Lunch? Packed. Pencil case? Full. Laptop? Charged. Outfit? Folded neatly on my desk. The first day of my university life was finally here and I could not have been more excited. After 13 years of school, who would’ve thought I’d be this excited to go spend another 4 years at a place some refer to as “hell on earth”, which I later found out was actually just the sticky-floored dungeon/man-cave hybrid place known as ‘Shads’.
Fast forward to near the end of semester two – the deadline for us submitting our specialisation preferences was fast approaching and I still hadn’t yet made up my mind. My first year of university wasn’t quite what I thought it would be, probably because majority of it was taught online, but I still loved every minute* of it. I spent hours researching specialisations and making pros-and-cons lists for each one. For example, my Civil Engineering list looked something like this:
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I sat down and thought about what I was really passionate about, and what I enjoyed about the part one courses. Mechanics of materials was fun, coding was at times challenging but also extremely rewarding, and I loved all the design projects. Even though the electrical paper was a bit of an uphill battle, I realised that mechatronics was the specialisation for me.
Fast forward again to the end of semester one of my second year, and I can say that I definitely made the right choice for myself.
I went into the beginning of this semester with no expectations – mainly because I genuinely did not know what to expect. I thought maybe we would just be playing with robots (which I was not completely wrong about), but I have come to realise that mechatronics is so much more.
I love mechatronics because it is one of the more practical specialisations; you get to see your work come to life and there is something truly amazing about that. Mechatronics is about designing technological solutions to real-life problems, and the places you can apply this skill are practically endless – whether it’s creating artificially intelligent limbs or automating systems to make every-day life more comfortable and efficient. It’s so relevant to us, especially with the rapid development and growing demand for technology. Loving what you’re learning is in my opinion the most important factor to take into account when submitting your preferences, so if you take anything out of this blog post, let it be that.
While we’re here, I’ll quickly introduce myself – my name is Sabina, I’m a Part II Mechatronics Engineering student and I am excited to be one of the bloggers for this year. When I’m not busy with uni work (which is getting pretty rare these days), I update my Spotify playlists, take pictures, paint and dance. Speaking of dance (nice lil’ segue there), tickets to the annual highly-acclaimed Engineering Revue are on sale now! Come see us, your fellow engineering students, make a complete fool out of ourselves.
That’s all for now, friends. I’ll be back with a recap of semester one and the cool stuff I did during my month-long break.
See you soon!
*okay maybe not every minute. 101 made me wanna die. I’d say ~80% of said minutes, which is still very large amount of minutes.