ABC Journal Guidelines

For A-Grade Claimer Consideration

If you aspire to and think you should claim an A, please heed the following:

You must only check the ABC column for each week if your record of “Above and Beyond Climbing” shows complete compliance with what the syllabus says:

To claim [an A] you must have done and recorded evidence in your portfolio of doing [at least two of the first three and at least two of the last three] behaviors listed below, each week throughout each 4-week period.

teaching and/or helping others in the class but not in your group;

teaching a Non-CS, Non-CE, Non-EE, Non-SE major about the material in this class to help them with a class they are taking;

applying what you’ve learned in this class in another class you are currently taking;

posting thoughtful questions;

solving puzzles (see above) or problems marked as optional; and

doing other work not assigned, exploring other topics in mathematics, writing code implementing what you are learning that has not been assigned, etc.

What if you comply completely with these ABC requirements, but the rest of your performance is pretty spotty? That’s called undermining your claim. How can you go above and beyond course requirements, if you don’t even go up to them?

Suggestion for Journal Keeping

Too late for this time around, but hereafter you could profitably learn to use the org-capture package!

Here is a gentle introduction to this powerful tool.

And here is some sample configuration code to put in a source block and evaluate when starting up spacemacs:

(require 'org-capture)

(setq org-directory (or (getenv "WORK") (getenv "HOME"))
      capture-file "seize-the-day.org"
      standard-options (list :empty-lines 1 :clock-in t :clock-resume t)
      org-capture-templates `(("t" "todo" entry (file ,capture-file)
                               "* TODO %?\n%U\n%a\n" ,@standard-options)
                              ("n" "note" entry (file ,capture-file)
                               "* %? :NOTE:\n%U\n%a\n" ,@standard-options)
                              ("j" "journal" entry (file+datetree ,capture-file)
                               "* %?\n%U\n" ,@standard-options)))

How to invoke org-capture

SPC a o c

This key sequence brings up the “Select a capture template” menu. Type q to abort if you change your mind.

Tip for Windows Users

If you want a universal keyboard shortcut to capture something in Org, you'll want to create one more shortcut:

[ ] Step 1: Create a shortcut named Org-Capture with the following target:

"C:\Program Files\GNU Emacs\bin\emacsclientw.exe" -n --eval '(org-capture)'

[ ]
Step 2: Create a shortcut key combination:

In the shortcut-creation dialogue box, in the bottom cluster of options, there’s a field labeled “Shortcut key”. Click once into the box, then hit the desired key combination (e.g., Ctrl + Shift + F1, but you can use whatever). Apply, and close. Now hit your keyboard combination, and the shorcut should launch. Some versions of Windows require a logout and perhaps even a reboot before remembering this keyboard shortcut.
[ ] Step 3: Copy the shortcut to the Start Menu:

C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\