Semester Two Results
Cue my first heartattack of the Christmas season — University results came out today, unbenownst to me. Nothing like having a cold, feeling like death incarnate and having someone at 1AM tell you to check your emails to get the blood pumping.
Well, I’ve passed second semester in all subjects. I’ve got atrocious results in analogue electronics (brutal exam), Physics (brutally bad lecturer) and Maths (I’m dumb). On the lighter side, I’m still getting fantastic results in the computer science and digital electronics portions of the course however – so there’s still hope yet. My worst fear – repeating calculus for a third time – has passed with me scraping by, so no great derailment to next year’s course structure like this year.
I’ve got to admit that I’ve really not fallen in love with the analogue side of electronics. I do like simple analogue circuits but complex feedback systems and the like bore me to death, and I’ve found that I don’t have the mindset nor the interest in them. Thankfully, course units from next year on will start to focus more on the digital and computer science portions, which equate to my version of nerd heaven.
So all in all, not the best results, but enough to get me into next year and into the subjects I enjoy rather than the subjects I’m forced to take. No more physics (heaven!) for me, just TCP/IP, Java, C++, Digital Design, and a whole host of other awesome subjects.
I hate to be the one to deliver the news… Digital electronics is a special case of Analog. Increasingly, you can’t just assume that signal propagation, impedance, etc are unimportant and just “wire it up”.
Take USB full speed for instance. At 480Mbps… at 480Mbps, from connector to connector, it’s all analog (and electromagnetic) design techniques. DDR RAM is another case where this is important.
Feedback systems? The most interesting thing there is. Switching Power Supplies (think powering your CPU… 0.9v at 80A… there’s a challenge!) will be the first place most “digital” engineers encounter that. Then there is the Engine that drives the modern world… DSP. Take all that Control Systems theory and run it in “Simulation”, but not really, in software on a DSP 🙂
The problem with University engineering courses is they don’t tell you what you’re going to do with all this otherwise apparently disjoint and uninteresting math heavy stuff. “What’s that for?” should be the order of the day, so students can become excited about what they can do with this new knowledge.
J.