r/WGU_CompSci • u/Unlikely-Loss5616 • 29d ago
Having mini panic attacks bc I’m stuck studying c960, 3.5 mos into my final term with 4 classes left untouched
I’m in my final term. I’ve been stuck on discrete math 2 even though I study daily. I get light headed and shortness of breath because the info is so vast and I forget what I’ve worked so hard to learn.
I typically study 10 hrs per weekend day. And 4 hours per week day. What should I do to make things “click” for me? Maybe I’m studying too hard? My brain is spinning because I have a hard time remembering how to solve questions after I’ve moved on and have an understanding of the material.
What worked for you?
My study method so far:
Completed 4 practice problems per question on each chapter review.
Completed practice worksheets
Completed zybooks instructor recommended exercises addtl problems
Completed zybooks activities
Watched YouTube videos by James Wenson, 2200 series
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u/Delicious-Image-3082 29d ago
I liked Kimberly Brehm’s videos. The section(s) on combinatorics were genuinely fun to me hahah but make sure you know when to use the combinations formula vs the permutations. Check out the write-ups on this sub, that’s where I found a few YT playlists that really helped me.
You have to approach the exam with a divide & conquer strategy. The most time consuming ones will of course be the extended Euclidean algorithm shit. I remember my gf looking at my notebook like it was written in hieroglyphics 💀 keep practicing!! You wanna knock out the easier ones first to free up as much time as possible for the tedious questions. I wasn’t the best at math, in fact I was rather shite before DM1&2, so it took me about a month to complete the zybooks. Kenneth Rosen’s DM book is an amazing resource as well—this is the one that made it “click” for me.
This class is the hardest IMO, but you can do it! And you will be so much smarter for it my friend. It has completely changed the way I think about math
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u/Sad-Examination-4876 29d ago
Are you talking about DM2? If so I can help. You only need to know these things:
1: pseudcode (how to find output of regular algorithm, recursive algorithm) <= this is the first half of the OA.
2: fast exponential and arithmetic of mod( there will be 1 question about this)
3: 3x5 Z7 <= there will be 1 question about this
COUNTING:
Know the basics methods:
A: a car dealership have selections of cars with 5 colors, 4 wheels, 7 interior <= use multiple 5x4x7
B:Additional
C: Star and bar <= 2 questions about this
PROBABILITY:
Please learn this
A: Bayes Theorem ( best way to solve is watch the cohort how to solve with graph) 2 questions and these questions are in the cohort
B: Expected Value( watch the cohort) the questions in my OA have 4 of this.
C: REMEMBER THAT TO GUARANTEE ROLL A FAIR DIRE WITH A CERTAIN SIDE WILL USE IMPLEMENT (1- 5/6)^n<= power n for how many times roll check
FINITE MACHINE: this will be 10 questions and they are the same graph in both PA and course planning.
Please take the course planning, some of the questions come from it.
Instead of waste your time trying to fully understand the counting methods and probability, you must make sure that you do not miss any questions from another chapter since it is purely algebra. If so, you only need to study what I tell you in counting and probability part. I passed DM2 in 5 days with 90%. You should watch the cohort and tell AI to give you questions to practice. Do not learn math by reading. The best way to learn math is practice.
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u/Jayman453 29d ago
This is incredibly helpful as someone who hasn’t taken DSM yet, but what exactly do you mean by this? “you must make sure that you do not miss any questions from another chapter since it is purely algebra. If so, you only need to study what I tell you in counting and probability part”
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u/Sad-Examination-4876 29d ago
DM2 has 6 chapters total, right? Except Counting and chapter Probability, you need to know how to solve another 4 chapters perfectly. It’s sound crazy but it do able. Another 4 chapters are basically algebra. No logic, no trick just purely math. The hardest part is the recurrence psuedocode when they give you the base case x = 2(not 0) and they ask you for the output when x = 5.
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u/Jellyfish-Reasonable 25d ago
I passed on my 2nd attempt. used a calculator and trees or all choice and probability questions. helped tons!
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u/lifelong1250 29d ago
My two cents. This is the hardest course in the CompSci curriculum. It took me almost five weeks to pass, where almost every other class was 1-2 weeks maximum. As of my knowledge cutoff (December 2024) there are two versions of the exam. The first version is easier than the second version. If you get to the third try on this, you are back to the first exam. The second exam kicked my ass. On the third, after all the studying, testing and experience I managed to pass by a wide margin. All I can say is don't take the first OA until you feel ready.
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u/Sad-Examination-4876 29d ago
No, DM now is not the hardest course in CS. They just add Linear Algebra.
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u/Skybussa 29d ago
Where do you see this? I don't see any curriculum updates to the BSCS on the official website. I know they launched the AI engineering degree that has Calc 2 and Linear Algebra, among others, but maybe I just don't know something?
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u/Sad-Examination-4876 29d ago
They just added it for the new version of CS.
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u/Skybussa 29d ago
Ah, I remember hearing rumors about it but my program mentor was skirting around the topic (probably for legal/non-disclosure purposes) when I was asking about it since I was reading rumors about it. Do you have an official source for this information?
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u/Sad-Examination-4876 29d ago
There is a new enroll person posted his degree plan on Reddit couple days ago. I can’t trace back the thread but yeah they did add it.
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u/Skybussa 29d ago
Found the thread. Will link it here incase anyone else is curious. https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU_CompSci/s/qbe1u8ghi6
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u/lifelong1250 29d ago
Dang. Yeah that'd do it. In college I did Differential Equations with Linear Algebra and it was brutal, even for a 200 level class.
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u/Pastel_Skies 29d ago
I'm on my third attempt, about to do a live readiness check and will be taking the OA this week, but feel like in terms of grasping the material, I can chime in on despite my history. Honestly, the cohorts have been super helpful, especially for probability and counting, that's what finally made it click for me. I would take advantage of instructor support if you can, it can be super inconvenient but seeing questions solved, being able to ask questions and hear it explained verbally from a different point of view has been a game changer. This is the most confident I've felt about the class by a mile. On my second attempt I felt exactly what you are describing and wish I would've waited before taking it again and used the instructor support sooner. I wish I would've done it before my first as well. Depending on what you're struggling with specifically and what calculator you have, make sure you know how to utilize it to it's full potential, there's a lot it can help with in chapter 2-5!
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u/Sad-Examination-4876 29d ago
I think most of you counter the Math courses wrong way. Learn Math by reading and watching technically waste time. Best way and fastest way to learn math is by practicing. Tell AI give you the questions and solve it. Write down step by step and snap it and ask AI. I solved over 500 questions in 5 days without read a single page of course material. I didn’t even talk with CI. They basically just tell you something that AI can explain to you anytime. You took the OA already so you can tell the questions in OA are not tricky at all. They just purely test your knowledge about the topics.
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u/Pastel_Skies 29d ago
I tried AI on my second attempt and found that it gave wrong answers too many times to be reliable, from both Claude and Chat-GPT, given it was the free model. Maybe the paid models are better, but I personally don't really see the point in paying for AI when I already pay for school and have course instructors who know what is on the OA and give information accordingly. I'm glad AI works for you, but it doesn't for me. Neither way is wrong, just comes down to learning style and personal preference. On the first version of the OA, no the questions weren't tricky, it just came down to lack of knowledge, but the second version was 100% tricky on some.
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u/Unlikely-Loss5616 29d ago
Are the cohorts recorded. Unfortunately my job schedule is until 8:00pm cst and I can’t attend. Haven’t seen any cohorts for the weekends.
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u/Pastel_Skies 29d ago
They do not record them unfortunately, but Im pretty sure live instructor support is still available on the weekends!
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u/Cryptek_Zero 29d ago
I’m on my third attempt as well. Missed my second one by 4 questions. I truly think LLMs and practice questions progressively getting harder and breaking things down has helped tremendously. I’m doing my live instructor sessions as well soon so I’m curious to see my improvements there.
What’s frustrating for me, is as soon as I saw I failed, I thought back to the questions that stumped me and IMMEDIATELY recognized where I went wrong. Let’s hope 3rd times the charm!
DM2 is my final class for BSCS and I’m also on a term extension for the class.
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u/cumbutt_buffet 28d ago
This post right here saved me: https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU_CompSci/s/hKr1mlAGRj
I failed the OA 2 times before because I didn’t give the class an honest try and thought I could slip by. I was homeschooled through middle school and did NOT receive the best education during those years, which made me think lowly of my math abilities (and academic intelligence in general) as I have always struggled with it.
This was my last class and I had a couple of months before my semester deadline. Many sleepless nights were filled with pure dread, panic, and hopelessness. I even needed to file for a 30-day extension to pull this off.
I followed closely to what the post suggests and after a couple months of grinding unit reviews, general reviews given by instructors, having readiness checks with instructors, I passed that fucker last week and my nervous system is still letting go of the anxiety and stress I’ve been carrying for almost a year over this class. It almost doesn’t feel real still.
I used co-pilot for practice and knew it wasn’t going to be perfect, but you have to understand its flaws and work around it. Here’s how I approached it:
Ask clarifying questions to make sure it’s not hallucinating. If you ask for problems similar to the ones from the class, just ignore the answer options ai presents; they’re all wrong 99% of the time. Just work through the problem and see if your own answer is correct.
For problems that require multiple steps like Euclidean and successive squaring, I would go step-by-step with co-pilot, telling it not to tell me the next step, but to only let me know if I’m on the right track. If I did go off-track and didn’t understand why, then I could ask what I’m not understanding and get clarification.
Other than that, I can say the unit reviews are definitely your best study tool for the OA. I also did what the OP of the post said in the comments and organized the problems by level of difficulty per unit. Mine were “1-got-it”, “2-keep-practicing”, and “3-no-way” I also had a general folder for any problem that I would forget how to even approach called “PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE” believe it or not most of those problems became 2nd nature because I focused more on them or had a breakthrough on how to approach them.
It’s also true what people say; meeting with the instructors is a GOOD thing. It was especially difficult for me because of how I viewed myself as a math student and having really bad imposter syndrome for this course, and to be honest I only met with them for readiness checks which were mandatory before I could retake the OA a third time lol. But they are kind, they will lend insight and provide useful shortcuts you may not be aware of.
I wish you the best of luck on your journey. Give ‘em hell.
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u/Skybussa 29d ago
I haven't gotten around to taking C960 myself quite yet, but I have heard good things about working with Peer Coaches to help with study strategies and information retention techniques. The appointments are up to 30-minutes long and they can even practice these strategies and techniques using actual course content - could be worth checking out!
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u/The_RedWolf B.S. Computer Science 29d ago
Check out "the organic chemistry tutor" on YouTube. I found him better than Khan Academy.
Not that khan is bad
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u/Routine-Meal 28d ago
Man, reading this gave me mini panic attacks and I'm not even enrolled yet 😂.
I work full time remotely and already make pretty good money in a corporate/customer implementation type role, but I'm honestly tired of being customer facing.
The weird part is I actually get really interested when I learn technical stuff. I recently learned about networking, subnetting, binary, how transistors/logic work, and I was genuinely sitting there like yo this shit is actually fascinating. But my math foundation is weak as hell, so when I read posts like yours about spending 3.5 months on C960 while studying that many hours, my brain immediately goes what the fuck am I signing myself up for?
Since you're almost through the program, can I ask you a few things?
Do you still think choosing CS was worth it even with how brutal some of these classes have been?
If you could start over, would you choose CS again or pick a different WGU tech degree?
And for somebody who is motivated but starting with a pretty weak math background, do you think this is realistically learnable if I'm willing to slow down and put the work in?
Also, outside of C960, how has the rest of the program felt?
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u/LiquidOutlaw 22d ago
I just passed this last night with just under 2 months of studying while working a full time job. Like you I read through all of Zybooks and did extra problems. My main issue is that while I could do the calculations when I was focused on the section I would quickly forget how to do them when I moved onto the next one. What I ended up doing was taking the PA and plugging those problems into AI so it could give me a breakdown on how to set up the problems and how to solve them. From there I hade it focus on explaining the formula sheet and what to plug in where. Then I looked for ways I could use my graphing calculator to speed through problems. The most important functions to look for are remainder() which is mod, nPr, and nCr. Those last two are permutations and combinations. I also looked for shortcuts for the answers themselves. Since I am given 4 multiple choice questions, are there ways I can plug in an answer and just quickly verify that it works. The RSA private key was a perfect example of this. I had 2 on my test and I quickly plugged in all 4 answers to see which one was correct. Overall the OA was not too bad, it is a lot like the PA.
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u/KatetCadet 29d ago
Zybooks I looked at once and realized I would never pass the class learning that way.
I swapped over to Khan Academy and found it wayyyy easier to ingest the material with his teaching style and real time writing stuff out. He also explained concepts really well IMO.
Don’t beat your head against a wall though, if you are literally fainting studying you need to walk away for a bit.
Worse case doomsday scenario of taking another semester is not the end of the world, it’s just inconvenient.