Hello guys, I am a first year Computer Science student. I just build my timetable from the timetable generator.

I am taking German just for interest. The commerce courses is for the Honours Business Informatics program. I haven't decide which program to go after first year, but it wouldn't hurt to have one more path.

Anyone who has taken/ your friends has taken German or Philosophy? Could you please tell me if they are difficult to learn? English is my second language. If German is pretty hard, how about French, Russian or Spanish? I just want to learn at least one more language over the university.

Could someone please take a look at it and give some advice? I will be really appreciated.
The pictures are a bit small, this is the link: http://www.timetablegenerato r.com/#myzhweo

i speak german fluently and grew up in germany. german is probably the easiest language to learn. russian is hard and french is in between.

If you grew up in Germany then you probably have a skewed perception of how easy it is to learn. I found it very difficult, especially with three "genders".

i learned english and german at the same time since my parents arent both german - one is canadian. given that i learned both languages simultaneously, i am telling you: german is way easier to learn. its more logical and structured.

also that 830 class is terrible. good luck with that.

It doesn't matter though, you were still exposed to the language much more than someone who has never heard German in their life and is learning it totally new, at a much older age.

what do you mean by the 830 class? thanks for your info

If you're not a morning person by now, 8:30 classes will be a huge pain in the behind. I had 4 a week first semester, figured I'd suck it up because the prof for the 8:30 lecture was better and I couldn't change my 8:30 tutorial time. Not a good idea. If you have trouble getting up in the morning, consider switching to a different core.

Take German! It's the closest to English of your named choices. German is a useful language because of the dominance of Germany in the European Union.

At McMaster the German language prof is Nikolai Penner. He is an extremely skilled and sympathetic teacher. Lessons are well organized. He listens and reacts to suggestions and feedback. He will help you to get a good mark for the course.

(Comment from a former language teacher, and linguist who has taken probably a dozen languages...)

With this timetable generator....is this the exact same thing you plug into solar to get the timetable u made?

Originally Posted by patriots4eva

With this timetable generator....is this the exact same thing you plug into solar to get the timetable u made?

I'm not sure what you mean by "exact same thing".

The timetable generator is not an official tool made by McMaster University. I'm not sure if you've done this before - your program says "chemistry" which isn't a first-year program but your year says "prospective student", but I'm going to assume you haven't.

When you initially register and pick courses, you simply select the courses that you want and the term in which you want them. 99% of the time, you won't select sections. Then after everyone has done course selections, SOLAR will close for sectioning, and then you'll get your timetable sometime in early August, with sections assigned. Then, a couple of days later when SOLAR reopens, you go online and you can switch the sections if you want, to match whatever is more convenient or fix any conflicts. There is no guarantee that you will get the sections you want, or that your timetable will match the mock-timetable you have made for yourself.

Since there are so many sections in first year courses, you probably won't have much use for the timetable generator. It becomes an incredibly useful tool in upper years though, when most courses have only one section and you need to make sure you select courses that don't conflict with each other.

It's impossible for you to take Math 1XX3 for two reasons
1) It's only open to kids in the Math/Stats program
2) Math 1ZB3 is its equivalent.

Also, if I'm correct, you need to take Lin. Alg. 1, which in your case would be Math 1ZC3

German 1Z06 is a pretty easy class. When I was in the class, there were a lot of painfully slow learners that made the class unbearable at times. This one girl never got it through her head that "ein" is pronounced like "eye-n" and kept saying "eeeeeeeen". She also kept saying she would love to visit "Leeebzeeesh" (Leipzig).

Nikolai Penner is a pretty cool guy. He's not a legit German and pronounces some German words kinda weird, but he's a solid prof. If you do poorly on a written assignment, he lets you get half the points you lost back by correcting everything.

He also showed us a lot of annoyingly addictive videos like this:

Originally Posted by hilton

german is way easier to learn. its more logical and structured.

In spelling correspondence to pronunciation, it definitely is, but I wouldn't say so otherwise. Pretty much ambiguous genders, overly complicated adjective endings and the pretty much pointless accusative case (why only change for masculine?!?!) I think are good examples why.

Too bad McMaster doesn't offer Dutch; it's like easy mode German.

By exact same thing I meant what you have on your timetable generator will be your actual timetable...no I haven't done this before, I'm going into first year next year, chemistry is just what I want to go into....Thanks for letting me know, I've been working with it for a few hours now trying to get it all worked out :( what a huge waste....

I have a quick question...when solar opens in June for course selection I've heard I need to be there at 12:01, should I? And do they give you a date when you get your timetable? If so, should I be on there at 12:01 to make changes?


Thanks for your response

Originally Posted by patriots4eva

By exact same thing I meant what you have on your timetable generator will be your actual timetable...no I haven't done this before, I'm going into first year next year, chemistry is just what I want to go into....Thanks for letting me know, I've been working with it for a few hours now trying to get it all worked out :( what a huge waste....

I have a quick question...when solar opens in June for course selection I've heard I need to be there at 12:01, should I? And do they give you a date when you get your timetable? If so, should I be on there at 12:01 to make changes?


Thanks for your response

The times and dates for everything are in a pdf on the registrar's website and on several pages on MI - this includes when timetables are released and when you can go in and change sections (those are two separate things).

You can be on right at 12:01am if you want to, but don't expect to be able to log in right away.