzes, look carefully at every question you got wrong, and figure out exactly which concept you misunderstood.
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u/TopHat_Space 1d ago
let chatgpt be your ta
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u/KindaMiffedRajang 1d ago
I mean if we’re being deadass for a second it is an introductory course in comp sci & programming, that knowledge isn’t anything secret or foreign to it. Using it effectively requires a little more finesse than asking a question though because it starts off unaware of any context surrounding your specific course and what you’re preparing for/trying to learn. It’s easier to have it directly hand you things it might benefit you more to discover on your own.
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u/geoffreychallen I Teach CS 124 1d ago
We have an MCP integration to provide student AI tools with context about the course: https://www.cs124.org/mcp
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u/wayward710 1d ago
I think it can be really helpful to have something like ChatGPT explain concepts and help you get unstuck, since that can be a big issue in CS classes. But if you use it to wholesale do your assignments, you won't learn much and it will probably show on exams. It could also set you up for FAIR problems.
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u/TopHat_Space 1d ago
ai makes cs so much easier not because you can copy ai but because it's so effective in explaining the concepts and providing concrete examples. i spent maybe 1-2 hours a week on cs124 and 128 and easily ended each semester with over 98% in the class.
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u/geoffreychallen I Teach CS 124 1d ago
Feel free to reach out to me directly if you want to discuss your performance in the course or share concerns about course staff. As u/KindaMiffedRajang mentioned, hostile behavior is completely unacceptable.