Last Exam Down

Well, I’m all done. Unless there are any surprises, that should be the last exam of my degree. Despite my lack of understanding of some things and my poor preparation, I actually wound up doing fairly well. Fairly well may be an understatement there. It doesn’t really make me feel any better though. The important thing about that though isn’t that I know the equations, I’m sure I’ll forget that soon enough. It’s important that I understand the methodology and I think I correctly demonstrated that.
So, what do I do next? I feel like celebrating, but I’m not sure how. Something big though. After that, I find a job and go work. It also feels like a good time to start a new project. Probably going to get some machining equipment going. It looks like I’ll probably be heading back to Calgary and I have some unfinished business there. Calgary is home to the Western Canadian Robot Games and I used to always enter it with a friend of mine. It’s time to show off a bit of new technology. Once I develop it that is. Before I can build anything though, I need to have tools to build things. I want a mill drill.

Well One More Left

Well, one more test left to write and I guess I’ll just face things as they come. I find myself wanting to find excuses for my lack of perparation, such as the week I spent ill. In first and second year, I’d have finished doing everything I could to prepare well before the exam. I don’t really know what to say about third year. This exam worries me, not because I think there’s a chance I won’t pass, but rather because I don’t think I’ll do well. Maybe there’s just too much material to cover with the project and everything. I feel like I’ve really been rushed through a lot of this. If everything goes as expected, I’ll probably walk away feeling like I should have done better.
Also, I’ve been pushing myself very hard for a long time. I deserve a good break. The fact that I’m not prepared drives me nuts though. I’ve always had very high standards for myself, but they have slipped over the years. There’s a chance that I might be in denial about how much trouble I’m really in. If I were to do this over again, there’s definately some things I’d do differently.

As Good As It Can Go

Well, things went as well as they could on the professional practice exam. There were a few things I didn’t know, like what someone else feels should be the five steps to managing an engineering career. I know for sure that I passed this exam, though I could have done better if I had more time to prepare and wasn’t under so much stress. I’m not going to say that this materia isn’t important because it is an accreditation requirement, but I have the general idea. Much of the material covered relates to safety and the duty to society and the public in general. Though this is one exam where I can happily sit back and say that I did good enough. Then I’ll promptly get up and get back to work on studying for my next exam.
Also, it looks like the local astronomy group is going to have some serious activity this weekend. I wonder if I can get in on any of it. It would require me getting a ride out of town since I don’t have my own transportation. Anyway, gotta keep moving, no time to rest.

8.5 hours to test time – calm before the storm

Well preparations have been made as best they can. There’s no turning back now. After this next exam, I have twelve hours to prepare for the next one. Then, custom shall prevail and I will stop working promptly at midnight. The exam I’ll be facing tomorrow is a largely conceptual exam and I feel well prepared for it. As for the one after that, it’s largely a test of analytical ability. My equation sheet for that test is still incomplete. My notes are incomplete, but twelve hours should be plenty to derive the equations that I’m missing. At this stage of the game, I have to be able to trust my linear algebra and calculus skills as well as my ability to decide which equations I need to obtain the result I’m looking for.
I have an absolute confidence in myself and my abilities. I am also without fear.

One last post tonight

School work is moving a little slower than I had hoped. My notes are a little incomplete and I was hoping to clear enough of the stuff I know for sure is correct tonight. There’s still quite a bit that needs to be recorded in my 7 pages of crib sheets that I’m allowed to bring in. The goal is still to get all that out of the way by noon. The only way I’ll be doing that is to get a good night sleep and start right away in the morning. At the moment, thoughts are on getting this material covered so that I can stop worrying about the last exam.
I also can’t stop thinking of the 3d printer nozzle that I want to build. I think I’ll try to get everything I need at one stop after the exams. There’s some information that I need first, mainly the grain size of the pellets, what temperature they melt at, and what temperature they’ll be irreperably damaged. I’ll also need a good termometer. At the moment, I’m thinking one of those meat thermometers will do nicely. It’s roughly the right temperature range and I should be able to just poke the tip into the test area. I’m undecided about how to connect my drive motor to my drill bit, though cordless screwdrivers are cheap enough. Heating element is also undecided at this point. I’m kind of leaning towards seeing what’s inside a USB coffee warmer simply because of low voltage. I’m also tempted to just keep looking around the trash till I find a broken toaster or just use a few resistors. Light bulb is undesirable at the moment. Maybe an old transformer. At the moment, I want to keep my voltages low and avoid using house current when possible. There’s still many details to be decided. Of course, most of them will be just improvised.
Goals for the moment, good night sleep, early start tomorrow, finish static stability section of crib sheets and move onto dynamic.

Three down, two to go

Well, thrid exam in my final set. Two more to go. For some reason I encountered a few difficulties on that exam that I never encountered before. During the last class, the professor gave us a bit of an introduction to the test. We were told the weighting of each question and an ammount of time was suggested. It wasn’t quite the weighting that was saw and the time… The last question took up much more of the time than was originally suggested and definately more than the weighting, 13/50, suggested it should take. I must have spent the last half of my time working on it. Oh, yeah, I guess I should say that this was a test about accounting and the value of money over time. The last question was about the 8 year life of a system. That’s eight years of calculating depreciation and the resulting effect on taxes. The same math over and over and over again. This was followed by a sensitivity analysis. I feel sorry for anyone who did all twelves calculations. I kind of cheated a bit and did two and scaled the effect appropriately. Well, it’s not really cheating, I used my background knowledge of mathematics to increase my effective productivity.
As for the problem I was having, due to the repeditive nature of the questions, I had a hard time keeping focused. I kept loosing my focus. My thoughts were on much more exciting things, like building a print head for a 3d printer. With all my zoning out and shortcuts, I wound up just finishing the test on time. Eight years for crying out loud.
Goals for tonight, more studying, thee hours or so. Going to start with the basics and cover the more difficult stuff tomorrow at school.

Umm… Tad busy right now

I’ve write a few things on my palm pilot for this and gee, I’d love to start sharing but I’m a tad busy at the moment. Maybe tomorrow. For now, I just wanted to show that I actually do intend to use this account. It kind of annoys me that I’ve come across a bunch of accounts which just have the hello world message and nothing more.