C Programming#

I will skip this one. I only took it as a make-up course after changing majors. For a second-year student, this result was normal—mainly because I barely studied it.

Data Structures — 91#

I was surprised by this score, not because I studied badly, but because the exam was genuinely difficult. The teacher’s mock paper was rather easy; the real paper had roughly twice as many questions. I wrote from the moment I received it until the end, mostly drawing diagrams and handwriting code. I nearly forgot to transfer the multiple-choice answers to the answer sheet, then used all my Gaokao-trained emergency speed to scribble them down. I left with shaking legs and no energy to cycle back to my dorm.

Anyway, here is how I studied it.

University Physics II B — 89#

This was the only course where consistently listening in class and working hard paid off exactly as expected. Data Structures above was a self-study result. I also listened seriously in Discrete Mathematics and Linear Algebra B, but got only 82 and 79, which made me furious at first.

After calming down, the reason was clear: listening in class completed the first step, learning knowledge; it did not complete the second, learning how to solve problems. I had little homework in those subjects, did only one paper for each final, and never reviewed systematically. Knowing something is not the same as being able to score well on it.

Physics had enough regular workbook questions, which made review easy. I had completed one pass by around week 15 and another before the exam. A good plan is to put 80% of your practice into the required workbook, then review it thoroughly. If you cannot solve a question during the term, Gemini 2.5 Pro-level AI can explain it clearly. If you never did the workbook during the term, do papers directly in finals: many workbook questions are difficult or not tested.

Physics is not particularly convenient to self-study. If you must do it, read the book, ask AI, then find matching question types in past papers. At my school, the papers are public and my teacher posted enough on the learning platform. Also, some difficult material from class is not included in the final. In many chapters, only a few core formulas matter; for de Broglie waves, for instance, $\lambda = \frac{h}{p}$ may be enough.

Java Programming — 88#

This was a real last-minute breakthrough. ZJUT’s Java exam permits one open-book page. You do not need extremely deep Java knowledge: go through the syllabus or slides, copy what you do not know onto the sheet, then do two papers.

The night before the exam, I studied and made the sheet from 20:00 to 1:30, then read two papers. Final review took 6h, and I had spent about 10h studying during the term.

Handwritten programming questions, especially threads and GUI, are troublesome. Record code patterns for the major question types. My second open-book page covered threads, GUI, and streams/files. Please do not share these pages around if you use them as reference; it is embarrassing when people quote my blog in a live senior presentation.

This year’s programming questions happened to be all handwritten types, with no GUI, so some preparation was unused. That does not mean those topics will not appear next year; past papers show that GUI and threads appear often.

Computer Networks and Data Structures Course Projects#

Computer Networks project: 88. Data Structures project: Excellent (95).

These two projects were hell.

My biggest scheduling failure was not realizing how much time they would consume. Each took nearly two days, enough time to review Java twice. If you read this before finals, allocate time for projects carefully.

For Computer Networks, I built a simulated school campus network in Packet Tracer.

The difficult parts were external/internal connectivity and port mapping. I used NAT, a web browser, port forwarding, DNS, and OSPF, which I thought might earn bonus points. During assessment I explained the design for seven or eight minutes and passed easily. I asked for an Excellent grade, but got 88, probably because my report was weak. If you want a high report score, find a senior’s past report with 95 or above.

For Data Structures, I wrote an AVL-tree library-management system, like more than 90% of the class. The important part is having a distinctive idea that your teacher notices. Mine was multi-level tree comparison—category, then author, then title. Books in the same category and by the same author become naturally adjacent in the data structure without manual sorting. The teacher seemed to like that small innovation.

Mao Zedong Thought and the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics — 87#

The key here is not doing papers. If you can recite the material, you can earn points. Memorize the focus points the teacher gives; they are usually what will appear. You may find many materials from older cohorts, but one or two supplementary sets are enough. All teachers for my cohort marked ten textbook focus points and three extended points, and they covered around 95% of the exam. For this kind of course, listening in class does not feel very useful for raising scores; the material has to be memorized.

Marxist Theory — 84#

The exam score was probably fine, but my participation score was terrible. One more absence and I would have been barred from the final. I even taught an unprepared roommate to a score in the seventies on the night before the exam, so I think I understood it reasonably well.

Unlike the previous political course, this one is hard to cram. My teacher did not give focus points, and the content forms a connected system rather than isolated facts. You need to understand every chapter that can be examined, then remember it. It requires less pure memorization than other political courses; once you understand it, you mostly know it.

If you cannot bear reading the textbook, try this series:

{An Exhaustive Production} Marxist Philosophy in One Go

That link is only the philosophy section; the creator also has videos on the other parts. My cohort’s exam was entirely long-answer questions, so do not waste time drilling multiple-choice questions that will not appear.

I will skip PE, Probability Theory, and the courses where I did too badly to discuss them.

Computer Networks — 82#

This was probably the hardest course and there was genuinely a lot to learn, so I have little right to complain. There are two common Bilibili choices:

Computer Networks Made Easy

USTC Computer Networking, Top-Down Approach, 7th Edition

Watch the first if you only want a good exam score; watch the second if you want to learn more networking knowledge. I watched the second and spent a lot of time on untested material, but I learned plenty and do not regret it.