My first semester as a UPenn student

Published: 2023-12-29 by Clayton Hickey

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to attend a university with such good opportunities as the University of Pennsylvania. I am more grateful still to be able to attend the university and room with my amazing girlfriend from high school, Elayna.

Why college

Africana

The first opportunity that was offered to me through the university was to attend the Center of Africana Studies Summer Insitute. I was very excited to see what college was like and I was excited about the learning opportunities the program offered, so I joined. Throughout the program, I learned a lot of African history both in Africa and in the United States as well as made friends that I believe will be retained throughout my time at college.

Classes

Class selection was extremely stressful. The first round of class selection at UPenn uses a lottery system. I did not receive math (MATH 1410), intro to bioengineering (BE 1000), or physics (PHYS 0150). I tried to contact the individual departments through email during the summer, but none of them could do anything (except the physics department which added me to the class without even responding to my email). I was told to not worry about it and that everything would work out. Everything did work out, but it was because I did worry about it. There is a 3rd party alert system for courses opening up, but I was not able to get math through that system. I was able to get bioengineering, but the section I got meant I would have to go to classes for almost 7 hours straight. I attended both the math class and the bioengineering class without actually having been a student. After the first math class, I talked to the professor who led me up to the math office. Apparently, there were spots still available, just not publically? However, I did receive the last spot, so I consider myself lucky. For the bioengineering class, apparently there were a lot of students who signed up for the course who were not bioengineering students. So, many of them got kicked out, so I would have been able to secure a spot, but I decided stick with the section I had originally because the lab that I joined had their weekly meeting at the same time as the other section. I found the physics 1 class (PHYS 0150) boring (I had done AP Physics 1 and 2 in high school), so I ended up switching to honors physics (PHYS 0170). I ended up switching my chemistry class (CHEM 1011) to the 2nd introduction to computer science class (CIS 1200) since I decided I wanted to either minor or major (decided on minor for now) in computer science on top of my bioengineering major. However, I found the class very easy and mostly annoying with the amount of work (and making us write tests). I should've probably taken chemistry instead, but I did have AP credit for it so I didn't need to and it would make a computer science degree much harder. I wish I would've pushed harder to take the next level of computer science instead of settling with CIS 1200 though.

Classes I ended up with: Intro to Bioengineering (BE 1000), General Chemistry Lab 1 (CHEM 1101), Programming Languages and Techniques 1 (CIS 1200), Calculus 2 (MATH 1410), Honors Physics 1 (PHYS 0170), Writing Seminar: What Data Can Tell Us About Modern India (WRIT 0160-301).

BE 1000 (Intro to Bioengineering)

I found the class content intersting, but it could have been easily cheesed (I didn't though, I took detailed notes on everything). You did not have to learn (almost) anything to get an A in the class. We had no in-person lectures. We were expected to watch about 20-30 minutes of online video lectures each week and do an online quiz (and we had 2 attempts for the quiz - takes the best score and has the same questions). We had biweekly labs whose homework was due 2 weeks after the lab. The labs were interesting, but not much was unique compared to my general chemistry lab. It was nice to have extra practice though. The homework was alright, but it was annoying that it forced us to use non-libre/open source software like Excel (free through school but have to use Windows), Logger Pro (free through school but have to use Windows), and some Adobe software (only available in school library) to complete. We also had biweekly ethics discussions which were interesting and required understanding some academic papers as we had to write paragraphs about them beforehand. Though, to me, it seemed like most of the problems could be fixed by companies not being so (I think needlessly) greedy and not being so restrictive regarding medicine - they should adopt a more open approach as opposed to locking everything down with patents.

I vow to make any bioengineering work I do as open as possible. I hope that being open will even make the current big pharmaseutical companies happy, because they will be able to manufacture my work too. However, I worry it will be hard to convince others to work with me. I worry that I may be perhaps too ideological in this way because my motivation for bioengineering work is not money, it's making progress for all of humanity.

CHEM 1101 (Gen Chem Lab 1)

I found the chemistry lab to be fun, but it was at the end of my 7 hour block of classes, so I didn't feel the fun while I was there. We would have 1 lecture and 1 lab weekly which each had an assignment attached. The lecture I think successfully introduced what we would be doing in lab. The lecture assignment felt kind of distracting since it was expected to be done during the lecture, but maybe it helped. The labs introduced a lot of techniques that I think would be useful working in a wetlab. We had to be very verbose in the lab assignment, which I think was useful because that it required in a real chemistry lab, though I found the strictness with the grading of it a little annoying. We had to use this weird, buggy website to complete our lecture and lab assignments which I found annoying. I think it would've been much easier to use something like just Google Docs. I don't think any reasonable chemistry lab would use what we did, but maybe I'm wrong (Nextcloud Office would be the perfect substitute).

CIS 1200

I found OCaml interesting (it made understanding the Nix language a lot easier). At the end of the year, we had someone from Jane Street's OCaml compiler team talk to us which was very interesting. Though, I think he thought my question was stupid. I was in the mode of thinking "the stack" in OCaml was more like "the stack" in Rust than it really was. I don't think my question was that stupid though since I think it is an issue with OCaml language that the goal they were trying to achieve was so difficult (I don't really remember what it was, but it was something about optimizing).

I was dissapointed that halfway through the semester we had to switch to Java. Java took all the fun I had been experiencing in the class out. Java, in my opinion, is an inferior language to both OCaml and Rust (which I use personally - and professionally).

Overall, most of what I learned was OCaml, but I don't think that was justification enough for me personally to have to do all the work the course required. I know other students found the course much more valuable than I.

MATH 1410 (Calculus 2)

I found MATH 1410 to be moderately difficult. I didn't like that we were expected to learn all the course content outside of class, though I kind of get it since it's a lot of content? Anyone can learn everything (and more) that we learned in the course by watching Professor Ghrist's CalcBLUE series. Anyway, we had weekly quizzes that were stressful, but not too hard. I mostly studied by doing practice problems (and reviewing the notes I took on the lecture videos) and got on average a 19 out of 20 with most of my mistakes being copy down mistakes, which was slightly above average (the average was much higher than previous semesters). I felt good about the final as well, but I worry the curve won't be too high and I'll still end up with an A-. They are currently being weird with the grading, so I don't really know what's going to happen.

PHYS 0170

I found PHYS 0170 to be worth the extra effort over PHYS 0150, but it did take up at least 12 hours/week. We had biweekly quizzes that were difficult. I performed slightly above average throughout the course, but I wasn't feeling well during the final and didn't do that good (though I wasn't that much below average - standard deviation was very high). The quizzes and the final consist of completing 2 difficult questions for the quiz and 5 difficult questions for the final, so there's a lot of the points resting on whether one's initial interpretation of the question is valid. So, even if one knows what they're doing, missing some constraint that often was not obvious at the beginning could easily leave one overly pressed for time (making it feel like kind of a gamble). I think I may still get an A, but I'm worried about it. I feel that I definitely learned enough to feel happy about myself either way.

We also had a low-stakes lab as part of the course that met weekly. It was kind fun and I think valuable.

I connected with more people in honors physics than any of my other classes, which I think added to the value of the course.

WRIT 0160-301 (Writing Seminar: What Data Can Tell Us About Modern India)

I found the course's assigned reading much less interesting than I expected (I was pretty excited). We had to take very verbose notes on it in a format that I definitely did not like (every writing seminar does though). The book mostly consisted of substantiated commentary about statistics in India, but I expected to learn more about India, the culture, and its languages.

The writing assignments weren't so bad and I think helped improve my writing, but I was dissapointed that there wasn't as much 1:1 feedback or detailed instruction on how to write that there was in the sample writing class I had in the Center for Africana Studies Summer Institute. It is very distressing to get highly positive feedback with very minor requests for improvement on drafts from peers and the professor, but then get a poor grade on the final.

Dental Pain

Possible malpractice

To preface, I get cavities decently often (despite brushing my teeth regularly), but I usually never have any pain. In May before the semester started, I chipped one of my molars. After waiting a week in extreme pain, my dentist finally had an appointment where he filled the chip in the tooth. During the filling, he seemed distracted, it seemed like he was trying to fill my tooth and someone else's in a different room at the same time. The next day however, the pain was still extreme. The next few days, the same. I went back to the dentist and asked him why it would still be hurting so much. He said that he may have drilled into the nerve at the center of my tooth. He said that I could either get a root canal or wait to see if it gets better, which he said was possible. The next few months, the pain did not go away, but I pushed through it anyway. About when school started again, the pain got even worse. I started to take Ibuprofen multiple times a day every day. I thought that perhaps the pain may be at a height when it was close to healing, so I didn't worry too much about it at first. But after a month it still hurt.

I decided I wanted to go to a dentist to get it checked again. However, my mom was switching jobs so we didn't have dental insurance. So, I tried to go to the school dentist so it would be covered by financial aid. After failing to get in contact with them for a few days (they don't work on weekends, only schedule appointments for the next day, and fill up their appointment book very quickly each day), they told me that they would not take me because the damage had been done by another dentist so it was against their policy. So, I decided to go to another dentist in Philly and ate the entire cost of the X-Rays. They found that it seemed my dentist had failed to fill the entire chip, leaving a pocket inside the tooth next to the nerve that the nerve was leaking into. So, it would definitely not heal on its own and I needed a root canal. They said it was definitely not infected, so I planned to wait until we had secured dental insurance before getting it, which they said would be ok.

About a week later, the Ibuprofen I had been taking to ease the pain had completely stopped working. I could not pay attention to anything. It was easily a 9/10 during the day. For the first day, I survived it. The next day, my girlfriend got me some dental anaesthetic gel to ease the pain. It worked great! for about half an hour when it completely stopped working no matter how much was applied. At the time, I had an appointment for a root canal in a week, so I was prepared to wait. When I lied down to try to sleep, the pain quickly rose to a 10/10. I tried to resist it because I didn't want to wake my girlfriend, but I couldn't handle it. So, I sat up and felt very minor relief. However, at this point I had tears streaming down my face from the pain. So, when my sitting up woke my girlfriend, she was understandably concerned. So, we both got up. I knew I had a math quiz the next day and afterwards, I was set to visit home, so I was very stressed about not being able to sleep, possibly for days. The stress, combined with the pain, I began to scream. My girlfriend described it as "blood curdling". The screaming was loud enough to pierce into the next room, and I presume the whole college house, waking our suitemate in the next room. She, thankfully, called the campus medical emergency response team (MERT) for us. After my screaming settled due to the adrenaline numbing the pain and my whole body, my girlfriend led me to the front entrance of the college house.

I was met with a nice police officer who tried to settle me. Apparently, MERT had gotten lost in the college house looking for me. The front entrance is the only entrance I thought anyone could use, so they must've come in some other way, but after about 15 minutes, they found me. They asked me a bunch of questions and asked if I wanted to go to the hospital. Since I really needed to do something about the tooth as soon as possible, I agreed to go in the ambulance. The EMT on board was very nice and related to my tooth pain. I was dropped off at the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center emergency department waiting room. After waiting for a few minutes there, I repeated what I had told the EMT and police officer to a nurse. The nurse then led me to a bed in the hallway, despite me telling them that lying doing made it hurt more.

For the next 3 hours I stood next to the bed with my girlfriend. I got bored of waiting, so I leaned up against the wall and tried to get some sleep. About 10 minutes later, the doctor finally came and scolded me for not being in the bed. The doctor had me sit down (which I also told the previous person made it hurt more). So, while I was sitting in even more pain, the doctor explained to me that they didn't have any dentists in the hospital (which would have been great to know before I spent ~$400 on an ambulance ride and ~$900 on the visit itself). They said the only thing they could do to me was to give me pain killers. They explained that they would give me a dose of Percoset, a highly addictive narcotic opiod, and a prescription for 5 more to last until I got my root canal. They gave me a dose in the hospital and had me leave immediately. After walking home in the dark with my girlfriend back to the college house, I was still in extreme pain. An hour later, I felt no different. I still could not sleep. The dose of Percoset they gave me did nothing (perhaps they should check to see if the treatment works before sending patients home?). I did some research on the Percoset they had given me. Apparently, it only lasts 6 hours, which with just 5 tablets, definitely would not last a week. It also apparently makes the pain worse when it wares off. I called the hospital and the receptionist told me that I could try to take Tylenol (after I had just said that Percoset wasn't working??). After explaining that the doctor explicitly told me to not take Tylenol because I could overdose, the reciptionist told me that they couldn't do anything.

Feeling utterly dissapointed in the hospital, my girlfriend and I waited until 8am when the dentist offices opened. Her and I called nearly every dentist in Philadelphia. Miraculously, we found a dentist who could do the root canal at ~10:30am. I was so grateful they could even take me.

Despite my pain, my experience at Excel Endontics was a good as it could've possibly been. After doing scans and finding that it had gotten infected, they began the root canal. For those who don't know, in a root canal, the entire tooth down to the roots is drilled out. They probably gave me over a dozen shots of novacane. However, they couldn't numb the tooth itself until they had reached the nerve within, which they then had to give multiple shots of novacane to properly numb. Despite me flinching once and grabbing the hand of one of the dentists, they were very nice throughout the process.

Immediately after the root canal I felt (mostly) better. However, I still didn't do very well on the math quiz. Unfortunately, I found out that day that a root canal wasn't the last step. I would have to get the outside of my tooth drilled away too to put a crown on it. However, that process wasn't so bad, except for being resistant to novacane and it taking a long time.

Lasting effects

I continue to be resistant to painkillers including novacane, Tylenol, and Ibuprofen, which makes colds extra annoying.

During finals week, I went to get a cleaning. They found that I had 3 deep cavities the side of my mouth opposite the tooth that had the root canal, the only side I could eat with for 4.5 months. I assume the cavities formed in the time I had been scared to brush my teeth because it hurt a lot. The only time I could get them filled was the day before my physics final. Unfortunately, the root canal and the crown ate the yearly dental insurance maximum, so we had to pay basically full price. The dentist had to use extra novacane which mostly wore off before the process was finished (I didn't tell him though since it was basically at the end). A few hours after the filling, I was in extreme pain, which I thought was weird because even when I had 7 filling at the same, I had no pain before or after. However, the pain has slowly gone away. About a week later, it's very faint. I assume it was because the novacane wore off so quickly.

Lijun Zhou Lab

During the summer, I applied to join the Lijun Zhou Lab, a biochemistry lab working on approaches to developing synthetic cells. I was accepted to attend their weekly meetings, but I did not have time to work in the lab fulltime. I am very grateful for the experience so far.

Tutor Engine and a research fellowship

On Tuesday, November 7th, 2023, I completed the MVP (minimum viable product) of Tutor Engine, the language (and more) learning app that I've been developing for 4 years. A few days later, I got an email from the college house that they were holding a meeting about the College House Research Fellowship in a few minutes. I thought it was interesting and I suprisingly not that busy that day, so I went. I talked about the app during the meeting, which I think caught the attention of the faculty.

A few days later, I emailed one of the faculty members who were at the meeting and had a linguistics background. They were very helpful in completing the application and helping me find a mentor for the program (which was a required part of the application). It was a weird, but cool experience going from barely anyone even knowing about the app I was developing to discussing it with top linguistics professors.

During finals week, I found out that I received the fellowship, granting me the opportunity to be more involved with reserach within and between the different college houses and $1500 (that I intend to set aside for the app - though my yearly loss is still $33.5k). I am very grateful for the position.

Still can't take Japanese classes

For normal language courses at UPenn, it is required to attend classes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at the same time. As an engineering student whose course schedule is basically full, it is nearly impossible to schedule. All the Japanese courses next semester are during required classes. If I am able to test out of general chemistry 2, I may be able to take it. However, otherwise, my only choice would be to take Mandarin, but I would also have to request a credit increase (I would be at 6.0 course units, but the normal max is 5.5), so it probably isn't a very good idea. I also want to focus on Japanese for now and not Mandarin.

My girlfriend

My girlfriend is awesome and has been very important for me to get through this semester. For our year anniversary, we got promise rings which is fun and exciting. We went to many places this year during college including the Phialdelphia Zoo, an obstacle course in the trees, an escape room, Dim Sum many times, Halloween minigolf, and ice skating.

I rely on her to take pictures, so if you want to see more I recommend checking out her Instagram: @elaynarinker. She's also starting her own necklace business at: @thedaintylinks.co.

Title: My first semester as a UPenn student
Authors: Clayton Lopez Hickey
Published: Fri, 29 Dec 2023 03:30:00 EST

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