Welcome back everyone, and I hope you are all finding ways to stay motivated and healthy during this lockdown! Because personally, I’m starting to look more and more like my cat-friend Jerry over there. As the end of semester two fast approaches, I thought I’d give you all a rundown of the four papers I took this semester to hopefully get you excited for next year!
ENGGEN 204
This is a general engineering paper that is compulsory for all engineering students, no matter what specialisation you end up choosing. This paper teaches you the importance of teamwork and communication, skills which will not only be vital for this course but also your career as an engineer. You are randomly put into groups with people in your tutorial group, and throughout the semester you have to collaborate with each other to complete three main projects. I have been finding this paper really fun, as you get to meet people outside of your specialisation and also get a taste of what working in the real world with different people will be like. I suggest you make an effort to get to know your team mates, try to interact with them during tutorials and team meetings, and this paper will feel like doing projects with your friends instead of a serious engineering paper.
MECHENG 211
This course teaches you principles of thermofluids, namely fluid mechanics, heat transfer and fluid dynamics. Although lots of these concepts were quite new to me, lots also build on knowledge from CHEMMAT 121 and our statics and dynamics papers this year. To be honest, I can’t say I am totally loving this course, but that’s okay! Don’t be discouraged when you don’t like something, because it helps you realise what you’re truly passionate about. There is only one test, some labs, a project and also a recap quiz every two weeks. This course is nicely organised and if you stay on top of lecture content and do the given practice problems you will be all good.
MECHENG 222
If you remember last semester, we took a statics paper. This course is that paper’s dynamic counterpart – much like how ENGGEN 121 is divided into a statics and dynamics module. This has been the most challenging paper this semester, as I’m sure many of my classmates would agree, but it has also been my favourite one. It’s probably the heaviest one in terms of workload too – weekly quizzes, two big tests and two projects too. Doing all the weekly tutorial sheets is something that has really helped me keep up with lecture content, so make to do that (theres more in the textbook if you run out!) and you could come to enjoy this course as much as I do!
MECHENG 270
This is also one of my favourites of this semester. This paper teaches you the essential skills of coding and programming for a career in mechatronics. One half of the course teaches you fundamentals of OOP (Object Oriented Programming), which explains why the course is taught in C++. The second half of the course is about abstract data structures, which in my opinion is easier to understand than the very abstract concepts of OOP. There is no exam for this course, just lots of projects and reflections, and two big tests. I’m definitely not someone who is naturally gifted at coding, and the assignments were at times trying, but there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing your functions pass all the tests. So don’t worry too much if ENGGEN 131 was not your strongest paper this year – the in-class exercises are super helpful and there are drop-in labs every Tuesday and Thursday that you can go to and ask for help!
In my opinion, the workload for this semester is lighter, but that definitely doesn’t make it any easier either. With less than 3 weeks until the end of the semester and start of exams, it’s especially hard to stay motivated and wake up on time for those early morning zoom lectures and tutorials. So don’t give up now – you’re almost there! Also, don’t forget to book for your vaccination if you haven’t already, so we can stay safe and get through this lockdown sooner.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to message me! I’m always up for a chat.
~ Sabina