I must admit that life is not great right now. 4 tests and a group project presentation all in the last week before mid-sem break, I thought this break would be a beautiful chance to catch up on sleep- yet here I am, with 2 essays, 2 reports, and a lab all due in the first week back. Am I anywhere close to finishing any one of those things? Of course not 😃
Anyway, I’m here to give My Honest Opinions of engsci’s first semester papers! First, an obvious disclaimer, these are all my personal thoughts and do not reflect the vibes of my peers, and also my memory is absolutely terrible so I’m not sure how valid my review is. Any problems, don’t bring them up to me please as I am already at my wits end. Let’s get into it!
(My other papers last sem were ASIAN100 and RUSSIAN100g and I’m not going to get into those- just know that ENGSCI233 took more time and effort than both those papers combined. Also, I did ENGSCI211 in Summer, which was the best choice I’ve ever made in my life. #recommend)
ENGSCI 255
Stats. The bane of my existence, my worst type of math, 255 somehow was actually my favourite engineering paper of first semester 😮 There were 3 sections to the course- linear programming, decision making and data analytics, and simulation. LP involved formulating linear programming models and solving them in excel, sensitivity analysis, and different types of network problems. The second section was exactly what it sounds like- we made decisions using stats, and visualised loooooots of data using R. Finally, simulation (my worst section in the exam by FAR 💔)- we learnt to use R for simulating poisson processes, inventory models, revenue management, and used a simulation tool for different queues. Overall, 255 was really well taught, and we definitely got way better at coding in R 😎
ENGSCI 233
I shed many, many tears. The first few weeks were absolutely atrocious, as we were forced to code connect four with sheer willpower and about 2 hours of python basics. Ironically, that wasn’t even the worst lab- cubic spline interpolation completely broke my soul 😗 Generally, it was a cool course- we learnt how to programme paper scissors rock onto microbits, implemented numerical methods like improved Euler and LU factorisation, and even did some parallel processing and Dijkstra’s algorithm.  233 may have been the most time-consuming paper ever, but it 100% made me better at Python, and some of the labs were actually kind of fun (can’t believe I’m even saying that)
BIOMENG 221
Bernoulli. The word is honestly all I remember. What Bernoulli’s equation is, I don’t remember. But just for you guys, I asked a friend, and this is what she remembers!
- Lots of things you don’t expect to be in the paper, eg. Electrical circuit formulations for heat transfer, ODE’s, fluid mechanics
- Contains stuff from both 121’s, chemmat content and beams & moments
- Ironically not much biology at all???
Best part of 221 was the teaching team imo, they were all so nice and made sure we could understand the content well (I admit I don’t think I understood much, but that’s on me fr 💯)
Overall, first semester was good, I had fun, met lots of people, sustained myself on lots of free food, cried lots- typical Uni life! Hope first sem was swag for all of us, and thankfully it’s over now 🗣Â
Until next time 🫰