And so comes to an end, the semester! One more semester left, and will be my long overdued graduation.

Warning: dry and geeky paragraphs ahead.

This sem, academic wise, hasn't exactly been easy, nor has it been terribly difficult. It started off with focusing solely on design project, where I spent more hours a day designing this bridge the I actually do sleeping. Its really cool that I get the feel of designing an actual project, but on the other side of the coin, I realised that there's so much to learn when I actually get out into the working world. In actual fact, midway through the project, it actually feels like, for every problem we run into, we just ask our external consultant. Maybe a little too much spoonfeeding? But I guess it would take forever if we didnt get answers from them. Check out my bridge below! =P


What followed next was probably the start of my final year project, and playing catchup with all the other modules. Struggled like crazy with my finite element module. I couldnt grasp what was the point of all the different matrices and nodes. I spent by far the most amount of time on this module, probably even more then my fyp itself! But at the end of it all, I began to see the signifiance of the module and actually found it a little fun! Not the exam tho. that was a little screwed up as a freaking axisymmetric question came out. Like hello? there was no example nor tutorial question on it ler. And three pages of cheat sheet? Overkill la. I probably could squeeze everything in two. But then my masterpiece was microscopic. Haha. And I saw someone bring a magnifying glass into the exam hall. Haha! Thats a first.

 

And by far my most favourite module this sem is the steel design! But then again, there's not many modules to compare with. FYP and design project doesn't exactly feel like proper modules. I like how the lecturer is soo soooo gangster like and that he teaches with loads of examples from what is happening outside in the real world. I like it that I probably can relate to any structure I come across when going out. Which is why I'm in civil engineering! We build civilizations! =) Steel structures are so awesome in what it can accomplish as compared to boring grey concrete structures. Haha. Hope those concrete ppl don't drop a block of concrete on my head. In the end, composite is the way to go. A mix of concrete and steel.

Soil ah... soil ah.. Soil actually means suay in hokkien I think. How can the lecturer go thru 2 questions in two hourss?!? Somemore the example is already fully explained in the text book. Really wasting time la going for lessons in this module. the problem with easy modules is that if you make even a careless mistake, you can be pretty sure that 50% of the cohort got it correct. I definitely could have done better in the exam, but complacency got the better of me. The majority of year 4s kept telling me that its easy and the exam shouldn't be a problem. True enough, the exam wasn't a problem. The problem was not taking the module seriously enough. At the end of the day, listening to the majority only makes you one of them, detrimental in a bell curve scenario.

And as for my FYP, well, lets just say I'm more worried for this more then any other module, and that I've been worrying about it all through exams. sigh sigh fyp fyp..