Hello Everyone!!
Welcome to my first blog !! 😎*cheering and confetti*
If you’re here I’m guessing you’re indecisive about your spec or a part II that has no idea what they got themselves into. I must admit the past bloggers have broken the spec down pretty well but I hope I can also share some helpful experiences and nuggets of info throughout my time as your PII CompSys blogger. But before that, I should probably introduce myself properly and my love/hate relationship with Computer Systems.
Who am I?
I’m Marie. 👋
Yeah, no. That’s it.
Just kidding. I have no idea how to describe myself. I suppose I have a lot of interests. If I could summarise it, maybe anything to do with art, crafts, culture, science, and self expression. I’d like to think I would probably find anything fascinating (if you start talking to me about quantum physics, I will actually fall asleep). Maybe a key thing about me is that I have a marked propensity towards procrastination; contributing to this is my personal motto of ‘YOLO, she’ll be right’ that leads me to slowly lose my sanity as I realise no she probably won’t. With that said, this has also lead me to try new things like participating in club activities which has made uni just that tiny bit more enjoyable and bearable. If you see me around I’m always down to say hi and yap.
Why did I choose Computer Systems? (my whole life story)
TL;DR: In all honesty… mostly, completely, arbitrarily.
My background is quite different to most people since I did my first year in biomedical science being someone who didn’t really know what to do with their life and was vaguely interested in biological concepts or doing something clinical 🥼. As much as I enjoyed it, I couldn’t see myself in labs doing research and wanted something more practical. I managed to get direct entry into a specialisation after applying for Part I Engineering towards the end of my first year.
I know Part I’s have the whole year to decide with people swaying them left and right but I was pretty much given a list of specs and told to choose one, the only caveat was that I couldn’t do software engineering since it was full. During my holiday in South Korea, I was eating Korean Fried Chicken 🍗 and I realised I should probably send in my choice and after skimming the UoA website, PII blogs and reddit, I ended up at Computer Systems Engineering since it sounded cool. Since then I couldn’t see myself in any other spec.
Okay so maybe not just because it sounded cool since mechatronics sounds cool too. Computer systems also seemed quite flexible, being a mix of electrical and software as everyone always parrots. (Wait… isn’t that also mechatronics?).
My Experience so Far
I do say this as a proud Computer Systems Student (I’m practically doing the same papers as the Electrical and Software students rn), so far this spec has been pretty challenging but I can’t even be mad because most of the teaching team has been very positive and encouraging. Sem 1 felt kind of like a continuation of electeng101. The only unrelated course to EE101 is Softeng281. However, Softeng281, I feel was designed in a way that even people who have never done enggen131 (me) can pick it up.
My tips if you’re considering Computer Systems
Be prepared to do a lot of electrical circuit analyses and work with sinusoids, if you didn’t/don’t like electeng101 then CompSys might not be for you.
If you’re considering Software as someone who already knows how to code and likes to challenge themselves, genuinely consider Computer Systems too. Unless you really know that you want to be staring at screens and code all day and want nothing else, you can always choose electives that cater more towards software, not that we have many electives to choose in Part II 😭.
I mentioned mechatronics and for the record, my brother did talk me out of it but I don’t remember his reason why. In hindsight, for my case it would have been way too much to catch up on. While mechatronics also encompasses a whole range of disciplines, as far as I know, part II tron mostly just deals with a lot of mechanics if you’re into that stuff.
That’s all for now. Good Luck with your studies and definitely check out later blogs that will hopefully be more insightful.