Hey team!
I’m Natalie, a part II Engineering Science and Asian Studies conjoint student, and I’m your engsci blogger for this year! Hope you’re all having a good time in first year so far, must’ve been tough being online for the first few weeks of University Life- but been there done that, it only goes up from here (or not, depending on how your grades are holding up- mine sure aren’t..)
You might’ve heard from your part II friends that the jump from first year to second year is insane, and you might’ve thought that they’re exaggerating, surely it can’t be that bad – I’m here to tell you that they’re in fact absolutely correct 😃 Within the first week, we were already being told to code connect-4 in Python after like 1 hour of learning python. As someone who hadn’t coded at all before enggen131, I have to say that this made me regret all my previous life choices. It had me going through daily mental breakdowns at 2am, wondering why I even chose engineering- but that moment when the tokens finally connect-4d… that’s why we do it 😎 So far, second semester has been deceptively fun, although we already have a group project proposal due next Monday, involving making a lumped parameter model and historical data visualisation, and several geospatial modelling lab tasks in R.. can you tell it’s always suffering out here?
I had no clue what Engineering Science was before I came into this (can’t lie, I still don’t know what’s going on)- and I have to admit that a big reason as to why I chose engsci was because of the field trip, but also because I knew I was better at engsci111 than literally anything else (I still have PTSD from electeng101). I also didn’t know what I wanted to do in the future, still don’t, so engsci was naturally the right choice- we get to pick our own electives, and a lot of our papers are pretty transferrable within different industries. It’s a bit daunting as not many Universities offer engsci as a major, but so far most people I’ve spoken to know what engscis are- solid win!
All in all, excited to be your part 2 blogger for the rest of this year- feel free to find me on my socials or linked in (www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-lau888), I’m always happy to chat! Good luck for sem 2 😊