Can't Get Over It... - The Last 12 Months

Song of the day:
Within Temptation
"Angel"

Part 1: Labbies

Next was industrial attachment/training but honestly, nothing interesting ever happened during the entire duration.

However, I managed to gain knowledge on a commercial micro-controller known as PIC micro-controller.

I did blog about my industrial attachment under the title “Programming Nightmare! / A little bit of this and that...” so just read about my rants in that blog entry. Hehe.

4th year was the final year of my entire course.

It started off with a busy laboratory session, where problem based learning, or simply PBL, laboratory.

This PBL lab is first of its kind in my faculty but not in UTM as other faculties had been implementing this for a while already.

So, students were put into groups of 5 and throughout the semester, groups had to go through 3 different laboratories.

In each laboratory, groups have to follow a 4 week schedule, where

1. 1st week: Collecting Information
2. 2nd week: Designing experiment procedures/preparing necessary equipments
3. 3rd week: Implementation of experiment
   
4. 4th week: Presentation and demonstration

Not only that, we had to do group meetings at least 3 times (but mostly 2 times for my group as 3 times might be too many times for us).

So with such a busy schedule, adding to the other subjects, I was pretty busy during 4th year.

Not forgetting the first part of my final year project, final year students also had to meet with their respective supervisor for at least 7 times a semester, chose their final year project topics and also did presentation at the end of the semester.

It was a hell of a time for us but I did enjoy the whole process as I’d learnt sooooooo much from doing presentations all semester long and working with my group mates.

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Part 2: F.Y.P.

Then came the 2nd semester of 4th year, which would probably be a hell of a time for some final year students, depending on their projects.

It never get any easier when one has to deal with software and hardware side of an electrical engineering project which I’ve endured.

Adding to the fact that I’m pretty lazy sometimes, things got even harder and worse.

Earlier on, I planned to start assembling the components in my project during the one month holiday in between 1st and 2nd semester of 4th year.

Well I did do that but I didn’t really take much time to research on the hardware specs of the micro-controller that I would be using though.

So problems started to pile up even at the beginning of 2nd semester when I realised that there were too many obvious differences between the micro-controller I’ve used to meddle with (PIC16F876A) and the one I intended to use in my project (PIC18XXXX, i can’t remember the code).

Therefore, I was forced (by circumstances) to change my core micro-controller to PIC16F876A.

Well, I mentioned that the problems started to pile up, right? Next was the programming (software) part.

You know, looking for the relevant computer program (with the C language linker) was a tough job unless you have $kaching$ (money).

So it took me the first few weeks to get hold of the required programs before proceeding with my program writing process.

I was at first shell-shocked by the difficulty of interfacing the program I’ve written with the actual micro-controller. Note that the program would be “inserted” into the micro-controller so that it would function accordingly.

However, PIC micro-controllers were such a hassle to deal with. And those chores took me another few weeks, which eventually reduced my available working weeks to nearly half of 15 weeks.

While dealing with my own problems, I still had the chance to look at my friends’ problems.

Chanuri was probably my only friend who was super duper troubled by her final year project.

Well, not that my other friends weren’t facing problems, but Chanuri’s was indeed a true hassle.

Her supervisor was already a huge question mark as he was known to be bias and discriminated females (as she’s the only female under him).

Note that my best-est friend, Dy, was also under him so it wasn’t only one side of the story.

Then, she didn’t get the help which was very much needed from her supervisor too. Therefore, she had to do all the things on her own.

And eventually, during the final week of the project, she somehow managed to obtain some result, which was only to be rejected by her supervisor who also humiliated her in her face by saying “throw your project away.”

Oh my gawd! Ridiculous, right? I mean, the title given to her was not even suitable for our level and yet he was being so mean to Chanuri!?

Well, a real lesson was learnt. Please choose the correct lecturer as your final year project supervisor before you even regret it.

So, throughout the 2nd semester, 4th year students also needed to meet their supervisors at least 7 times. BUT, I met mine less than 7 times. Muahaha..

At the end of the semester, all final year students would do a final presentation and demonstration in front of a panel of evaluators.

I was scheduled for Wednesday morning (16th April 2008) and was supposed to be the 2nd fella to present in Group 2 in the same laboratory (Power Electronics Lab).

But I was pushed forward instead as the first fella did not print out the latest evaluation form so I headed Group 2 to be the first to present.

To me, it was a fun experience doing presentation as the panel consisted of a few lecturers who knew me.

The worst part would always be the question and answer session for every final year student, depending on the panel of course.

Fortunately enough, my panel weren’t full of inquiries.

Group 1 was different. The panel included my supervisor, who was an associate professor and so it was understandable that he would ask a lot till you drop.

Well, the demonstration was conducted at the end of the whole Group 1 presentation session. One by one, we did a demo on our project and explained whatever the panel asked.

Fun is the only word I’ll use la. Hehe.

FYP ended well for me luckily, as I got an A for it. My initial expectation was to get a pass so obviously it exceeded my expectations. 

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Part 3: Unexpected Events

To be honest, I really didn’t expect some things to happen.

I did mention in “2nd and 3rd Year Tales” that I didn’t have the chance to know people from other courses.

Firstly, I got to know some faculty mates better through the use of technology. What I’m talking about here is MSN of course.

And also, there were lotsa shocking developments in terms of gossips, you know those “A is together with B” or “C breaks up with D”.

SEE gang had our last gathering at Tebrau City, watching Iron Man and also had dinner at a local Chinese restaurant before the movie date.

Well, I would also like to thank Eng Xiang, Lyeyong and Jia Hwang for the last yumcha session I had (with UTM people before the end of my whole UTM experience) as it marked the ending of my 4 year experience.

Adios to all and may all of you have a great career ahead of ya!