Hey guys,
It's been so long since I've updated lol. That's because I've been busy during the past two terms - I just happened to have a bit of time now before all my assignments are due.
Term 2
Let's start with the remainder of Term 2. Well it's a miracle I passed math, especially since they got rid of supplementary exams (the exam that saved my math grade in Term 1 lol). To be honest, I was able to do one question properly and the rest I had no clue so I wrote random crap lmao. As for physics, I walked into the exam feeling a bit better than my Term 1 exams. BUT I will say that I am lowkey annoyed at the School of Physics because when I got my final marks back, it said I failed the course. At that point, I had no clue what I did wrong because I spent last term making sure I got 100% in all my weekly quizzes and went to help sessions. I cried myself to sleep that night. But then, I get an email the next day saying that they calculated my final mark wrong because they forgot to include my lab exemption mark. I was relieved but also extremely pissed off. These days, I'm more paranoid with the pre-exam marking because I would never have known that they forgot to include my lab exemption mark. Moving on to comp, boy did I struggle with that course. At the beginning of the term, I didn't think the subject was that bad until the assignments came. Because it took me so long to understand the content, I always fell behind. It reached the point where I would cry whenever I'd do a quiz or during labs, or have panic attacks in the middle of lectures. I stopped attending lectures because of that. Shout out to Jamon for helping as much as he could last term but I failed comp lmao. I'll be taking ENGG1811 next year, which is Python. I started learning Matlab and Python by myself and omg they're a lot easier than C.
Term 3
This term, I'm taking ELEC1111, ENGG1300 and MMAN2130. These subjects are quite full-on. ENGG is difficult because not only does my lecturer go through stuff really fast, but it's completely different to what I've been taught in physics and getting out of my past habits is difficult lmao. ELEC is difficult because they're expecting a lot of things such as need to pass the lab exam and getting at least 40% in finals to pass the course. MMAN is difficult because there's a 4 hour TAFE component and my TAFE class finishes at 9pm, which doesn't leave me a lot of time to study (and I have a lab the next morning).
Let's start with ENGG. I appreciate my lecturer for providing so many resources and giving us the opportunity to give as many free marks as possible. For example, we just need to complete a set of questions and show it to the tutor and that's 1 mark given to us each week (the answers don't need to be correct - you just need to have an attempt). The tutorials are also very helpful, even though they rush going through the questions because we always run out of time. The Block Tests, however, are brutal. We're given 45 minutes to do 3 questions, but these questions take so long to do. It's a miracle I passed the first test but I don't think I passed the second test because I wasn't as prepared, and also because I spent a lot of my exam time crying over how I was unsure on how to do these questions. The lab reports aren't that bad though. I thrive on any writing components so it's not too bad.
When it comes to ELEC, I like how my lecturer has provided a lot of resources and lots of practice questions. However, the mid-terms were extremely rough. Apparently the average mark was 59 but a lot of my friends and the ELEC group chat members were saying they didn't pass the mid-terms (including myself). The lab exam wasn't hard, but the fact that I needed to pass the lab exam to pass the course added a lot more pressure. I was having a break down in the middle of the exam and one of my lab demos had to calm me down in the middle of the exam, especially since by the time I had completed half of the exam correctly, he was reminding me that I've already passed the lab exam. At this point, I'm re-learning everything because there are so many parts in the course where I'm trying to understand but I take so long to understand things rip.
As for MMAN, it doesn't have a final exam (thank god) but it is a group project with 3 tests during the term (each worth like 3%). I'd enjoy the group project even more if everyone was contributing. There should be 5 people in each group but because a lot of people dropped the course, they allowed having 4 people in each group. I happened to have 4 members (two of them are my friends) but one of them doesn't contribute or put any effort. Essentially, it's a 3 person group. We had to tell him off after submitting our first group assignment. As for the CAD tests, we have to make a part within 45 minutes. The problem is, 45 minutes isn't long enough. Plus, SolidWorks is annoying. Firstly, it's only on Windows (so I had to download Windows to my Mac laptop). The fact that it's very laggy makes it difficult to prepare for these tests. Even when using the computers at uni, it's notorious for lagging and crashing. And on a less important note, the layout of SolidWorks is ugly lol. At least use AutoDesk or Fusion, where it's compatible with Mac and doesn't lag.
Apart from me ranting about my courses, I'm getting more involved in uni life. I was a bit more involved in Term 1 but because I failed physics, I decided to step back on that in Term 2. I've decided to join the AIAA Rocketry Team, specifically the media team because they're in desperate need of content lol. I also recently ran for Marketing Director for AIAA and got the position! My friends also got executive positions in AIAA. The reason why we all pushed for executive positions is because at the moment, AIAA is disorganised. They don't upload content consistently and when they do, they always upload it at the weirdest times (like 2am). We all want to make improvements to the society so that's our main goal for 2020.
Anyway, I need to finish my second report which is due next week rip.
See you soon!
- Olivia