Exams are finally over
Saturday, June 18, 2005

Hey guys, whats up? Long time no see. Well, I've just finished my exams. At 11:00am on Saturday June 18th I finished my 2nd year electronic engineering exams. No more revision everyday, no more worry about not revising, no more guilty nagging feeling I should be doing work, it's all over for another year and it's a sunny glorious day. So, I guess I'll fill you all in on the back story of my exams. On May 7th I decided I should start preparing for the eight exams ahead of me, here's the summary:

1. Systems and Control, a look at the theoretical side of systems, stability and feedback.
2. Signals and Processing, how to analyse signals, transform them, create radio receivers, frequency modulation.
3. Ultra Large Scale Integration (ULSI), the physics and science of making 50nm transistors and other nanotechnology.
4. Analogue Design, transistor amplifiers, operational amplifiers, field effect transistors.
5. Digital Design, microprocessor programming, vhdl, assembly, PLDs, FPGAs.
6. Software Development, c++, Object orientated programming and Unified Modelling Language.
7. Applied Linear Algebra, matrix optimisation, solving linear equations, eigenvalues.
8. Electronic Systems, a look at reliability design and the construction and use of micro sensors.

These are the exams I had ahead of me. After playing a lot of Halo 2 and not really working all year I decided I needed to really get down and do some learning. And learning I did, I spent 6 solid weeks revising EVERY DAY for at least 5 hours, my record being 10 hours straight (think about that). I gradually started learning everything I'd covered over the past year but not without problems, from writing so much I would get repetitive strain problems in my hand, I'd never feel like taking a break and it all did get a little taxing. But this last week has been the most depressing of weeks since I have been at university. Everyone in my house had finished their exams by Tuesday whilst I still had three on Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning. YES, I had an exam at 9am on a Saturday morning. Not only this, but I still had not taken the most difficult of the topics, Signals and Processing, essentially two modules packed into one, I had to learn all about frequency, phase and amplitude modulation, their creation, detection, efficiency, benefits, types, uses, etc... and also signal processing, Fourier transforms, Fourier series, discrete Fourier transforms, fast Fourier transforms, auto correlation functions, filter design, anti-aliasing filters and loads of other stuff. Needless to say, it took forever and it took everything out of me and it was while everyone else was relaxing, being bored and playing video games. And on top of it, I had two straight after. Well, last night I missed a free ticket to a Ben Folds gig to revise for my final exam (I'm that dedicated) and now I'm just overjoyed that it's over with. If I had to wait just a few more days before I finished I'm sure I would have cracked, my final exam was on the last possible day I could have an exam.

So now I can begin doing all the things I have wanted to do for a long time in no specific order; I can complete Knights of the Old Republic, play some more Halo 2, visit Alton Towers, spend time with my girlfriend, finish reading Catch 22 and all sorts of little website things.

Oh by the way, my co-webmaster, EndofRadio opened up his first new site for a long time the other day. It's amazing he got a site completed and publically released. Anyway, if you want to see the site, you can find the Mount Eerie Preservation Society over at http://mounteerie.trivialbeing.net

Labels: Life

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