No More Exams
Exams are over! I only have to finish my (two) nanotech paper(s) by Friday, and I can declare this semester officially finished.
The Distributed Systems exam I took at 8:30 yesterday morning was a walk in the park. A breeze. A piece of cake. A joke, even. I was the first one done, and it took less than an hour (out of the allocated three).
The Linear Systems exam at 5:30 yesterday evening... not so much. Three hours into the exam, everyone was still seated and furiously scrawling control theory, system design, matrix calculus, and state-space circuit analysis into the two blue books provided for solving the exam's four problems. 
State-space equations for a linear time-invariant control systemThe teaching assistant, who was proctoring the exam, extended our suffering by 30 minutes when the full time had elapsed and he noticed nobody had submitted anything.
Some time around 9:00, I submitted my exam and walked to Mad Mex to meet Katy for margaritas (and dinner... but mostly margaritas). That helped quell the Linear Systems anxiety, but I'll still be happy if my grade is curved above 70%. Apparently, the average score on last year's final exam was somewhere in the 30-40% range, so perhaps I didn't do as poorly as I thought.
In the fall, my courses will all be of the applied physics variety (photonics in communication, nanoscale fabrication, and magnetics of some sort, I think), so I consider my intimate relationship with control systems over. That feels fantastic.
The only time "real" electrical engineering should resurface before I get my Ph.D. is when I have to take the Qual, short for qualifying examination, which is a series of brutal torture and ritual bleedings oral and written examinations that have some sort of new research requirements. I believe the Qual can only be taken once, and it must be passed. So, at some point, I really am going to have to learn some serious electrical engineering; I just hope it doesn't have to include control theory.
Anyway, I could ramble about engineering forever... or, I could go work on my paper(s) a bit more. How about the latter? Oh, good.
Comments
At least the ritual bloodletting this semester involves a ritual curve, a ritual breeze and then onto something you really enjoy :)
Only one time? Humph. My second-rate school allowed two tries on the "oral", aka the proposal. I do not envy trying to pass a real qual at your top-tier school. When do you plan to take them?
Posted by: tlt | May 10, 2006 12:56 PM