yjk

First off, you do have elective requirements you have to meet, for example you need 12 arts credits and 3 credits from each "category" of science minus one (https://science.ubc.ca/students/requirements/faculty, see academic calendar for more details). Speaking from a GPA perspective, I find that if you're actually interested in a subject you can probably do better in those courses than so-called gpa boosters (I heard ATSC 113 is no longer a GPA booster anymore, as well). Another thing to note: I haven't checked, but I would not recommend taking WRDS 150 with a bad professor because of how much the syllabus differs and the class sizes are small. Much better to take an ENGL course IMO.

reddit.com/r/ubccsss/comments/15a3ge4/do_i_really_need_gpa_boosters/

Hi, here is my program for both terms. I added EOSC111, ASTR101, and applied for the waitlist for PHYS119, and ATSC113. I actually took an ECON course but everyone told me to drop it and take easier courses for my GPA. I wonder do I really need those GPA booster lectures. It seems like a waste of money to take classes that do not attract me and does not meet any of my science reqs. Also WDYT about my program overall? Do you have any opinion?

Just for reference, how much would Google and Meta stand to pay if they didn't ban Canadians from reading Canadian news?

While we're at it, can we ban amp links and other url tracking in general?

No punishment for doing it, but maybe have a bot to remind people.

To clarify, I'm not engaging in whataboutism, I think both of them should be banned (though maybe sometimes affiliate links have their place).

Also, I note that finding the answer to this on the academic calendar was pretty hard for me.

There are like four references to deferred standing, I list them in order of google search results (standing deferred "ubc academic calendar" course registration):

1. https://vancouver.calendar.ubc.ca/campus-wide-policies-and-regulations/grading-practices/standings (does not mention impact on registration)
2. https://vancouver.calendar.ubc.ca/campus-wide-policies-and-regulations/academic-assessment/deferred-and-supplemental-examinations (does not mention impact on registration)
3. https://vancouver.calendar.ubc.ca/faculties-colleges-and-schools/faculty-science/bachelor-science/illness-academic-concession-and-deferred-standing (has a hint, I guess? "Some science courses offered in Term 1 of Winter Session that are prerequisite to courses in Term 2 have scheduled deferred examinations in January. A student with Deferred standing in one of those courses is expected to write the January examination.", which somewhat implies that you need to write the exam to keep the post-req)
4. https://vancouver.calendar.ubc.ca/faculties-colleges-and-schools/faculty-arts/bachelor-media-studies/academic-concession (about a specific degree in faculty of arts? has some lines that definitely could be misinterpreted to be about registration)

On the Science Academic Calendar registration page, it does mention that "prerequisites are courses that must be successfully completed before taking a course", but without explicitly mentioning standings there's no way I would find that without specifically worrying about this issue (which I probably wouldn't, given that I've already been assured by my advisor).

Reddit post for context (not my words):

"No seriously. Like what's the point of having faculty advising that just gives you incorrect information? I deferred my Math 101 exam at the end of April because I was pretty sick, and was specifically told that deferring the exam wouldn't impact registration or major selection because "being able to defer an exam means that you have proved thusfar to be successful in the course as you were in good academic standing up until taking the final exam. Therefore we assume you would have been able to pass the course and get the credits."

I'm now being told by Science Advising that actually, standing deferred doesn't give you the credits for the course, because you haven't taken the exam and thus have not completed the course.

What?

I made a pretty impactful decision based off the original answer from Science Advising. If I knew that deferring an exam wouldn't enable me to register for 2nd-year math courses (and presumably, also reject my math major application since I don't have the credits for MATH 101), I would've just taken the exam sick because even if it affected my GPA, I would've at least gotten the credits for it."

I don't mean to be nitpicking but if the rule is zero-tolerance I think we should clear up the edge cases. I hope you don't take this the wrong way.

• What happens when the original title is misleading or clickbait? Personally I like how HN handles things in this case (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
• How about if you want to ask a question about a news article as the main focus of the post, but also want to include context about the article?
• Or if you're making the post to discuss a related topic, and include multiple articles?
• On that note, what even counts as a news article? What if I post a link to a reddit thread about a news article?

a) When I took this course tutorials were not marked at all and had material released, and personally I only went to one, though I found the course easy overall. b) If there are more lecture spots than tutorial spots they will open them up, no need to worry. You probably do not need to reach out yourself and they will move you in to one or release a new section. I couldn't actually find a source for this but this is what has been repeated on the community.

From LoveCPen:

Hello fellow third or fourth years in cpen or cpsc. I was able to register for CPSC320 but all the tutorial sections are full. One of them is blocked and as far as I know they create another section depening on the number of students registered.

Since CPSC320 is a core course for me, i cannot drop it. So the issue is, out of the 5 tutorial timings (including the blocked one) 2 of them conflicts with my other courses. I really dont want to drop other courses as it will make my proceeding to 4th year standing at a risky point.

Who should I reach out to to request for adding me to a tutorial that does not conflict? And When does cpsc usually release tutorial sections for poeple in my situation who is not in the waitlist but could not register for the tutorials.

Any input will be appreciated since I am really worried

ubc built different

(continued)

Last thing before off my soap box - blog posts by “independent scientists” alleging research misconduct are not evidence of that misconduct in the same way that a peer reviewed article by experts in that field alleging misconduct is. This is an important point, because Schneider is far from the only “independent scientist” with a blog where he does “take downs” of all the corrupt and stupid scientists who always get it wrong. That is the regular stomping grounds of creationists, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and all sorts of cranks who would absolutely love a system where they could level whatever accusations they want at scientists that if they can gin up enough public outrage the university would have to investigate each and every allegation to the bloggers satisfaction. And there are anti-vaxxers and creationists who do just this with much more impressive academic pedigrees. F*ck all these guys and all of the other amateur science critics who are accountable to nothing except for whatever axe they’ve been grinding and the chip on their shoulder.

edit to head off the replies - the accusations in the article are something I think that the university and department should look in to because while Schneider isn't the best he's not quite a complete crank, however, I would urge caution about making conclusions about "UBC-O prof caught doing fake research" based off of only reading this blog post because the author of the blog hasn't really done his own due diligence and experience has taught me that it's really easy to selectively present evidence or distort things in a way that isn't immediately clear to a lay person (which in this area I am, and most of the people in this sub reddit are as well).

edit2: Schneider is "on the right side of things" as far as taking a stand against research misconduct - which is a very real problem - it's just that he's rather sloppy and is a good example of "if you find research misconduct, don't be Schneider be like the people who called out the fake bird genomes" because if you go about it the way Schneider is going about it your criticism probably isn't going to go anywhere and you might also get sued. On that last point - there is a reason news organizations, even small local ones, have in house lawyers. Defamation lawsuits are real and they suck a big one. A lot of them can also be avoided if you run what you've written by a lawyer who can identify what potential defamatory claims you are making, who might sue you over those claims, follow up to see if you are prepared to defend those claims and if not help you delete or reword things so you aren't going to get f*cked over in court over some small point.

I would like to remind everyone: If you are going to speak truth to power, please don't half ass it and if you are going to do so in writing under your own name maybe talk to a lawyer first.

edit3: if you want a long but rather funny example of what I mean by talk to a lawyer first if you're gonna speak truth to power:

Part 1: https://www.alabseries.com/episodes/episode-8-lawyer-brain-pt-3-the-counterclerk Part 2 (the part where they get sued by a side character from the above episode): https://www.alabseries.com/episodes/episode-27-coach