College's long vacation

Oh yeah! The first semester at Poly came to an end so fast that I realized the true meaning of "How times flies".
Now, here follows one month long vacation. It is time to relax, right? Absolutely right! After studying so hard for three months, I should try to relax a little bit. Playing games such maplestory(online game) and Kingdom hearts I & II (PS2) are good choices. However, games are not the best way to relax because they took you so much time to play and are not good for your brain and eyes if you keep playing for a long time. To me, I will try to do some sports to keep healthy. Sports can help you develop not only your body, but also your acuity.
Vacation does not only mean the relaxation, but also includes good time to learn new stuffs. During vacation, you can have a lot of free time to learn new subjects, making you ahead of many other students. As a result, you will study more smoothly in up coming semester. You can also try to look for some part-time jobs or intership, shortening the distance between the real society and yourself. So, you can feel much easier to be on your position in the future.
In a word, do what you like to do in college's long vacation, but make sure the thing you do today must be useful to what you will do in the future!
Good luck to all of you guys!

Polytechnic University Scholarships

This post is for students who are interested in applying for an admission to go to Poly.

Poly's Available Scholarships:
1. Dean's Partial Scholarship: Most common one of all, more or less the university will grant you some funds to reduce the burden of high cost tuition fees. The funds will be determined depending upon your high school grades or GPA.

2. Honors College Program: To be honest, I am not sure how many high school students will be able to make it right after their high school graduation. But this isn't all that hard and scary to get in once Poly has accepted you. A minimum of 3.5 GPA is required with good standing in classes, and two recommendation letters from different Prof. are needed for an application. In one word, this is the best way to go to Poly for free as this program will not only pay for your tuition bill, it will also offer an valuable opportunity for students to earn a possible MS degree in as little as 4 years.
3. Other Scholarships: Please see Poly brochure for more information.

How to do well in college?

Last Friday, when I went back to LESP and had a visit on my dear teachers, Henry asked me an important question which made me deep into thinking. He said many LESP students did not complete the 4 years college because they thought there were too much tasks and high pressure in college, they could not bear them any more. So, he asked me honestly:" Well, you did so well at Poly. Can you share some experiences on how to do well in college?"

Henry did give me a tough question which was much harder to answer than my biology final. Anyway, I will try my best to give a proper opinion to this question.
In my opinion, firstly,as a college student, I know that though I can be as free as a bird flying high from the ground, I still need to control the idleness hidden in my heart. If the idleness is out of control, I may keep playing maplestory and hate to read the thick college books.

Secondly, if I meet some difficulties that may drive me crazy, I will try to relax and talk with my best friends and professors at Poly. After releasing the negative aspects out of the brain, I will feel much comfortable and filled with drive again.

Thirdly, I must examine myself at least every week. With the help of examination, I know more about myself. For example, I did not do so well in biology this semester. At first, I complained the professor taught too fast. However, after the deep attack of the third biology exam, I realized that I did not put enough time on reading the biology book. I was just scared to read the thick biology book.

Forthly, I need to double check what I am doing now and figure on what I will do in future. That is because what I am doing now will have unbreakable link with what I will do in future. Do well now, make better preparations for the future.

At last, do not try to compare with others unless you are a genius. Focusing on comparing with others just reduces your combativity.

However, GPA does not represent for everything. Except the study, I still have so many things to learn my Polymates, such as how to be a good person with honest character, how to improve the ability of communication and how to think outside the box.

Computer Science Notes Collection on C++

I happened to have a 20-page personally edited draft of notes deal with C++ programming language, for those of you are interested in getting one copy and think that you might need it in your uncoming college courses. Please let me know. Email me at jimmyli2001@msn.com.

P.S. - Most likely, all Engineering courses of any kind will need to take C++ if I am not mistaken, so just let you know and Computer Science will definitely be taking C++ for a while.

Where would you be without friends?

The Christmas Party hosted by CCC from LESP tonight was a blast in my night, I met HuiQing back from Union and of course my fellow schoolmate Jason was also in the house, to my surprise even the little cuttie Sirandy came back too, wow she still looked cute, and Charles, Lance, Ken, Xia, Liu Jian, Richard and more; all those potential grads students from my home school, forgot to mention some new faces I saw; I had no idea who they were but anyway, I am proud of you all and hoping you will make it to your dream school. It is always good to see your old fellas back in high school after you graduated, and taught them some of the experience of college life. Besides all that, the fun part is that they were willing to ask you advice and suggestions to prepare themselves better for college, I was glad and felt deeply appreciated when they listened to me, I hoped all my informations will help them in the journey of college. Again, I enjoyed this night's fun with them, all the hard work of the semester was over now and I finally had some time to kick off the tension in my brain and my body, felt like the semester made me super old. Thinking about a while back in Florida, where I virtually didn't have any close friends due to my difficulties of socializing with diversed cultures. I am happy to have LESP as my home school in America and made friends with you guys. Indeed, friends are important in any aspects of life, whether in college or in your future life, I will not make a speech on that topic here in my blog to bore you guys, I will leave it up for you to understand and learn it. As a ending I want you all to understand why I am posting this blog. For the very simple reason: you guys are the best! Follow your belief that you will succeed and your personal interest to pick a major rather than the green paper values that attract your hype, really doing something you like is better than making more money!

Where would you be without friends?
Sitting in a corner of a lunch table, thinking about how terrible your life has been in your not so old and not so matured mind. Shy away from crowds and unwilling to speak in class nor ask questions. What a dull life is that?

Let me know if there is more activities going on with LESP later and do not hestitate to IM me either on MSN or QQ regarding to any problems that I would be able to help with! Thank you very much.

College's Best Kept "Secrets"

In college, something is known to the public like the tuition fees, but how much UNKNOWN secrets do you know? Here I will expose some of them.

1.Government Funds, namely FAFSA & TAP for NY Residents:
The funds would not be disbursed into your account unless otherwise your school confirmed so, consult with your financial advisor to make sure that the proper funds were DISBURSED.
WHY? Sometimes your might be selected to go through a verification process by your school, even after the government had granted you the funds prior to your attendance. In this case, you would need to submit adequate proof to your school in order to receive funds, and MOST likely your school would not notify you, so it is really up to you to speak with your advisor. Do this at your convinient when you pay the bills. Don't wait until the end of semester to panic, you don't want to pay more bills with late fees.

2.Grades Dispute:
Having an disagreement with your grades from tests? Don't wait, walk up to your Prof. as soon as they are available.
WHY? Usually Prof. of large classes tend to make mistakes on your papers, though most of times are unintentional mistakes, these grades will hurt you more or less and it is a 100% guarantee you don't want that happen. So, pay close attention on your grades and talk to your Prof. if neccessary. Let's suppose in a math test, if you made a mistake and already caused an incorrect answer in the question but the follow-up steps were correct, you would still get credit for it but ONLY if you point it out to your Prof.

3. Big One:
Let's suppose at the end of the term, you average is very close to an A but a little short from it at A-, what would you do? Go speak to your Prof. about the A you are getting!
WHY?Okay, rumors are Prof. don't care about your grades, true enough if they don't recognize you much in most cases! But look at the bright side, they pay sympthy to your grades on a crack between two letter grades difference. Remember an A counts for a 4.0 GPA and A- is only 3.7 GPA, so it is a good reason for you to get 4.0 instead of 3.7; more scholarships and better-looking transcripts!