First Day Back

Today was the first day of lectures for me back at Uni. Luckily for me, my first class wasn’t until 12pm so I got to sleep for a little bit longer in the morning. After a shower and a bowl of noodles, my mum dropped me off at the bus stop down by the shops. I didn’t have to wait long for the bus to come as I sat there making sure in my mind that I had everything I needed in my bag. When we stopped at the bus stop down Flanshaw Road, I was surprised to see Jesse and Luke get on the bus together. They sat with me and we were like the three Engineering musketeers from Rutherford. They’re both specialising in Civil Engineering this year and we shared timetables as we journeyed into town.

My first lecture was Mathematical Modelling 2 (ENGSCI 211). On the way to class I bumped into Rebecca Cunniffe, who had a lecture in the room nextdoor to me. We walked down the stairs into the library basement passing Ethan and Sue in the process. It was like a Rutherford reunion that lasted a few seconds. The lecture room was already quite full when I arrived so I sat in the second row down at the front. I met a new guy who was sitting next to me called Nick – he’s specialising in Biomedical Engineering this year. I didn’t talk to the girl sitting on my other side though, not for any particular reason, just because the window of opportunity for introductions passed and then it would be awkward if I introduced myself half-way through the lecture. Our lecturer’s name is Dr. Cameron Walker. I remembered him from my Advanced Mechanics (ENGGEN 150) paper last year. After he introduced himself, Cameron told us that he didn’t have any idea what the time was (the clock on the wall wasn’t working and there was no time shown in the corner on his computer screen) so he went on the internet and searched “current auckland time” on Google. For the entire lecture, he had a window open on the projector with a large display of the time (this one) so he wouldn’t go over time. I thought that was pretty ingenious!

After our Mathematical Modelling lecture, I thought I’d head for the gym since I had a 2-hour gap before my next class. As I walking through the Informations Commons though, I met up with Menglu. She was waiting for her twin sister Mengyun to get out of class. Then I found out that Mengyun was actually in the lecture that I just came out of! She’s doing Electrical Engineering this year while Menglu is doing Civil. They introduced me to one of their friends called Manu, who’s doing Computer Systems Engineering just like me. I was glad to have finally found someone else doing the same specialisation as me! Together we all went to the office of one of our lecturers so he could give us our course notes.

Menglu had to go to one of her lectures, so Mengyun and I went to the Engineering library to do some study for our Basic Skills test next week. On the way into the library I bumped into Clinton who was coming out of the library and he told me that he had a test on his first day! Looks like he got dunked straight into the thick of Engineering. Reading over the practice questions for the test made me realise that I had forgotten a lot of what I had learnt last year. I think I’m going to have to cram for the next week to make sure I’m ready!

My second lecture of the day was Circuits and Systems (ELECTENG 202). After a few introductory messages from the course co-ordinator, our first lecturer took over the class, Dr. Waleed Abdulla. He’s actually quite a funny guy. He gave us a brief introduction of what Electrical Engineering is all about, including a slide about Biometrics, which I thought was pretty interesting. He told us that you can tell the difference between a male and a female by the way they walk, demonstrating for us in front of the class. At the end of the lecture, he left us with this quote regarding study (I’m not sure if he made it up himself or not):

An hour a day keeps the failure away.

Straight after that lecture, I had my last class for the day: Electronics 1 (ELECTENG 210). Our lecture’s name was Dr. Mark Andrews, a name that sounded familiar to me yet I didn’t know where from. His introduction lecture was quite entertaining too. He gave us a bit of a shock when he told us there was no coursebook OR lecture slides for the course, and that we’d have to take notes every lecture. I don’t even remember how to take notes properly since we’ve had coursebooks for every other Engineering course so far! He told us that we have a test tomorrow morning to evaluate the level we’re at with Electronics. I hope it’s not too hard because I’ve forgotten a lot of the stuff we learned in Electronics last year as well.

After my last lecture, I decided I’d go to the gym since I didn’t get to go earlier in the day. Being back at the gym for the first time in a couple of months brought back memories, though several of the exercise machines are now in different positions to how I remember them last year. I didn’t stay at the gym for too long because by that time I was getting a bit tired, but I definitely noticed the effect of not going to the gym for so long. This year hopefully I’ll get into a good routine to go so I can get into shape! This time next year I’ll be a changed man!

My first day back at Uni was pretty good overall. So far I’m not behind in any of my coursework (mainly because we haven’t really done anything yet!) but I’m not sure how long that will last. I better get studying for that test tomorrow morning.