1 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

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.

2 March, 2009 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

And So It Begins…

I woke up this morning feeling energised and ready to start my University journey! (Well, I did go to sleep before midnight last night so maybe that’s why I felt energised…). I wanted to start things right, have a clear mind and get into a good routine of sleeping earlier to wake up earlier, so this morning was definitely a promising sign of good things to come! Dad dropped me off at the bus stop up the road with Calum and we waited for the 7 o’clock bus to arrive. We arrived in the city at around 7:45am, so I had a bit of time to find out where my first class was. I thought I might ask at the Student Services reception office in the Engineering building but when I got there it was closed! I searched around frantically trying to find someone who looked knowledgeable and luckily a guy told me where Eng3401 was. When I walked through the door I was surprised to see how many people were already sitting in the lecture theatre, ready to start. The only seats left were down the sides by the aisles, so I sat next to an Asian guy near the front.

We were introduced to our first lecture, “ENGGEN 150 – Advanced Mechanics” by Andy Philpott. He told us that he would be lecturing us in the second half of the semester. Our lecturer for the first half of the semester is Addie Pujii, the same guy who took a few of the lectures last week at the Superstart Maths course I did! Addie’s introduction didn’t last long; he pretty much got straight into the course material about the process of Mathematical Modelling. I followed most of what he said and made a few notes in the margins of my handout, but I think I’ll need to re-read some of it tonight!

The next class I had was “ENGGEN 115 – Intro to Engineering Design”. This lecture was held in one of the huge lecture theatres in the Owen G Glenn building across the road. Again, this lecture theatre was pretty much packed by the time I got there. I managed to find a seat down the left-hand side of the theatre and I sat next to another random guy (that’s two new people in one day!). He told me his name was Braam. The lecture wasn’t too strenuous; most of it was just introductory information and course outline stuff. Our lecturer’s name is Richard Lin, I think he might be Malaysian.

The next class packed the entrance outside our lecture theatre

When we got out of the lecture at 10am, there was another huge crowd of people waiting eagerly to get in to the theatre after us. Out in the open area outside the Owen Glenn building I met up with Luke and Matt (I actually forgot Matt’s name and I had to ask him again – he was one of the guys on the Maths course). We decided to head to the university bookshop (UBS) to see if our coursebooks were available yet. We found the Engineering coursebook table downstairs and, luckily for Matt, he managed to grab the last ENGSCI 111 coursebook. It was a huge book, nearly the thickness of a 500-page pack of A4 paper! The line of people waiting to buy their coursebooks was ridiculously long – the queue for the upstairs counters was going down the stairs, and the queue for the downstairs counters trailed the length of the bookshop and around the corner! I was going to wait with Matt and Luke in the queue but I had to leave early because I had my Diagnostic English Language Needs Assessment (DELNA) test at 11am in one of the Engineering computer labs.

The DELNA test is this assessment that every new student at Auckland University has to take. It is designed to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses in English, supposedly. Initially everyone just takes the screening test (which is around 17 minutes long) and if they pass with a satisfactory competency level in English, then that’s it – done. If they do not pass a satisfactory standard however, they must attend a two-hour workshop to help improve their English skills, and if they do not pass the workshop, then they have to attend a two-week course in English, and so on. Knowing all this before I took the DELNA test made me a bit worried because I didn’t really want to have to come back for the workshop etc. I got through the first half of the test okay; it was just a multi-choice quiz matching word meanings. The second part of the test required a bit more brain work though. We had to read paragraphs of prose text and click on one word per line that was out of place or incorrectly used. It sounds easy, but a few of them were tricky to pick out, simply because of the way the sentences were structured. In total there were around eight paragraphs to read but I didn’t get to the end – I missed the last paragraph. At first I was a bit worried about not finishing, but afterwards I heard that my friend didn’t finish either but he still passed. Tonight I got an email from DELNA telling me that I passed as well, so that was a relief. Phew!

I met up with Craig and Caleb and we decided to catch the bus home just after 1pm. On the way to the bus stop we passed the Westpac Bank stall and they were advertising their tertiary bank account. $40 bank credit and a Debit Plus card with no first year fees, I was keen. I filled out one of the application forms and as a result I got a free bottle of ginger beer, PLUS I went into the draw to win a car! Wasn’t it just my lucky day huh

While we sat waiting for the bus to come at Skycity, I heard a voice that sounded familiar. I turned around and saw the host from the Sunday programme on TV1  talking on his cell phone. Well, at least I’m pretty sure it was him. I tried to whip out my cell phone and get a photo of him but all I got was his back. Caleb took a photo too, but his was from behind as well (closer though). I think his name is Cameron Bennett. Have a look and see what you think…

Cameron Bennett? I'm sure it was him!

Originally I was going to get off the bus just after the Te Atatu off-ramp with Craig and Caleb and walk to Rutherford, but I decided that I would just go home instead, since I was pretty tired from the early start this morning. Phoebe was on our bus too, she was sitting behind us.

Well my first day at uni wasn’t too strenuous and I am keeping on top of all my work so far (a course outline handout…), which is good. I’m hopeful that the rest of the week will go smoothly too! My journey to becoming a professional engineer has officially begun!

27 February, 2009 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Engineering Welcome

After our morning lecture with David (our last one, might I add) the engineering students walked across the road to the Fisher & Paykel Appliances Auditorium at the Owen G. Glenn building for the official Engineering welcome for first year students. It was supposed to start at 10am, but luckily we all made it in time. When we arrived at the auditorium, I was shocked to see how many first year engineering students there were! Seriously, there were hundreds packed into the enormous lecture theatre (around 620); it was hard to even spot an empty seat!

I was shocked at the large number of First Year Engineering students

The official welcome got underway as we sat through presentations given by various staff in the Engineering faculty, as well as some different clubs associated with engineering. One of the speakers talked about the dangers of crossing Symonds Street for nearly ten minutes, urging us to cross the road using the underpass. He even showed us maps of where the underpass was and everything. Although there were a few presentations that were quite informal, one of the messages that echoed in my ears for a while was the need for us to concentrate on our studies if we were to be successful in engineering. We were told that we were the top students in New Zealand, that Engineering is for the elite, and it made me wonder how I was going to cope with all the pressure I am likely to have this year.

After all the formal stuff was finished, we were taken across the road to the Engineering buildings to the ‘Circle’ (I think that’s what they call it), where they had a free BBQ lunch ready for us. As you can imagine, feeding over 600 people meant the queues went for ages and we ended up waiting in line for a good 20 minutes before being served a sausage and a vodka jelly shot drink thing. Since I don’t drink alcohol, I just gave my jelly vodka thing to Luke, as I’m sure he would consume it without any hesitation. Over our lunch break I met up with a few people I knew, including Mengyun and Menglu, Josh from the trip to America last year (from Westlake Boys), Julian Lees from Science Camp, Michelle Ye and Zac Preest.

An AUES advisor telling us about the activities for the afternoon

We were spilt into three groups for the afternoon activities after lunch. Luke and I joined the group that was heading over to the Recreation Centre across the road to play indoor soccer. When we arrived at the rec centre, we had to get into groups of around 10 for our indoor soccer games. Knowing barely anyone apart from Luke, Michelle and Zac, I didn’t know who to group up with – though I was trying to look out for any buff guys or sporty Asians who might be useful in an indoor soccer team. We managed to get a group of 10 in the end, fortunately including a couple of buff guys AND some sporty-looking Asians. Since they could only have two teams on the court/field at one time, the other teams went upstairs to play some ‘ice-breaker’ games. The game we played in our group was called “3-6-9″. The rules were quite simple: we stood in a circle and went around counting up from ‘one’. At every number that had any of the digits 3, 6 or 9 in it, the person had to clap. So it would start “one”, “two”, *clap*, “four”, “five”, *clap*, etc… it sounds easy I know, but believe me it gets confusing when the speed picks up and you have to think fast (for example, the number 33 would be a double clap).

My indoor soccer team

Our team was called down to the court to play soccer soon after, and our team was getting hyped (or at least I was anyway). However, when I saw our opposition, I felt a little uneasy. We were up against a whole team of huge Indian/African guys. They looked like they could squish us without even trying! Luke decided to be our goalie, but within the first 30 seconds of the game the big gigantor Indian/African surge powered through and scored. One goal down I thought, it’s still good it’s still good. A couple of minutes later, they scored again! Grr.. they were really asking for it after that second goal. That’s when the tables turned. Those Asian sporty-looking guys in our team unleashed their soccer skills and started creating gaps in the defence. It only took a big lob kick over the top and a couple of chasers to finish it before our team was on the scorebaord! It was like a comeback from the dead. Despite our efforts, the other team managed to score another goal and that was how the game ended. Final score 3-1. It was fun nevertheless though.

We then headed back across the road (using the underpass, tick!) to the engineering building where we had a quiz game led by some guys from Auckland University Engineering Society (AUES). There were multiple rounds of 5-question quizes, and each table had a team name. The table I was sitting at became team “Clueless”, purely because we didn’t know any of the answers for the first 3 questions. Luckily one of the rounds had questions about television shows, an area we were strong in! We didn’t win any prizes, but given a lot of the questions were about drinking and alcohol, I wasn’t expecting to know all the answers!

It was a fun day overall and very well organised. If my first year at Engineering is going to be anywhere as near as fun as today was, I’m sure I’m going to have a great time!