End of Part II MECHATRONICS – Final Blog Post from Vanessa

Hey lovely readers!

This will be my last blog post of the year and also my last chance to convince you to specialise in MECHATRONICS engineering. I want to say a huge THANKS for reading my previous blog posts and for somehow not getting bored of me. 😊

I hope I have done a good job of entertaining you with what I get up to in my uni courses and imparting some valuable advice and information about doing mechatronics. 😄 If you would like to help those in the same position as you are right now, I recommend applying to be a Part II Student Blogger for the Faculty of Engineering in your second year. This job has been super rewarding and fun, and a great way to earn some extra money on the side of your studies.

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The last few weeks of semester two were insanely busy for the part II mechatronics students. We finished off the last week of semester two with a 10% MECHENG 222 project due on Tuesday, a 20% MECHENG 270 coding assignment due on Thursday and a 20% MECHENG 270 test on Friday. I also had a 30% German oral presentation on Thursday and a 30% German portfolio due during the exam study period, which meant being sleep deprived and a few days behind all my friends for exam study. 😪

Luckily, the part II mechatronics students only had two exams (both were on a Saturday and a week apart – kinda gross but at least we had a week to study for them in between), whereas the part II mechanical students have an extra exam for MECHENG 236. As of right now, I have had 3 days of holidays but my mechanical friends still have 2 more days until freedom.

Both the MECHENG 222 and MECHENG 211 exams were “harder” than we expected because the questions were quite different to the previous year’s exams. 😵 I think it’s really important to have a thorough understanding of the course content and concepts, not just memorising how to solve certain types of problems. Otherwise if you come across an unfamiliar type of question in the exam, you will for certain get stuck and that’s not a nice place to be in. Trust me, I’ve experienced this. 😓

The MECHENG 222 exam had 5 questions and we were told there would be 2 questions from Lihua’s section (kinematics), 1 question from Vlad’s section (vibration analysis) and 2 questions from Hazim’s section (kinetics of particles and rigid bodies). For some reason, vibration analysis did NOT come up in the exam and we got bamboozled by the questions from Lihua and Hazim. 😕

The MECHENG 211 exam had 6 questions – 2 from Alison’s section (thermodynamics), 2 from Mike’s section (fluid mechanics) and 2 from Stuart’s section (heat transfer). I went in that exam prepared to tackle Alison’s questions first and nail them, and maybe get stuck on Mike’s section; however Mike’s section ended up being a breeze and I was completely thrown off by Alison’s questions. One of Stuart’s questions even had a typo in the units, which caused everyone a bit of confusion and stress.

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Now that I’ve finished exams, second year engineering has come to an end. Fortunately I have an internship lined up, so yay for getting work experience, but nay for not having holidays. Part II mechatronics has truly been a fantastic journey, with tough but fun and worthwhile moments throughout the year. I’ve made loads of new friends, learnt lots of new things and created many awesome memories. I hope you get to experience this too in your second year and I wish you all the best for choosing a specialisation. 😇😍

 

Thank you again for reading my blog posts!

~V