Full Steam Ahead

After finding out that I managed to pass all my papers last semester (what a relief!), it was back to business at Uni today. I was getting worried for a while after my exams because the thought of failing any of my exams meant that I would not be allowed to enrol in one of my second semester courses. I really didn’t want to become a split-year student because that could just get messy so I was considering taking a break from Uni if I did fail any papers and finding an Engineering job for the rest of the year instead. As luck would have it though, I can put that past me – for now.

My first class today wasn’t until 1pm so I had a bit of free time in the morning… well, to sleep in! On the way to Uni Jesse and Luke Dickinson caught the same bus, though we only started talking after we had got off the bus behind the Aotea Centre. My 1pm lecture was Object Oriented Design (COMPSYS 202), which is pretty much a programming paper. We were introduced to the Linux operating system and were told that we would be learning how to program in the C++ language this semester. Straight after our first lecture, the second class was in the same lecture theatre so I didn’t have to move. Dr. Chris Smaill, who taught us for ELECTENG 101 last year, returned to introduce himself again for this semester’s Engineering Electromagnetics (ELECTENG 204). The introduction and course overview was pretty brief and we were already into the course material in the second half of the lecture!

Finally today, I had my first tutorial for my Technical Communication for Engineers paper (ENGGEN 204). We were welcomed by our teaching assistant Vicky, who gave an overview of the course and outlined the different modules we will be covering in the next 12 weeks. The first module is working in Microsoft Excel and Word, learning how to use the different functions and tools that are available. Although there were a couple of things that were slightly new to me, some parts of the tutorial seemed rather trivial, especially such things as “navigating around a spreadsheet using the scroll bars”. I would have thought that was implicit. Then again, if I can gain marks for simple things like that then I’m not complaining!

The first day back at Uni wasn’t too bad all in all. I’d give it about a 7/10 in terms of excitement. And for once I’m on top of all my course work now, I just need to keep this up for the next 12 weeks and I should be fine!