Jonathan Chuang

EECS 183 - Elementary Programming Concepts

Credits: 4
Everyone should absolutely take this class. This course was my first exposure to coding and also, it was the course that convinced me to be a computer science major.... Now, I am not saying that it will have the same effect on you too, however, I am saying that coding and understanding the basics of computer science will play a huge role in the near future, regardless of your occupation. If you do not have coding experience prior to college, like me, you will probably find this course to be a challenging and time consuming course. But utlimately, I found that these challenges and the way coding taught me a new way of thinking is what I like so much about computer science. Hopefully, you will too. Read more

Recommendation: 10/10

STATS 280 - Honors Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis

Credits: 4
Personally, I thought this was a much more difficult course than advertised because the professor's teaching style did not match my learning style .... Throughout the course, it was apparent that my professor was a brilliant researcher and knew R extremely well, however, I had difficulty understanding her lectures because she would blindly lecture without checking for student understanding or go through practice examples together in class. I found going to GSI office hours very helpful to get a more detailed understanding of the material and to finish the homeworks correctly. On a positive note, I learned R in this course and decided not to be a statistics major. Read more

Recommendation: 6/10

ENGLISH 125 - Speaking Math

Credits: 4
The first-year writing requirement has a wide variety of topics to choose from and I picked "Speaking Math" ...because in high school I was always much better at math than writing so I figured a combination of the two could help me become a better writer. I like to think I was right. The "Speaking Math" section of 125 focuses on how publication incorporate and manipulate statistics to convey the message they want. Almost always, the statistics are factual, however, it's important to ask yourself how they got these statistics and from who & how the portrayal of numbers could lead to a different reaction if they were shown in a different form (i.e 90% are good vs. 10% are bad). Read more

Recommendation: 8/10

SPANISH 277 - Spanish Grammar and Composition

Credits: 3
This class was a good refresher of lots of Spanish grammar rules as well as most of the verb forms. If you took AP Spanish in high school, this course will be a nice review before going into harder Spanish courses.

Recommendation: 8/10

ALA 170 - BLI Leadership Lab

Credits: 1
I really wish I had taken this course further into my college career. This was a fun course where ... everyone was split into small groups (4-6) and each group had half-a-semester to turn an idea into reality on an issue that's important to the group members. Our group ended up creating a project that matched people who were looking for workout partners to promote exercise because we all believed that people have a tendency to remove exercise from their schedules when their work schedule gets busy. The struggle is real. As someone who skips leg day every now and then, I know if I had a workout partner every time I went to the gym, I would feel motivated and obligated to do every leg day. As I said, I wish I had taken this course later because now I have much more ideas and a wider skillset to transform my ideas into real solutions. Read more

Recommendation: 8/10

EECS 280 - Programming and Introductory Data Structures

Credits: 4
This course dives much deeper into C++ by exploring new data structures, like vectors & classes, basic knowledge for writing code, such as the four pillars of object-oriented programming and ... simply tools to write code efficiently, like overloading operators to simplify your code. This is the course with the notoriously hard project that simulates a game of Euchre, however, it's a very rewarding course each time you finish a project. Since most projects in this class was partner-based, it also strengthen my ability to collaborate with another computer scientist in-person and through Github. Read more

Recommendation: 10/10

EECS 203 - Discrete Math

Credits: 4
This course introduced me to proof-based analysis. To this day, I am still questioning ...how some of the topics covered will be of any use in my career as a computer scientist. However, many of these concepts were helpful in EECS 281 and EECS 376. A few topics that I did enjoy were logical forms (modus tollens, modus ponens), RSA, and probability. Read more

Recommendation: 7/10

SPANISH 280 - Conversation Through Spanish/Latin American Film

Credits: 3
This class is easily my favorite Spanish class. In this course, we explore Latin American culture through watching Hispanic TV shows and movies. Professor Noverr ...has a tendency to pick great shows/movies. Prior to this course, I hadn't really watched any Spanish movies because I didn't really know which were good. Now, I can recommend you to watch Gran Hotel on Netflix and La cara oculta (The Hidden Face). Read more

Recommendation: 10/10

PSYCH 111 - Introduction to Psychology

Credits: 4
This intro course covered a broad spectrum of topics to get you interested in taking more detailed, upper-level psych classes. The workload ...and material is probably very similar to an AP Psych class in high school. Plus, it's always cool to know what's going on in your brain. Read more

Recommendation: 10/10

EECS 281 - Data Structures and Algorithms

Credits: 4
The rumors are true - this is a hard course. Easily the hardest course I had taken up to this point, but also the most rewarding. This class will forever own hundreds of hours of my life ... towards testing and debugging but it also advanced my knowledge and enjoyment in computer science exponentially. As the course name implies, I learned many new data structures I had never heard of before like deques, maps, sets, stacks, and queues & algorithms I did not know could exist like dynamic programming, branch and bound, new sorting algorithms, depth-first search, and breadth-first search. While the rumor is true, as much of a difficult class this may seem at times, it is equally rewarding in hindsight. Read more

Recommendation: 10/10

EECS 201 - Computer Science Pragmatics

Credits: 1
I registered for this class because of a friend's recommendation and it did not disappoint. I believe this should be a required course for anyone who is a CS major.... In short, this class provides a brief overview of a new, relevant topic every week through only one lecture and one homework each week. In my prior EECS courses, they provide us with the tools and tell us how to use it for our specific purposes. For example, for projects, I would get instructor-made Makefiles and all I had to do was to type "make project" in terminal and "magic" would happen. However, EECS 201 dives into what these tools are, how we can build our own tools, and why these tools are used. Some of my favorite topics were creating our own Makefiles, using Linux on a virtual machine, debugging using gdb, and using vim to edit our Python code. Read more

Recommendation: 10/10

SPANISH 296 - Special Topics in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures

Credits: 3
This course examines Hispanic culture through short stories, movies, and poems. I hadn't analyzed Spanish literature prior to this course, so ...that was an intriguing new challenge for me. For any Spanish literature reader, those Borges pieces are tough to understand! The literature and cinema chosen for this course were very oriented towards major social issues in Hispanic culture, including historical Bolivian protests, the Mexican Movement of 1968 for education rights, and the separation of social classes. Read more

Recommendation: 10/10

SPANISH 289 - Introduction to Translation

Credits: 3
This was probably the easiest Spanish course I have taken. This class introduced the issues of translating Spanish to English and vice versa, for example, ... some words in English don't exist in Spanish or sometimes the tone that the author is trying to convey gets mistranslated. Since we were primarily translating Spanish to English, the majority of the spoken communication was done in English (which isn't great for someone trying to improve their Spanish speaking skills). However, I did become a better translator by the end of the course. Read more

Recommendation: 9/10

AAS 322 - Introduction to Environment Politics: Race, Class, and Gender

Credits: 4
I took this class for my upper-level writing requirement. Lectures covered important issues, such as global warming, environmental racism, ...and modernization, with a concentration of how these issues impact Africa. I enjoyed learning about these topics because they're not covered in a typical computer science course. Plus, learning about these crucial issues gives me new ideas on how I can make a positive impact on the world with my skillset. Read more

Recommendation: 8/10

EECS 370 - Introduction to Computer Organization

Credits: 4
This course focuses on computer architecture. This is an important course for all computer scientists because ...it taught me how information travels in the hardware as well as why the order in which you declare variables can cause the software to run slower. In addition, we learned basic logic operators like adders, muxes, wires, and ROM. This is an important class because software need to communicate with hardware to create a functional product, thus it's essential that the people working on them understand each other too. Read more

Recommendation: 9/10

EECS 376 - Foundations of Computer Science

Credits: 4
Prior to this course, I had heard it would be a lot like EECS 203, just way harder. Like 203, I expected ... the applications of this course to not be very applicable towards coding/programming. Today, I'm still wondering if this is true. There are a few overlaps between the two courses, such as writing proofs, Fermat's Little Theorem, and working with probability. However, this course focuses on proof-based analysis for numerous languages, different ways to analyze/classify languages and algorithms. This course comprises of topics like Turing machines, identifying languages in P, NP, coNP, ZPP, BPP, RP...(yeah, they could work on cooler acronyms), randomness, and cryptography. For me, this course was a drag because it would seem like the things we learned in lecture were not directly related to the things we were asked to do on the weekly homeworks. In addition, for me, it was a lot harder than 203 simply because there's a lot less math and a lot more proof-writing. On a positive note, one thing I did like was the randomness unit because that unveiled a new way of solving problems efficiently that I had not concerned before. Read more

Recommendation: 5/10

PHIL 183 - Critical Reasoning

Credits: 3
Are you tired of arguing with people who never change their minds? Turns out it's a "you" problem. I believe this is a critical class that everyone should take, especially ... politicians. In this course, we learn about the many biases that cloud our judgement and decision-making. Before we blame others for not being able to change their mind, we need to change our own mindset to discover the truth and update our viewpoint when given evidence, even if it's evidence for the opposing argument. This course provides the tools to do so - to critically reason. Read more

Recommendation: 10/10

SPANISH 487 - Studies in Hispanic Linguistics

Credits: 3
This is a project-based course that focuses on Mock Spanish. Mock Spanish is the use of ... real Spanish words or made-up Spanish words to index stereotypes of Hispanic culture or stereotypes of the use of Spanish. Mock Spanish is a prevelant issue today, especially in modern America where latinos are increasingly frowned-upon. We can see examples of mock Spanish in pop culture, for instance, the Terminator's famous quote "Hasta la vista, baby" or even in everyday conversation, "no problemo". My group and I wrote a research paper on the use of Spanish in Ann Arbor restaurants, you can read it here. Or you can take the course and write your own! Read more

Recommendation: 9/10

SPACE 101 - Rocket Science

Credits: 3
As a child, I thought rocket science was a hoax because of the popular saying. As a result, ...I knew I had to take this course to see what it's really all about. Turns out the popular saying is correct, rocket science is pretty hard. Luckily, this is just an intro course that covers the basics of rockets, rocket history, and outer space. It's a pretty interesting course and now I can say "it's not rocket science" knowing that it's a real thing. Read more

Recommendation: 7/10

EECS 485 - Web Systems

Credits: 4
Although this was a really hard course, I liked the format Professor DeOrio chose to teach this virtual course.... Each lecture was broken down into 4-5 10-20 minute videos that allowed me to watch one part, take a break or do something else, and come back to lecture later easily. Boredom/lack of focus was something that a lot of my other courses failed to account for given the virtual learning environment. In terms of the course material, I thought I was very fortunate to have seen/used all of the material taught from my summer internship. If I hadn't, I think this course would've been 3x harder to learn all the material, such as full-stack development, HTTP, the dark web, and Blockchain, at such a fast pace. So prior to taking this course, I definitely recommend playing around with HTML/CSS/JS/React/Flask. Read more

Recommendation: 10/10

EECS 493 - User Interface Development

Credits: 4
This was my favorite course this semester. I've been really enjoying web development and this course taught me a lot about human-centered design.... Now when I'm designing websites, I always consider "Know thy user, for you are not thy user". Moreover, this course covers basic HTML/CSS/JS, jQuery, Vue.js, and so many techniques/concepts of designing for your target audience. Finally, my group and I were able to create a really cool final project. Check it out here! Read more

Recommendation: 10/10

SPANISH 421 - Cinema from Spain

Credits: 3
This course was very similiar to SPANISH 280. We watched contemporary Latinx films and studied literature.... I really wished I took this class when it could be in-person because Zoom breakout rooms for discussion are not the best. Althought I don't feel like I improved my Spanish skills that much this semester, I really enjoyed some of the films that we watched for this class. An interesting film to watch if you're ever bored: "La piel que habito" by Pedro Almodóvar. Read more

Recommendation: 10/10

PHYSICS 106 - Everyday Physics

Credits: 3
To be fair, I think this would be an amazing class if it were in-person, but the virtual version was just so poorly handled.... For starters, we had 2 take-home lab assignments every week and each lab would have numerous grammar mistakes (shoutout to Grammarly). While that already made some of the lab instructions confusing, the instructions themselves would be unclear and I would have to spend a lot of time googling to figure out how to do the lab correctly. Although it is an easy course, I wish I could've taken it in-person to learn the material better and actually know how to do the labs. Read more

Recommendation: 3/10

WGS 300 - Men's Health

Credits: 3
I switched into this class a few weeks into the semester and it did not disappoint. Men's healthcare is a subject that isn't talked about enough... and this class definitely alleviated some stigmas I had about men's health. Overall, the workload was pretty light - weekly discussion posts, 3 essays, and a take-home exam. More importantly, the overarching themes of this course are important and relevant - we covered economical/racial/gender disparities in the American healthcare system, during COVID-19, and diseases in general. The only reason why I gave this class a 9 instead of a 10 is because there were so many readings each week and I'm not about that life. Read more

Recommendation: 9/10

EECS 482 - Operating Systems

Credits: 6
After feeling burnout from Zoom university the previous semester, I sought out a winter internship while taking only the hardest EECS course.... This was easily the hardest EECS course I've taken and also the most time-consuming. The course consisted of 4 projects: disk I/O scheduler simulator, implementing a mock thread library, pager simulator, and a mock network file server. This course essentially felt like another part-time job. On the bright side, I did learn a lot about operating systems in this course and would recommend this course given you're taking 2-4 super easy courses along with this one. Read more

Recommendation: 7/10

EECS 497 - Human-Centered Software Design & Development

Credits: 4
Recommendation: 10/10

SPANISH 315 - Contemporary Issues: Drug Trafficking in Latin America

Credits: 3
Recommendation: 10/10

BIOLOGY 105 - Biology of Nutrition

Credits: 4
Recommendation: 8/10

LING 111 - Intro to Language

Credits: 3
Recommendation: 7/10

EECS 486 - Information Retrieval & Web Search

Credits: 4
Recommendation: 8/10

SPANISH 420 - Latin American Film: Violence and Conflict in Colombia

Credits: 3
Recommendation: 10/10

PHIL 340 - Minds & Machines

Credits: 4
Recommendation: 7/10

EARTH 111 - Climate & Humankind

Credits: 1
Recommendation: 8/10

EARTH 106 - Earth Science in Feature Films

Credits: 1
Recommendation: 6/10