Thursday, December 11, 2008

2 Exams done, 1 more to go

I just came back from a 4 hours Process Control Exam. I am very happy and relieved. The exam was very easy, I can actually finish it in 2 hours, but I took 3 and a half hours to beautify my answers and to check for any careless mistakes. If I didn't do any careless mistakes, I am confident that I can get full marks for the exam. I'm not boasting, it's true. Haha... For the exam, it was open book and we were ALLOWED TO BRING IN LAPTOP! This is really a luxury which NUS Students never get to enjoy. There were no internet connection though, but you can use Matlab or Maple or any other programs you have to check your answers. I had my Matlab ready before the exam, but at the end, I didn't use it because all calculations are relatively simple and can be done by hand. Luckily, they didn't ask us to plot the Nyquist Diagram (this was past year question). I have the program to plot Bode Diagram in my Matlab, but I did not write the program for plotting Nyquist Diagram, the program codes were given in the lecture notes, but I have never tried the codes before. And Bode Diagram was actually given in the exam, that makes life so much simpler. :)

One thing I find peculiar about the exam is that we have to write our date of birth on our answer script. It really makes me wonder, why do they need our birthdate information? As far as I know, people taking the course can be of very different ages. For example, Erez is 6 years older than me and Jon is 1 year older than me. But still, I don't see the point of writing our birthdate on exam answer script, unless we are graded differently based on our age, which of course doesn't make any sense and it's unfair.

Yesterday, I had another exam too-oral exam for Chemical Engineering Model Analysis. In my opinion, the exam was a waste of time. Basically, the professor, Alex, just wrote me a partial differential equation, then asked me to tranform it into dimensionless form. It is really a brainless work, you just have to know what dimensionless parameters to introduce, then the rest are just secondary school algebraic manipulations. He gave me 15 minutes, but I finished in 5 minutes. The prof looked at my answer, then he said "ok, you passed!", then he laughed. And I laughed too.... I have never had such an easy exam in my life before. It is really lame, but I'm happy. Haha...

My last exam will be next Wednesday (17th Dec). It is also 4 hours exam on Petroleum Engineering. I have not studied anything for this subject. haha... so you can see how lazy and playful I am in Denmark. In fact, I studied for Process Control only at the last minute, because when I came back from Switzerland, I had to work on one last assignment and I only studied seriously after that last assignment was submitted. I'm glad the exams was easy and given my minimal amount of effort this semester, I am more than satisfied already. :)

Before the 4 hours exam today, I went with Jon to Prof Alex's office to take photos with him. He's really a nice guy. He's from Moscow, Russia, but he has lived in Denmark for the past 15 years. He invited Jon and me to come back to DTU next time to do our phD. I told him I have 3 years bond with Singapore government because of tuition grant which I signed. He said, "well, government and situations can change, you can look at DTU websites and be updated about our phD projects and you can come back if you are interested." I feel very honoured by his invitation, but I guess it is very unlikely that I will come back. I still prefer to live in Asia than in Europe unless Erwin comes with me. :) Erwin asked me to register together for NUS Chemical Engineering Master Program after we graduate, but I told him I have enough of Chemical Engineering. I also told him that if we come to Europe with our Bachelor's Degree with Honours, it is equivalent to Masters level and we can skip Master program and do our phD right away. Well, I will see how things go in the future, it's too early to tell now.

Here are 4 photos....



myself with Professor Alexander Shapiro
myself at the exam hall. Comfortable chair, big table and laptop allowed. :)
Jonathan and Byeong Jun getting ready for exam. My Matlab ready for the exam. :)Lunch at DTU canteen. Don't ask me how much they cost. They are expensive by Singapore standard. :) But I'm happy. They have only beef and vegetarian lasagna for the day's menu and since I don't eat beef, I can only order vegetarian lasagna.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

tell your prof that the government policies will hardly change in Singapore. LOL....

Erwin said...

Diana!

Super crazy. Put all the Danish students in NUS exam halls, I wonder what they think!

What is your plan like now?

Mudita said...

Reply to Erwin: Jon and me will most probably be touring Scandinavia after our exam. We will visit Kirsi in Tallin, Estonia and Indra in Stockholm. Probably visiting Finland and Norway too. I'm sad that you are not with me, otherwise we would have seen Ireneus and Kirsi together since they are our friends and they would be so happy to see u.

yU.Zhong said...

Hey, the table is sooo huge! Can we get NUS to improve on the exam environment? Ha, we also paid alot school fees!

Diana, see you back in Singapore soon, and good luck for ur final paper! =)

Mudita said...

Reply to Yu Zhong: Thank you for your good luck wish. :) I should also thank you, although it might be too late now, for being my great assisstant as Vice-Chairman of our Heat Exchanger Design and Gas Cyclone Design Team. If there are more opportunities in the future, I look forward to more teamwork with you and 6 other friends in our group. And we should organise more gathering for our team like BBQ or something. Haha....

See u soon in Singapore during our night classes in NUS. :)