Orbis non sufficit
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Back at uni
So I'm back at uni now, it's been fairly decent so far. Today is my first really long day, I was falling asleep in physics already. Atm I'm in the comp labs waiting for wushu. There was an eng bbq today, that was pretty cool, ate about 4 sausages and 2 hamburgers. mmm. There's another bbq tomorrow night to welcome new members to the monash philharmoic orchestra (now including me every second week), and a wushu bbq next week (potential along with science and SPAM bbq's, according to the word on the wind).
A few of my classes are going to be fairly tricky (the special topic in maths and good ol physics, probably the PDE class too), though the eng stuff seems simple enough (engineering materials and engineering design). Design actually seems kind of interesting, we learn about how various things are manufactured and how to design them appropriately and such. It also has a project where you have to build a crazy robot contraption thingy to perform a set task (steve had this last year with a different task). It seems cool in concept but there's not a lot of time to do it so it might sort of suck because of that.
That's the project that would have been replaced by the Formula SAE car project, except it turns out that I can't do that coz I can't make the required time commitment to go to tafe and learning welding and machining. I want to learn that stuff but it requires 8 hours a week at frankston tafe, and I have classes in all the times they have allotted for it. Also they don't recommend you do it if you don't have a design subject next semester (coz the project goes for the whole year), which I don't, so damn. Maybe next year. I'll try and keep it in mind when I pick my subjects for next year so that I can try and make space for the tafe stuff. I might even be better off taking it easy and doing an extra year (rather than overloading as I currently will have to do) so that I have time for it. I dunno, i'll have to think about it. I currently have 3 units which aren't going to fit properly into my course, so I'll have to overload by one subject in 3 semesters to fit them in, which may cause horrible, horrible clashing. If I do an extra year then i'll have those 3 subjects for it and also an extra 5 spaces, so I could cut back by one unit in say 3 semesters and do 3 units per semester in my final year.
The suckage of that is that I would be here for 6 years doing my undergraduate degree, 7 if I do honours in science. I'll be an old man by the time I get free. I'd probably want to do something after that too, either a phd in science or a masters or whatever in engineering. Not sure how engineering phd's work. that'd put me at 10 years or so all up. So I'd be about 28 by the time I finished at university. If I decide to go with the engineering though I should probably go work in the industry and then come back and do postgrad stuff. I think that's the usual trend. Bah. I don't have to worry about that yet anyway, just gotta come up with a design for this contraption for now.
*Edit
Ok, turns out I miscounted, I'm doing 5 units this semester coz of the special maths topic, leaving only 2 extra units to jam in somewhere. Also the course adviser told me that I could probably work something out with them when the time came to fit everything in, like doing some of my final year project stuff over the holidays or something. As for the SAE team, I probably won't be doing that as my design project but I'm applying to join anyway. Hopefully I can be involved with it in some way, it's pretty freaking cool and good practice for designing and building things and being part of a team project. Maybe i'll get lucky and be able to some of the tafe stuff too; since I live in frankston and all I should be able to get there at times other people can't, even if I can't make the allocated times. Here's to hoping. It'd be good to at least be a bit involved with it this year, coz as I get into my 3rd and fourth year there are opportunities to be involved in more leadership roles with the thing, which I'm more likely to get to do if I have at least been part of it before, at least according to my theory. We'll see what happens
So I'm back at uni now, it's been fairly decent so far. Today is my first really long day, I was falling asleep in physics already. Atm I'm in the comp labs waiting for wushu. There was an eng bbq today, that was pretty cool, ate about 4 sausages and 2 hamburgers. mmm. There's another bbq tomorrow night to welcome new members to the monash philharmoic orchestra (now including me every second week), and a wushu bbq next week (potential along with science and SPAM bbq's, according to the word on the wind).
A few of my classes are going to be fairly tricky (the special topic in maths and good ol physics, probably the PDE class too), though the eng stuff seems simple enough (engineering materials and engineering design). Design actually seems kind of interesting, we learn about how various things are manufactured and how to design them appropriately and such. It also has a project where you have to build a crazy robot contraption thingy to perform a set task (steve had this last year with a different task). It seems cool in concept but there's not a lot of time to do it so it might sort of suck because of that.
That's the project that would have been replaced by the Formula SAE car project, except it turns out that I can't do that coz I can't make the required time commitment to go to tafe and learning welding and machining. I want to learn that stuff but it requires 8 hours a week at frankston tafe, and I have classes in all the times they have allotted for it. Also they don't recommend you do it if you don't have a design subject next semester (coz the project goes for the whole year), which I don't, so damn. Maybe next year. I'll try and keep it in mind when I pick my subjects for next year so that I can try and make space for the tafe stuff. I might even be better off taking it easy and doing an extra year (rather than overloading as I currently will have to do) so that I have time for it. I dunno, i'll have to think about it. I currently have 3 units which aren't going to fit properly into my course, so I'll have to overload by one subject in 3 semesters to fit them in, which may cause horrible, horrible clashing. If I do an extra year then i'll have those 3 subjects for it and also an extra 5 spaces, so I could cut back by one unit in say 3 semesters and do 3 units per semester in my final year.
The suckage of that is that I would be here for 6 years doing my undergraduate degree, 7 if I do honours in science. I'll be an old man by the time I get free. I'd probably want to do something after that too, either a phd in science or a masters or whatever in engineering. Not sure how engineering phd's work. that'd put me at 10 years or so all up. So I'd be about 28 by the time I finished at university. If I decide to go with the engineering though I should probably go work in the industry and then come back and do postgrad stuff. I think that's the usual trend. Bah. I don't have to worry about that yet anyway, just gotta come up with a design for this contraption for now.
*Edit
Ok, turns out I miscounted, I'm doing 5 units this semester coz of the special maths topic, leaving only 2 extra units to jam in somewhere. Also the course adviser told me that I could probably work something out with them when the time came to fit everything in, like doing some of my final year project stuff over the holidays or something. As for the SAE team, I probably won't be doing that as my design project but I'm applying to join anyway. Hopefully I can be involved with it in some way, it's pretty freaking cool and good practice for designing and building things and being part of a team project. Maybe i'll get lucky and be able to some of the tafe stuff too; since I live in frankston and all I should be able to get there at times other people can't, even if I can't make the allocated times. Here's to hoping. It'd be good to at least be a bit involved with it this year, coz as I get into my 3rd and fourth year there are opportunities to be involved in more leadership roles with the thing, which I'm more likely to get to do if I have at least been part of it before, at least according to my theory. We'll see what happens
Comments:
Design is crap. Also that project only seems cool until you realise how much time it takes trying to do it. Then you will understand how horrible it is.
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