Breakfast of champions: Steak Ramen with boiled egg. I was off to a good start... then I slipped on a banana peel (metaphorically speaking).
Math A ("math fundamentals"):
I'd describe this exam as "sheep being led to slaughter." Seriously, the exams from the previous years were way easier than what I faced today. Heck, I could even get a perfect score on the older exams, but today? Uh-uh, no. Not a good way to start the morning. I went into a meditative slumber during the break before my next exam (in 30 minutes) to cool off, I was quite disappointed to say the least. I made a horrible mistake-- I let my curiosity get the better of me. What does that mean? I saw a problem that I've never seen before and decided that I'd play with the problem to see if I could solve it. I wasted too much time rechecking my equations against the problem to see if it fit and fiddled with it too much as I got closer and close to the answer. End result? I got burned for time! Atleast the problems were tricky, some of them required some clever thinking to get through... Consolation has it that the rest of the Japanese students that took the exam got slaughtered too. My goal is to (hopefully) ride the bell curve (if they do use it here).
English:
As my labmate put described it, "you being in an Englsih exam is *criminal*." heh I couldn't agree more. We had 1 hour to do the exam. The exam had some article from MSN on IP phones, asked us a bunch of questions and asked us to write a 100 word essay on how internet phones would effect society. I write over 700 words in a sitting for my blogs and I push well over 1,000 on occasion. I was done in 30 minutes and I left in 45. I left early because I wanted an early lunch-- I will still miffed about the first exam.
Math B:
Foruier transforms, differential equations and Lapalce transforms. I know for sure that I didn't perfect the exam. We had 3 problems on the exam, of the 3 we choose 2 to solve. I had enough time in the 1.5 hours to try all three and pick the best 2 solutions I wrote for grading. I threw the Japanese adjudicators for a loop. They were wondering why the hell I attempted all 3 questions that they didn't know what to do for a little bit even after I told them one of the solution papers should not be graded (all solution papers had to be submitted). I couldn't get a perfect solution for both problems but I brought them as close as I could to getting the final result. I might have made an algerbraic mistake in one problem and then the other one, I didn't know the inverse laplace transform of a "hyperbolic tangent" function. But it's okay, I wrote down what the solution should look like algerbraicly.
Electomagnetics:
Again of the 3 problems, we choose 2 to solve and hand them in. One problem I didn't understand so well so that pretty much left me with the other 2 problems to solve. I think I did pretty well for this exam. Solved everything, little shaky on one of the question but I think the results for this exam are good.
Tomorrow: Control Systems
I hated this course the first time I took it at UBC. I loved reviewing it on my own. The theory is beautiful-- using differential equations, you can make a system respond to a variety of inputs during a specific state to change the output. The usual math we study are "close form" solutions to most problems. We don't usually talk about how a set of basic equations and variables evolve over a period of time based on certain inputs. This kind of math can be used to progam robotic controllers, acoustic filters and more. The same theory can also be applied to economics which I find fascinating.
Wedensday: Interview
Presentation on my graduating project at University. I need to make slides (which I gave yet to do) and make a list of Japanese key words I will be needing during the presentation (my technical vocabulary is still limited). My professor wants me to do the interview in Japanese. I tried to hide my Japanese skill so I could spend more time practicing before using it in a formal setting. Unfortunatly I got preempted... the reason? My marks for my Japanese courses have probably come out and they probably turned out good (a copy is sent to my professor). He told me that my Japanese was good and that I should do the interview in Japanese. Damn, well here goes nothing. It'll be a trial by fire.
It is now 11:02 pm, test at 9:00 am, arrival time to exam room at 8:30 tomorrow. I've been meaning to review notes but I'm sick of review. I wanted to read my old projcet report but couldn't bring myself to do that either. Probably later tonight.
After exams? I will celebrate and go travelling. Plans? Tokyo, Nagoya (expo), Hokkido, Taiwan and Korea (if I can squeeze Korea in). I'm going to be burning a hole in my wallet, but what the hey, it's now or never!
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