Online Lectures

As most people requested, here's a link to some of the best online lectures ever! I remember using all these lectures during my first year before every midterm/final! To be frank, I actually still use them! I hope you enjoy them - they're in HQ and broken up efficiently into categories and subcategories as well. The best part is that you don't have to sign up for any of it, and it's all completely free- Thank you MIT! I especially loved the math tutorials and found them to be of the greatest help, I'm really bad at math sadly.

So, if there's anything else you guys need - just tell me! Oh yes, and the link for the past papers as well. I'm pretty sure you'll find everything you need on this website - past finals, assessments, assignments and midterms. Thank you again, to everyone supporting the site!

Without further ado, here are the two links :

1. Online Lectures

2. Past Papers

Sudden Boost

Salut guys!

Just wanted to throw out a quick thank you to all my subscribers and regular visitors! The site is growing tremendously quickly. A few weeks back, I only got about 1 to 2 users a day, now there are on average 20 users. This all thanks to the previous users spreading the message. So, once again - thank you to you all. I'm definitely going to keep expanding the website, keep posting relevant information that can enhance your time at McGill and I'll keep replying to all your mails and comments(if they're questions). If there's anything at all that you want me to post on the site - tell you, and I guarantee I'll make a new page for you!

Someone requested that I post the links to Math 133 and Math 141 online tutorials and post some Comp 208 programs as well. I'll make sure I finish doing that sometime this week. That's really all from me - enjoy life, enjoy McGill - take care!

Ranking

So McGill got the coveted 18th rank that so many universities were fighting for - top 20! Last year, we were rank #20, so you can imagine how big this is. We beat universities like Berkley and Kings! I really think this is a monumental achievement for McGill - it's already been called the number 1 research university in Canada. Just a few days, McGill received 500 million for outsides companies and sources for research intensive studies - so you can imagine how well the McGill name is recognized.

Anyway, so here is the link to the ranking list:

Ranking 2009

Newspaper report

So, I guess we can say congrats to Heather Munroe Blum - headmistress of McGill University.
If you've seen McGill lately - it's all under construction, and the developments are simply amazing. The amphitheater, the restorations, the new buildings. The fact that McGill can so easily drop 500 million on making the campus better, shows how well established and funded they are. So to prospective McGill students - this should be incentive enough to try and join us here and this amazing institution. And to current students - congrats, go celebrate - haha!

Math 141 and 133 Calculators

As per requested in previous comments, I decided to post the numerous number of calculators that I've used throughout my math life at McGill. They're all online and extremely powerful. Some can actually integrate complex integrals, while others can find the determinants of 6x6 matrices in 2 seconds. I'm listing these links not so you can speedup your web work, but so you can quickly identify where the problem lies and in some situations - so you can work backwards to find out what method to use for integrals or inverses for example.

Math 141

Integration Calculator

List of every Intergral

Derivative Calculator

List of ever Derivative

Partial fraction Calculator

Factor & Simply Calculator

Math 133

Reduced Row Echelon Calculator

Everything else you could do in Math 133

I hope you like these calculators! Tell me what you think and what else you'd like me to post. Enjoy math!

Halloween

Hello! It’s Helene again, here to tell you about another exciting day in the life of ...well...me! So my boyfriend and I have been cracking our brains over Halloween costumes and we finally came up with something. There are so many parties all over the place and considering that this might be my last Halloween in Montreal, I wanted it to be amazing!

We first started researching couples costumes online and found a lot! None were particularly interesting – you had Adam and Eve, the Flintstones, lock and key, Hugh and the playboy bunny. But I think for Halloween, you really have to stand out to make a difference and to catch someone’s eye – especially the judges’! – ha-ha. We loved coming as pieces of chess, or r2d2 and c3po, or a twister mat, or a beer pong table! Those were amazing ideas, but ones I felt every couple out there was researching and going to come as.

Honestly, go on google and search for Halloween costumes, you’ll find a lot! Don’t copy them however; just get a roundabout idea from what to wear – in the end – make your design up from scratch. Montreal’s clubs hold like 600 people and at any given time, there are about 2000 people on the street – it would be horrible to see someone wearing exactly the same costume as you are!

So, the idea we settled on, was going as the Simpson! It's not that original, but it's something I doubt anyone will wear. I'm debating whether to paint myself yellow, or buy like foam and paint that yellow, then attach the body parts to ourselves. It's still all a mystery to me! I found some amazing youtube videos with people explaining what to wear and what not to wear to Halloween:

Outfits for Adults

Top5 Couple Outfits

For singles as well

Top 10 for 2009

Give them a look-see, they should make your decision much easier!

There are a ton of other amazing costumes - like mario bros, tetris, sperms and an egg, etc. I would definitely suggest going to the dollarama and buying your supplies from there! Though, I wouldn't really recommend putting body paint on yourselves from there - might end up burning your skin! Oh! yesterday I bought food from there - it was terrible - don't make that mistake. Just stick to things your not going to intake - haha!

Anyway, that's all from me. Take care, enjoy Halloween and take a lot of pictures - you'd want to remember your college Halloween - believe me - they're AMAZING!

The Dollarama

Ah yes! The dollarama! I remember the first time I went to one so clearly. It was almost magical stepping in and seeing 80% of the products sold for a dollar. Don’t get me wrong – this place was amazing! You could get virtually anything, from spoons to glassware to mirrors for a dollar +tax obviously. But the funny thing was that within two months of McGill’s freshmen being in university, most of the students living in New Residence were hooked. And I mean hooked! Buying plants, paper plates, bottles, guns, Christmas decorations from there – Stuff they didn’t even need.

That aside, I’d say the dollarama saved my bank account. I had a single room, so it was horribly lonely in there. With no decorations, few posters and a lot of space, the only things I could fill my room with were accessories from the dollar store. I bought table clothes, TV antennas, pencil holders, slippers, blankets, covers – everything! Within a month, I knew the blue prints of the place – ha-ha. I don’t know why everyone is so against the place to start with – it’s every cheap person’s dream come true. You can be so fancy and “rich” buying from the dollarama – because anyone who came into your room wouldn’t know where the half the things were bought from – yes! The quality is that good.

Anyway this isn’t really an informative blog post – it’s just me venting out my love for the dollar store. I must admit though, I spend a lot of money there – maybe about 10$ a week – NOT on food that too. But hey, I don’t mind, I’ve taken all the stuff from my first year and dumped it in my new apartment here. It all still looks new and is in excellent condition. So don’t fear the place – it really saves you a lot of money if you’re smart about what you buy. Don’t go buying hamster food when you don’t have one, don’t buy super glue if you need to stick paper together, and especially, don’t buy food.

Banking

Hey guys! Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, been finishing up with midterms. Only have 2 more left in November, so I’m good for this week. I got a lot of mails asking about banking and which banks to choose. So, I decided to write this blog about my favourite bank – RBC!

As you know there are about three main banks in Montreal – RBC, HSBC and TD. They’re all amazing banks with student plans and low monthly charges. What it basically boils down to is proximity, services and their plans.

RBC

I know RBC and HSBC have an awesome student plan where you don’t pay any start up or initialization fees. Plus, you don’t get charges monthly, nor are you swarmed with transaction fees. The only fees you do pay is when money is transferred to your account from another bank’s account. For instance, whenever my parents transferred money from their respective accounts, I got charges $30 - $15 for the transfer fee to RBC and $15 for the bank that sent the money.

It’s kind of stupid paying so much, so what my parents did was send one large sum of money for the year, so I only got charged once. For international students, it’s especially important to watch interest rates on a daily basis, so that when your parents do transfer money, you can save. I know that you can sometimes save about 300$ in exchange rates itself.

RBC has an unseen but important benefit – there are ATMs everywhere. New Residence has one, every mall has about three and the McGill campus has some as well. This basically means that you can deposit and withdraw money wherever you are, without paying any fee. If you’re an HSBC or TD banker, you have to pay a nominal fee to withdraw money from the RBC ATM.

HSBC

HSBC was my second choice, the only reason I didn’t get an account there was because there was only one ATM and one service center – right opposite the McGill campus on Sherbrook. It was a tad bit too far for me and I preferred going down to the lobby of New Residence to take out money there. HSBC has outstanding customer service, in that whatever problems you have, paying bills, online banking, issuing cheques, paying your mobile phone bill, McGill bill – they’ll do it for you, for free, right there and then. RBC has the same plan and you don’t have to wait for more than 5 minutes! I don’t know, but I think that’s really good.

TD

I’m really sorry, but I sadly don’t know much about TD, they’re not that into the student plan as RBC and HSBC are. They advertize like crazy – especially at frosh events, but I don’t know a lot of people who have TD accounts. All I can say is that they have a sweet plan wherein they pay you $50 to join TD. So, the minute you open an account there, you get $50 credited to your account! It’s that amazing? I would have joined, but the service center and ATMs were really far away – and I mean really far – somewhere on Peel and another one on Crescent. I made a lot of daily or weekly transactions, so TD didn’t work out for me.

How to ace Calc

For me, my hardest subject was without a doubt Math. Math 140, Math 133, Math 141, Math 263, Math 264, the whole thing seems like one big blur right now. I honestly have no idea how I got an A. Actually I do. I remember failing almost every assignment and quiz at first. But then I found YouTube. I know it seems so stupid, but ask yourself, do you actually get everything the Prof teaches? You have to attend every class and study everyday to get a word he says. At least for me, my Prof only focussed all his attention on the top 5 bright students and no one else. I hated it, it’s like the rest of the class didn’t exist.

Anyway, so ya, YOUTUBE! I searched for everything I didn’t understand there and watched explanations of how to do it. From the fundamental theorem of calculus to advanced integration, you had real geniuses teaching you online. They made things 10 times easier than the textbook can ever. If you’re in Math 133, you probably don’t get anything right now – Wikipedia is your friend. At first, there were these guy who’d shoot the answer in like 2 minutes while you spent three days trying to figure it out. But after Wikipedia, I could shoot the answers 4 times faster than they could. How? Cause wiki makes stuff simple. They don’t teach you the entire formula, only the condensed version of it.

TAs are also the best people to go to. I often got stuck with my COMP assignments and they were so friendly that they`d not only find the problem with my programs but actually correct them as well. Though you sometimes get these horrible TAs that just want to screw you over like their TAs did them. Ha-ha.

Making $20,000 in 2 days

This was a random study I found in Montreal on the web one day. This company http://www.anapharm.com/ was offering thousands of dollars almost every month for participants to try their experiment drugs. Now, even though that’s a lot of money and they say Health Canada approves it, I would honestly never try it. I remember reading an article about a man who went for a similar test in Toronto for an anti-inflammatory drug test and ended up with his sight impaired. There’s obviously no compensation for your medical expenses, you just get the x thousand dollars. I thought I’d leave the link there INCASE anyone is really desperate for cash. Don’t do it for fun otherwise.

Effects

Here’s another link you should read about how horribly wrong these test go: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2006/08/4840.ars You have to remember that even though they say it’s a 100% safe, each person’s body reacts differently to certain chemicals and drugs. Peanut butter is 200% safe, yet it can close to kill some people. The base point, don’t do it!!! Unless not having the money means death itself. These tests don’t usually fill up too quickly, so you can guarantee yourself a spot there. After you sign a few responsibility papers and contracts, you’re good to go. These tests often include you sleeping over at the lab for tests to be carried out on you, so make sure you have the time.

A Safer Choice

This however, is a site you should visit: http://www.hec.ca/en/current_student/financing_studies/work/index.html, it’s a bit like paid research, but to answer questions and make decisions. It’s mainly for group studies to observe human nature, and all that you disclose is your decisions, so it’s really safe. They even have work-study options to help you make money on and off campus. This site helped me a lot to find small part-time jobs all over the place. They have a lovely international section which I found was considerate, considering almost everything Canadian is for Canadians – a little...close minded I think?

I'll try and find some other websites you can visit for paid research. I know it's the quickest way to make LOADS of money, but please remember to be safe. I know a couple of people who've had bad experiences, so I don't want that happening to anyone else. I know that Concordia and McGill have MBAs looking for participants for decision research - those are super safe. But I've posted that on the "making money" link, so make sure to check that out too.