One Quarter an Engineer

So I might be counting my chickens... I mean there is the possibility that I could go into my exam tomorrow and forgot EVERYTHING I ever learned... not to mention some basic mental logic... in order to fail my programming exam. It is worth 50% of the course so potentially a rock bottom fail may be rather unfortunate for me... But improbable scenarios aside. Year 1 university complete.


I call myself one quarter of an engineer but really I don't think the relationship is quite the linear. I can't think of any reason though why it would become essential to but me to work at this point. It isn't like they would suddenly enlist me in a.... major electrical disaster (as opposed to a war or something)... and require me to step up as an electrical engineer. Mind you... if you need some very basic amplification... I'm your girl :). I have operational amplifiers (known as op amps) down so well.

After thinking about it. I think university is a compounding thing. I've seen my second and third year mates. More exams, more work, HARDER work. Definitely compounding. So that makes me 1/8th an engineering... cuz it means next year i'll be 1/4 then 1/2 and THEN i'll be an engineer. Now because it is a compound thing I better not be forgetting... well apparently I have already done that. Not great considering my exam was yesterday. Ahhh well... Lets see what I can remember huh?

1. Study is a whole body experience. If you can't convince every part of you that its what you need to be doing it doesn't happen. You sit down with good intentions but your fingers creep to the mouse, your eyes lock onto facebook - or google when facebook gets dull, your body suggests the bathroom - 5 times in 15 minutes, your throat drys up and needs water, you are suddenly way more hungry than you used to be, your legs are uncomfortable you need to get up and stretch - repeatedly... and so the list goes on. So only when your whole body realises that this study is IMPORTANT is anything likely to happen.

2. Sometimes it won't compute. You've read it a thousand times. Copied out the sequence a hundred times. Written out the equations with pretty labels and every other imaginable thing you can get from your notes. You know that from question to answer it goes like THIS. And still... for some reason in your head it doesn't. In your head 2 + 2 = 4... like it should... It is like being in 1984 (the book) and Big Brother and the marvellous propaganda is saying quite explicitly 2 + 2 = 5. The propaganda says it so it must be true but your brain refuses to allow the system to work for you.

3. Rote learning is good. Whoever said science/engineering students couldn't rote learn their way through their degree? Well maybe not all of it... But certainly first year. This is the one and only solution the the problem in question 2. You don't get why it does it or understand why that particular value even needs to have a place IN the formula. You just know it does. If you right out the answers to every tute sheet you've ever been given and cross your fingers... you may even manage 100% not understand... Unlikely sure but... 1st year physics lecturers don't actually but that much effort into the exam... which leads to -

4. Exams don't change. Unless you are unfortunate enough to be in a revamped course... You know when the uni decides that the old one isn't quite right so they need to overthrow the whole course.. maybe combine it with this other one... But essentially exams don't change. Questions may alternate on a 2 year cycle or the values get adjusted but essentially... Past exam papers really are your best friend. I don't use them often but I do know they work. There have been a couple of physics exams I've survived only because exams never change and rote learning works...

5. Nobody buts in the effort they should. I dunno maybe somewhere out there there is the hard slogging uni student, I am yet to meet them. One of my friends is damn near failing and she has to see a study aid person. I've looked at that time table she was given... Nobody can study like that and remain functional... We are talking 7-10.30 6 days a week... And according to the theory that should be typical of an engineering workload... Let me tell you unless it is the 2-3 days before an exam NOBODY can do that. See point 1. if you are question why not :)...

6. Deadlines can move. Yes, yes, they shouldn't have to, nevertheless thanks to procrastination and a failure to put in the effort you need in a timely fashion sometimes they do need to. I always thought a deadline was like a brick wall or something. A year or so of uni has shown me it is much more like an elastic, you can hit it and move it a little, just be wary the elastic is liable to snap eventually. Some lecturers are more elastic than others but they all will give you an extension... generally for little more than you approaching them with a pretty please. However this is a power you should not extort because it generally just means that you procrastinate to the later date at any rate... I suggest NOT doing that.

Last, or else I'll never finish, but possibly the exact OPPOSITE of least...

7. Procrastination is evil, bad and inescapable. No matter how many good intentions you have to do your work nice and promptly and not allow any aspect of your study to fall behind you are going to. Procrastination is always more appealing than your work. And while you are procrastinating you don't care that your work isn't getting done. Unfortunately the more you procrastination the more the study/work stress hurts at the end of it. Procrastination seems harmless, seems fun... it is EVIL. I say don't procrastinate knowing full well that you, I, everybody will... Its just life really...

Uni is fun... sort of.... Learning how to learn... I used to scoff over the past year that how has my learning been improved... and suddenly i realise that it has.. studying for exams is getting more effective... So much happens without you realising it... Nothing changes until everything changes... such is life.

Communal Living: The Silent Domestic

This is definitely one for anybody who has ever lived in a communal environment. In fact anybody who has had to live with anybody besides themselves. The silent domestic comes in many forms, depending on the issue, depending on the people. They happen between couples, but perhaps they shouldn't?, they happen between friends and family and they happen between the relative strangers who happen to share any kind of space with one another.

The silent domestic is the fight you have through the little actions. It is the label staking claim on the milk in the fridge even when you live with only one or two other people. It is the refolding of the hand towel so it suits you or the rearranging on the living room so YOUR chair can actually see the tv for once.

These fights are everywhere. However it is perhaps when attempting to live communally, be it colleges or share houses, that they are at their worst. At home with family before you move on and move out these kinds of things aren't necessary. Either everybody does it the same way, after all that is where most habits come from. Or you talk/shout about it until you come to solution. People don't need to be territorial at home.

I mention that couples probably do it and shouldn't. Well really if you are getting serious enough to be living together (and I have good old-fashioned morals so read married) you need to be communicating. There are sure to be any number of niggle-y things, especially initially, but you should know each well enough before even getting to that position to know how to handle it with the other person. To me the best silent domestic in couples is the old faithful... 'which way should the toilet seat be left?'...

Here the experiences I'm speaking about are, if you haven't picked up on it, the college experiences. Well not specifically university, in fact some of my most memorable silent domestics come from my job before uni, forced to share a bunk bed type accommodation while on the job for several days at a time. Noteable me and my... roommate... didn't get along all that well... particularly by the end of it.

This is the situation I talk about. When you are living with people, not of your own choosing but because you just have to. Maybe its you've joined a share house with a friend and realised that their other friends... aren't really your sort of people. That kind of thing. The little things that they do that piss you off - in some cases into a silent rage - and yet all you do is intentionally do it back the other way, your way.

I live in a hall way type arrangement with 3 other girls. We each have a bedroom of our own but share a bathroom, toilet and laundry. Some of the most significant silent fights we've had here involve the common areas. Though I'm not going to deny one of the most popular 'silent' domestics about musical taste... Nobody really talks to anybody else but you all put your music on loud enough to drown out the 'dreadful' strains of the other persons.

We have some quirky silent domestics amongst ourselves here in the hallway. In charge of our own cleaning they include how we go about cleaning the bathroom or the toilet or even when we do the cleaning. I like to get up and get ready before I give the bathroom sink a wipe down (as is my job at the moment), one of the others prefers that to be done first. So she does it... Cool you may think, what is the problem with that? The body language if you ever saw her doing it would explain that. I have the disadvantage of not only living with these 3 girls but working with them too... If we aren't on good ground... work becomes hellish.

But my favourite silent domestic, the one that is my basis for all silent domestics, is the one we have about the washing detergent. Now we don't have any structured plan about who has to buy the washing detergent. We all know that we are good about somebody getting some in good time so we never run out. All good... never have we run out of washing detergent or fabric softener. In fact, when we start to run out we generally end up with MORE than we could ever need.

That is where the domestic comes in. This particular fight is 3 against 1. How is this a fight at all? Well the 3 like one kind of detergent and the 1 likes a completely different one. You may think the 1 would just concede, I mean after all it is just detergent, or not. It is the single longest running silent domestic in our hallway. Whose type of detergent is there first at resup time.

I am one of the 3. We occasionally all manage to buy together, and end up with a ridiculous amount of our choice. Unfortunately the 1 has managed to trump us all this time around... with 5kg of her choice! That is a long time in clothes washing.

It wasn't really until this moment that I even noticed that it WAS a fight. That it was a we HATE your detergent and I HATE yours all out brawl using only our wallets and our bought preferences. The ultimate in what I'm calling silent domestics. No words are ever spoken, nobody ever actively complains - it is only detergent - but each of us wants it to be OUR choice that we are using...

Silent domestics will always be there... Frustrating as hell to live with but funny as hell to think about as a discerning adult apart from it all...

My Speech

Good Afternoon. My name is Daisy and I’m going to be speaking for the next 4 minutes about how to talk for 3 minutes. I will be covering topics and techniques as well as reasons why the ability to talk for 3 minutes is a crucial skill.

The beauty of the 3 minute speech is that it can in essence be about anything. Because of the brevity however it is essential to pick a subject without too much complexity or to choose a single component of the larger topic.

For a more formal level of speech some preparation should be involved in the topic selection process. It is important to start off with more information that could be covered in a 3 minute period to ensure that even with forgotten pieces of information the 3 minute mark is achievable. From the total selection of information you should then choose the most important pieces of information. Think of this as how you would explain your topic given 15-30 seconds. This also becomes handy later for given your speech an introduction. These are the points about your topic that you consider to be the backbone of your speech. Using it shuffle your information around into categories to cover your 15 second scenario points.

In more informal situations and when discussing things you are very familiar with it is possible to use a more fluid technique requiring less preparation. This method relies heavily upon mental agility about the topic. I personally call this method the ‘peg’ method.

Named after a primary school punishment for talking in the back row the ‘peg’ method is designed on the idea of a single point of stimulus from which the speech must flow. In the original context the student would be given an object from the teachers box of trinkets, most memorably a small white peg, and be required to talk for 2 minutes. Understandably this was not necessarily a successful affair. Unfamiliarity with the centre point of the speech often led to heavy reliance upon pauses punctuated by umm or arr as well as stilted topic development and large jumps in logic. Because of this I would not recommended this method for speeches outside of a peer level.

Another more fluid method of speech would be the story method. This as with telling a story means starting at the beginning and running through to an end point. This can be used for less argumentative styled speeches. They are less effective at emphasising any one particular point and can characterised by poor outlined introductions. They do however give your audience a good representation of the connections in your topic or the journey taken from point A to point B.

Now why would you bother to master the art of the 3 minute speech at all? Surely being able to talk for a few minutes at a time doesn’t really help you do anything much… Except procrastinate with your friends or tell somebody about the fun day you had Both of which you are perfectly capable of already without any excessive practice… However how about explaining yourself, whether it be in a good or a bad context, to a boss or superior… Given a short and direct instruction or explanation to a larger group whether they are peers or more critically subordinates. You need to be aware of you own abilities when speaking in order to give a good impression of yourself.

All of the aspects of a 3 minute speech are the same as those for a 5, 10 or even 30 minute speech only in a less complex capacity. By training yourself out of bad habits in the 3 minute time frame it becomes more easy for you to transfer your skills onto the longer speeches without committing too many faux pars. Bad habits such as resorting to umm or arr are accentuated by the length and complexity of a speech and topic. It is only by practicing on the shorter speeches that you can minimise and aim at eliminating such a tendency.

Well I have given you a brief 4 minute look in to the hows and whys of 3 minute speeches. Hopefully this will make you appreciate the reasoning behind the practice just a little bit more.

One of those delightful assessment tasks you do because you have to do… I got stuck we a pretty dodgey topic because i did my initial 3 minute speech on how to talk for three minutes (didn’t prepare perhaps the way i might have had i realised I’d be stuck with the same topic for our assessable version).