We expect that all students will need help at some point in this course. If you find yourself needing help, this is not cause for embarrassment: it is completely expected, and our goal is to ensure that you are able to receive the help you need. A good rule of thumb is that if you spend an hour on the assignment without making any progress, seek help! Please be sure to seek help early and often through any (or all!) of the following resources:
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Recitation Section Every week, our wonderful Ungergrad Teaching Assistants (UTAs) will hold recitation sections, in which they will review course concepts to try to help students build on, or fill in the cracks in, the knowledge they gained in the previous week's lecture. The UTAs will have prepared practice questions, many of which are modelled after the programming asssignment problems. Students are, however, encouraged to come to recitation with specific questions or concepts they wish to review. The bottom line is that recitations will save you A LOT of time and sleep.
Recitation attendance is completely optional, but highly encouraged. If possible, please attend the recitation for your assigned section. This will prevent overcrowding in any one section. But if necessary, you may attend any recitation. And you are more than welcome to attend multiple recitations.
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Your Study Group Building a support system of friends with whom you can struggle and work through the challenges you encounter is one of the best ways to seek help. You will quickly learn how much you can figure out working together!
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Discord: I have created a discord server that you can use for any questions related to course logistics, material, or assignments. You can get coding help through discord, or just use it to get to know your classmates better. Please use discretion and don't broadcast your code in a way that other students can easily copy it. Posting code snippets is fine, but if you are going to cost a large segment of code please send a private message to me or the UTAs. The invite link for the server is here.
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Student Hours: The instructor and the TAs are always willing to help you during our student hours. Please make frequent use of these times! Even if you don't have specific questions, you can come to student hours just to work until you do have a question. If you want to get one on one help but none of the official student hours work for you, then you should not hesitate to schedule a time with the instructor.
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Email: Please send me emails as often as you need! But note that in my class, you are never allowed to apologize for sending an email or asking for help, and you are never allowed to dismiss your own questions as "dumb".