Things are looking up
I tend to keep myself busy, and sometimes it is frustrating because I feel like I'm not accomplishing much - just spinning wheels. This tends to happen towards the end of every semester. I've been a lot busier at work this year too.
My state of mind lately has been to just finish up the semester and reduce the madness. I've had a lot of trouble focusing in my classes during the last couple of weeks. Work's been busy as usual, and I had a very important midterm this morning in one of my (hard) EE classes. This exam is important because it will play a large part in whether or not I pass the course.
So I went to the exam this morning feeling underprepared. But for some strange reason, I've been very mellow since I got up this morning. Work didn't stress me out even though I had more to do than there was time to do it in, and it was all pretty urgent. I got 95% done with it too, and wasn't late for my midterm. Parking was an issue at school, as it is every day, and so I found myself arriving in the classroom with just enough time to take out my calculator, my pad of nerd paper, and my (professor-provided) cheat sheet. The professor handed out the exam, and I took a brief glance at all the problems and found myself in the position of knowing, for the most part, how to work all three problems.
I always take a quick glance at all of the problems so I can mentally budget the amount of time that I have. Frequently, I don't end up working the problems in order, because I like to get the slam-dunk problems out of the way. This time I actually was able to solve the problems in the given order. I also had this feeling that I wasn't going to need the whole period to finish this exam. Usually when that happens I just crank through it and bail early. This exam was too important for that, so I took my time and was very careful to present my solutions in a clear, orderly, and explanatory fashion. Rather than sticking with the usual strategy of "work the problems somewhat neatly and only show major steps," I went with the strategy of explaining the process of solving the problem. This was, in my opinion, a necessary insurance policy in getting a good bit of partial credit should I have worked the problem incorrectly. So stuff that I would never waste time writing on an exam, I wrote this time. For instance: one of the questions involved a NMOS inverter circuit. The first part of the problem was to determine the output voltage in linear mode. The second part asked for what the output voltage would be at the edge of saturation. Normally, I would write the formula, fill in the constants, and solve for the unknown(s). This time, I wrote "The edge of saturation is the boundary between linear and saturation points, and is defined as the point where Vds is equal to (Vgs - Vt)". That way, he will at least know that, even if the number at the end is wrong, I understand the concept. Can't hurt.
After I finished the exam, I chatted with some of my classmates who are graduate students. We compared answers, and, with the exception of the third part of the second question, got the same answers. Either we're both right or both wrong. I'm pretty sure that we must have both been right.
Feels good to have done well on this exam. That might be part of why I wrote so much about it today.
School rocks! (a true statement, although on some days I might disagree)
My state of mind lately has been to just finish up the semester and reduce the madness. I've had a lot of trouble focusing in my classes during the last couple of weeks. Work's been busy as usual, and I had a very important midterm this morning in one of my (hard) EE classes. This exam is important because it will play a large part in whether or not I pass the course.
So I went to the exam this morning feeling underprepared. But for some strange reason, I've been very mellow since I got up this morning. Work didn't stress me out even though I had more to do than there was time to do it in, and it was all pretty urgent. I got 95% done with it too, and wasn't late for my midterm. Parking was an issue at school, as it is every day, and so I found myself arriving in the classroom with just enough time to take out my calculator, my pad of nerd paper, and my (professor-provided) cheat sheet. The professor handed out the exam, and I took a brief glance at all the problems and found myself in the position of knowing, for the most part, how to work all three problems.
I always take a quick glance at all of the problems so I can mentally budget the amount of time that I have. Frequently, I don't end up working the problems in order, because I like to get the slam-dunk problems out of the way. This time I actually was able to solve the problems in the given order. I also had this feeling that I wasn't going to need the whole period to finish this exam. Usually when that happens I just crank through it and bail early. This exam was too important for that, so I took my time and was very careful to present my solutions in a clear, orderly, and explanatory fashion. Rather than sticking with the usual strategy of "work the problems somewhat neatly and only show major steps," I went with the strategy of explaining the process of solving the problem. This was, in my opinion, a necessary insurance policy in getting a good bit of partial credit should I have worked the problem incorrectly. So stuff that I would never waste time writing on an exam, I wrote this time. For instance: one of the questions involved a NMOS inverter circuit. The first part of the problem was to determine the output voltage in linear mode. The second part asked for what the output voltage would be at the edge of saturation. Normally, I would write the formula, fill in the constants, and solve for the unknown(s). This time, I wrote "The edge of saturation is the boundary between linear and saturation points, and is defined as the point where Vds is equal to (Vgs - Vt)". That way, he will at least know that, even if the number at the end is wrong, I understand the concept. Can't hurt.
After I finished the exam, I chatted with some of my classmates who are graduate students. We compared answers, and, with the exception of the third part of the second question, got the same answers. Either we're both right or both wrong. I'm pretty sure that we must have both been right.
Feels good to have done well on this exam. That might be part of why I wrote so much about it today.
School rocks! (a true statement, although on some days I might disagree)
posted by walterplittle at 00:22
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