Hey everyone!!!
Maadhav here, currently running on four hours of sleep, two energy drinks, and the rapidly fading hope that I actually understand thermodynamics.
Welcome to Week 9, also known as “midterm season,” also known as “why did I think engineering was a good idea,” also known as “please send help and maybe some functional brain cells.”
The Current State of Affairs
Let me paint you a picture. It’s 9 PM on a Wednesday. I’m sitting in the library surrounded by primarily mechanical engineering students who all have that same slightly manic look in their eyes. Someone’s muttering about Bernoulli’s equation. Another person just joked about shear stress, and nobody laughed because we’re all too tired to process humour.
This is midterm season. This is our life now.
The Exam Situation (A Horror Story in Four Parts)
Thermofluids Midterm: The Reckoning
So apparently, knowing that heat flows from hot to cold isn’t enough anymore. They want NUMBERS. They want CALCULATIONS. They want me to remember approximately 17 different equations and somehow know which one applies to which situation.
The test itself was… an experience. You know that feeling when you’re doing a problem and you’re 80% sure you’re doing it right, but there’s that nagging 20% that’s screaming, “This answer makes no physical sense”? Yeah, that was the entire hour.
My personal highlight was spending 15 minutes on a problem, getting an answer, checking it, panicking, redoing it, getting the same answer, then changing it anyway because surely it couldn’t be that simple. (Narrator: It was that simple. He changed a correct answer to a wrong one.)
Dynamics Test: The Sequel Nobody Asked For
If thermofluids was a psychological thriller, the dynamics test was pure chaos. Vibrations Analysis and Kinetics of Particles. It’s like they took everything that was already confusing and decided to test it all at once.
The preparation was intense. Our study group met three times in one week, which, for context, is more social interaction than I’ve had all semester. We worked through practice problems, argued about sign conventions, and collectively experienced the five stages of grief when we realised how much content we needed to know.
Test day arrived, and I walked in with what I’d call “aggressive confidence”. Not because I knew everything, but because at some point, you just have to accept your fate and hope for partial credit.
ENGGEN 204: The Surprisingly Time-Consuming Wild Card
Never underestimate a non-technical course during midterm season. While I was busy stressing about thermodynamics, ENGGEN 204 casually dropped a group assignment that somehow took three times longer than expected.
The Study Techniques (Desperation Edition)
Method 1: The “Teach It To Your Confused Self” Approach
I’ve started explaining concepts out loud to my empty room. If you can explain why fluid velocity is zero at a wall boundary to an inanimate object, you probably understand it.
Probably.
Method 2: Practice Problems Until Your Hand Cramps
There’s no shortcut in engineering. You can’t just read the theory and hope for the best. You have to DO the problems. Over and over. Until you start seeing free body diagrams when you close your eyes.
I’ve done so many thermofluids problems that I’m starting to recognize which ones came from which textbook. This is either mastery or madness, and I’m genuinely not sure which.
Method 3: Strategic Panic Management
Here’s something they don’t teach you: managing multiple deadlines isn’t about perfect planning, it’s about strategic panic. You can’t stress about everything simultaneously, so you rank your panic by urgency and severity.
This week’s panic priority list:
- Dynamics test (high urgency, high stakes)
- Thermofluids practice problems (medium urgency, essential for understanding)
- Design project refinements (constant background anxiety)
- Sleep schedule (completely abandoned)
- Healthy eating (what even is a vegetable)
Real Talk: The Struggle is Valid
Let me be clear about something: if you’re finding this hard, that’s because it IS hard. This isn’t impostor syndrome, this isn’t you being underprepared. This is just genuinely difficult material being tested under time pressure while you’re also managing multiple other responsibilities.
Some days, I look at problems and understand them immediately. Other days I stare at the same problem for 45 minutes and make zero progress. Both experiences are completely normal.
The mechanical engineering students I’ve met are some of the smartest people I know, and we’re ALL struggling. The difference is just how good we are at hiding it. (Spoiler: not very good. We all look like we’re barely holding it together because we are.)
Survival Tips From The Trenches
Actually Use Your Resources
Office hours are your friend. TAs want to help you. Study groups aren’t just for the “smart kids”. They’re for everyone who wants to actually learn this stuff instead of just memorising it.
Take Breaks (Seriously)
Your brain isn’t a computer. You can’t just run continuously at maximum capacity. I learned this the hard way when I spent six straight hours studying dynamics and retained approximately nothing.
Now I study in focused blocks with actual breaks. Revolutionary? No. Effective? Unfortunately yes.
Accept That “Good Enough” is Sometimes Good Enough
Perfectionism will destroy you during midterm season. Sometimes you have to submit the assignment that’s 85% of what you wanted it to be because you also have two exams this week. That’s not failure, that’s realistic prioritisation.
Looking Ahead (With Realistic Expectations)
We’ve got about three weeks left in the semester. Three weeks of final projects, exam prep, and trying to remember what sleep feels like.
Am I ready? Absolutely not. Will I figure it out anyway? History suggests yes, though not without significant stress and questionable amounts of caffeine.
The finish line is visible, even if it’s still pretty far away. We’re going to make it through this semester the same way we’ve made it through everything else in engineering: one problem set at a time, one exam at a time, one mild breakdown at a time.
A Message to Future Part II Students
If you’re reading this while deciding whether to choose mechanical engineering, know this: midterm season is brutal. The workload is real. The stress is legitimate.
But here’s the thing. I’m still here. We’re all still here. Tired? Yes. Stressed? Absolutely. Regretting our choice? Maybe on Wednesday nights in the library. But also genuinely learning incredible things and developing skills that matter.
Every problem I solve, even if it takes three attempts, teaches me something. Every exam, no matter how rough, proves I can handle more than I thought I could. Every design iteration brings our phone case closer to being an actual manufactured product.
This is what engineering is, not just the exciting design moments, but also the late-night grinding, the difficult exams, the slow progress through complex material. If you can handle the struggle, the payoff is worth it.
The Bottom Line
Week 9 is kicking my butt. Midterms are no joke. I’m tired, stressed, and questioning my life choices on an hourly basis.
But I’m also learning more than I ever thought possible. I’m solving problems I couldn’t have touched six months ago. I’m designing actual products that could actually exist in the real world. So yeah, it’s hard. But it’s also exactly what I signed up for, and somehow, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a thermofluids problem set calling my name and approximately 12 cups of coffee with my name on them.
Stay strong, stay (somewhat) sane, and remember: we’re all just pretending we know what we’re doing until suddenly we actually do.
Your sleep-deprived, exam-stressed, still-somehow-optimistic engineer,
Maadhav
P.S. To whoever invented the Reynolds number: we need to have words. Respectfully.