Dead Week/Finals

My old school had a dead week before finals, so I am somewhat familiar with the concept and the hectic studying that goes on during it. However, I feel that dead week here at Purdue is going to be a lot more challenging. This is probably because in high school most of my classes were fairly easy, whereas the classes in college are somewhat tougher, especially math. Math is absolutely murdering me right now, and I have no idea how I am going to pass the final. I suppose I will have to put in over 5 hours of studying every day! It's no surprise to me that dead week is going to be rough. In my freshman year of high school, I made the mistake of not doing any review before dead week, so I was in a mad rush to study everything before finals week. Four years on, I am in the same boat in my freshman year of college. The only difference is that I knew I should have studied before dead week, but with all the homework and projects in all my classes (especially ENGR131) I have had no time to study anything but what is taught in class on the day.

However, I am not totally unprepared for the madness of dead week. I have several strategies to maximize my efficiency and ensure that I am well-prepared for finals. First of all, I temporarily deleted all the games from my laptop and deactivated my Facebook account. Games and Facebook are my biggest two distractions from studying and sometimes hinder my productivity. Second, I have drawn up a timetable for all my studying. This way, I have spread out my studying over the entire week, organized every day into studying and non-studying blocks, accounted for homework that I still have to do, and focused on topics that I know I have trouble with. In my experience, this is probably the best way to go about studying during dead week, because otherwise you will feel overwhelmed by all the chapters you have to study.

Despite all the madness of dead week, there are two good things about it for me. One is that I only have to study for two finals - math and chemistry. The second is that, two days after dead week, I will be flying back home to New Jersey to enjoy a long Christmas break completely devoid of studying.

ENGRO103 Final Thoughts

My semester in ENGR103 has been a great experience. I have learned many things about cultures that I didn't know, such as the fact that engineers in different countries have different philosophies, strategies and mindsets. For example, when we learned about the Chunnel project, I was intrigued by the conflict in engineering styles between the French, who were more theoretical and liked to plan ahead, and the British, who improvised more and solved each problem as it came to them. I also learned about the many opportunities for study abroad that Purdue offers, and how they could be beneficial to my career as an engineer. Taking this class has made me want to pursue things in my career that I had not thought about before. In high school, I did not think much about studying abroad. I knew a transfer student from England who went to my school, and judging from how he felt I came to the conclusion that, while studying abroad would be a nice thing to experience once in my life, I would probably feel too out of place in a new country. However, since taking ENGR103, I have changed my mind and decided that I want to study abroad at least once in my college career, preferably in a country where the predominant language is not English. Overall, ENGR103 has been a great eye-opening experience for me in terms of both my engineering career and my personal thoughts and interests.

final week

This month is the end of the semester and the end of a year. I always surprised how fast the time passes. Next week is dead week, but it likes the beginning of the semester. I still remember what happened on the first classes. In the first ENGR team meeting, we said we don't like this class and hope we can survive from it. Now we finished our project and we did good job in the final presentation and team exam. Next week is time to say goodbye, since there will be many people who are in my classes right now that I won't see once the semester ends. At the same time, I must work hard in the last week to do the review because I almost forget what I learnt in the first lecture. It's too bad. I have three final exams, but I just begin to review chemistry. It's a long way to go. I hope I can good grades in the final so that I can get A.

Most people will go home and spend the break with families. Unfortunately, I have to stay in the dorm during the winter break. It's a good news for me that Purdue Village won't closed during the winter break. This is the first time I can't stay with my family when the New Year is coming. I'm sure I will miss them. There are some friends won't go home too. We can hold a party to celebrate the New Year. I hope we can have a wonderful party. We (me and my friends) plan to visit Chicago and New York. We can stay with other friends in New York and they can be our tourist guides. The trip makes the boring winter break seemed better. I can't wait for it!