Not the first time that I had thoughts on chowing down on one of the many resistors we get to keep after every Electrical lab session. Certainly not the last! It’s been a few hectic couple more weeks since the last time I have blogged, but I honestly thought it was going to be a hellscape from here! (I say as I have another test that I definitely could’ve studied for but procrastinated until today lmao)
End of year is approaching quickly, meaning the exams are also approaching fast! Even with two more weeks for content and until the exam season starts, I want to give a hand for you and everyone you know going through this first year together! It’s definitely not an easy ride going into it
You often hear lots of horror stories about how Electrical is ‘one of the hardest courses in Engineering’ and I can attest to it (multiple times, I may add), but I think that stems from one bad event in the first year that steers students away from the course. In fact, I would say that taking the final obstacle that is William Lee’s Electrical exam is a litmus test to see how students perceive the subject. If there are people who are more positive about it, they lean more in favor to taking similar courses (Electrical or Computer Systems), and vice versa.
May not be like it, but I can show that the more artistic, chaotic mind (like me) can get through some of the toughest challenges I had to overcome when it came to understanding the more logical materials in this Semester.
… They were hoping to get a bright idea.
I’m never the best at giving logical advice, funny enough. But what I can do is compile the subjects with the full-blown expansion for second year (apart from ENGSCI 211 and ENGGEN 204, which are spread across all specializations), each with a short and snappy summary, pros and cons to keep in mind, and how to (possibly, I never take my own advice most times) overcome the challenges within them! And they’re all being read, like they typically would, in a very dramatic reading.
I hope this will bring a better scope for when you make your choice in the second Semester (the only semester in second year that has one elective chosen out of three, the rest are compulsory). Also, this is covered in the official Electrical Engineering guide, but they don’t really give an overall scope of what’s at the bottom of the rabbit hole.
(Or you can read the full scope easily with https://uoaengineering.github.io/courseviewer/electrical-and-electronic-engineering/)
Last Warning: It’s a whole bunch of words from here, read at your own discretion!
(I would have added drawings but I’m on a time crunch again due to said test this week coughs)
Semester 1
ELECTENG 291: Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering
William Lee returns with a fiery passion! Along with the entrance for another amazing lecturer! With pens and papers in hand, the Electrical lecturers are here to teach everyone the absolute basics of Electrical Engineering! Complete with the return of Superposition, Node Voltage, and more new concepts (Such as Transients, Capacitors, and Inductors)! Stay tuned if you also want to learn the mysterious land of the Laplace Domain which also extends to ENGSCI 211!
Pros: William Lee, his notes, and his passion. Dulsha’s slides and her pacing. And the return of the forever wonderous Assignments with unlimited attempts! Not only that, but there are labs running fortnightly which helps students get more familiar with the practical side of the concepts we have studied.
Cons: Simple concepts (as much as the lecturers make them) become complex very, very quickly. Often times, I have to rely on the Part II Tutors to help me understand them. I recommend practicing on all the Assignment problems over and over again until you’re comfortable with solving them! With the topic of the labs, they are insanely strict with what to do and not do with how you take down your notes!
COMPSYS 201: Fundamentals of Computer Engineering
Compiling with the CompSys students! A deeper dive into the basics of computers! This extends on some of the topics covered in ELECTENG 101, such as ASCII, Binary (and more base systems), Boolean stuff, and more! The intricate beginnings of computers are unraveled in this course, with a prize of a PCB up for grabs! Stay tuned to whether or not we can keep up with the logic (gates) of our lecturer…
Pros: The lecture slides given at the beginning of the course covers absolutely everything; read them all when you can! Lots of videos online can give you a rundown for these topics as well, so you can be prepared for the next lectures! And the tests and exam is MCQ… Don’t let that get to your head though!
Cons: I advise the above because it does get confusing pretty quickly! I’m sort of biased since this is a Compsys course, but this course is in complete logic mode! There can be no assumptions made unlike what you may have learned back in ENGGEN 121 and ELECTENG 101!
SOFTENG 281: Object-Oriented Programming
A return of Programming from ENGGEN 131! But this time it’s Java, and not just any Java, it’s OOP! Out of the languages that I have come to learn and loath (I have come to terms with the fact I really don’t like programming in general), Java is one that has stretched my mind to the limits! If you enjoy coding, this one will be for you!
Pros: Live coding in the lectures, which are also shared through Github and Visual Studio Code (or whichever program supports the uoa link which updates the code they made during lectures), so you can use them as your own! (aka there are a million ways to program for all your assignments)
Cons: It gets a little frustrating when the code doesn’t work quite as well as you like… or you turn to ChatGPT for the answers. Not saying that there’s anything wrong with it (from an objective standpoint; heck, there was an assignment where you trial with an AI to see how it affects the way you code) but beware that there are tests which test your knowledge in the language without the assistance of AI! Please do your own work!
Semester 2
Recommended Elective* || ELECTENG 292: Electronics
The sequel to ELECTENG 291! Dulsha comes back and a new lecturer (bearing a teaching style alike that of dear old William)! The first few weeks are just Opamps, Opamps, and Opamps! Introduced in ELECTENG 101, they come back with a few new concepts to them (as easy as they are in the first year). Oh? What’s that? Transistors? Diodes? There’s more?! There’s only two weeks left! (Have mercy on my poor soul!)
Pros: Dulsha’s slides once again come in clutch; easy to digest and note down! Since the first few weeks are talking about similar topics, they are straightforward and easy to link together coherently. Mark Andrews, taking over the second half, explains in a very straightforward and cohesive way in line with his notes (which he annotates after the lectures) and similar to William Lee’s!
Cons: It takes practice, practice and more practice in this run! Lots of practice problems are given to you, so I recommend at least trying to read through them before learning how! Just like in 291, there are biweekly labs that uses the same journals, so the same rules apply here.
Recommended Elective* ||ELECTENG 204: Electromagnetics
Oh? Electronic and Magnetics? What a combo! What do you mean it’s actually easy!? The two lecturers coming in are definitely experts on their stuff! They know the struggles for all the students that are undertaking the course downstairs (wink wink it’s ELECTENG 209 wink wink), so most of their content are easy to digest!
Pros: The provided lecture notes from both lecturers are very helpful, and they teach them during lectures very concisely and easy to follow! The first part of the course, about Transmission lines, will not show up in the final exams, so you can focus on the other exams that require all the previous notes!
Cons: Because it’s more lax than the other demanding Electrical courses, it does lead to less people coming into the lectures and thus lag a little bit behind (like me right now!). Don’t be like me and slack off out of a single Electrical course!
* So, the Course viewer says that 292 is an elective, but I have been told that ELECTENG 204 is actually an elective and ELECTENG 292 is compulsory, but I’m sticking to have both as Recommended Electives as they are both important courses in the grand scheme of an Electrical student’s road!
ELECTENG 209: Analogue and Digital Design
The trickiest and the most loathed by both students and lecturers! Why? Stay in the labs until 7pm to figure it out! With demanding times between 4-7pm in the assigned laboratories, it’s a wonder that everyone I have met who has done it all sag in their seats! The whole project centered around building our own energy monitor (which measures the Voltage and Current of a given input and shoves it into a bunch of firmware, hardware, and the like) is the bane of every COMPSYS, ELECTENG, and even the rare SOFTENG students a run for their money!
Pros: The physical labor of building the actual circuits is really fun! And you get to play around with the different software that they give to have a real taste of the professional settings. Working together with other students is also really good for team building!
Cons: The lab documents which say how many hours it takes to get through an entire paper is a lie; you double the amount they recommend, and it’s about accurate (eg. they say 5 hours, we take 10 hours a week). It takes a lot of our attention away from the other subjects! My mind breaks every time I have to remember that there are also interviews at the end of each lab!
Conclusion: It’s a fun, challenging ride!
Despite what I might say for the cons area, there are a lot of positives I got just from going through the motions with the mind of a jaded student! It’s a tough ride, like I have mentioned many times before, but I can come out laughing and smiling at the end of it all.
With what you guys have coming up for the last couple of weeks, there is a lot to celebrate for; you are almost at the end of the first year for engineering! There may be a bit weighing on the exams and what you may pick based off of them, but you can always change your mind down the line! Like I have mentioned, it’s never the end of the world if you are out of reach of the top; there are so many more things you can do!
That’s it from me (I pulled out too many brain cells remembering what has happened in the first semester and I shudder to think about it), take care of yourselves! Go and support the other bloggers here; I can see some of them dropping like flies at the end of the semester where everything is going crazy!
– Lanna Lagasca