Monday
Mondays are typically my busiest day. Out of the seven main modules I take, four of those lectures are on Monday. In some ways this is good, because this results in most of my tutorial sheets being set right at the start of the week, giving me plenty of time to complete them. I had lunch at the Queens tower rooms (one of the only places on campus where you get food on a plate), which I have concluded to be my favourite place to eat in Imperial.
Tuesday
Tuesday is design and manufacture day. Currently, we are working through 3d-modelling a gearbox for a cement pump. This is probably one of my favourite bits about my course, because fundamentally mechanical engineering is about applying physics and maths to solve problems, and this epitomizes what we do in design and manufacture. Well, that and a lot of sketching. I practiced a little bit of accordion in the evening, which is slowly improving besides my lack of musical capability!
Wednesday
Woo, go Wednesday! Wednesday is the little ember in the darkness that is my week, because there are no lectures in the afternoon. Usually, I go to gaming society on this day, but this Wednesday I decided to continue with some 3d-modelling. I also discovered my favourite unhealthy quick meal: fold cheese and anything I want into a tortilla parcel, and fry it in a pan until it becomes an oozing parcel of cheesy goodness.
Thursday
Ah, Thursday, I remember you well. This Thursday, we had our first computing test. I think it went quite well, considering I find programming slightly challenging, although I feel like I made a few blunders. After two weeks of writing reports, I have come to accept a new method I like to call “controlled blunders”, being that it is ok for me to make a few errors, if it means that a) I learn from them, and b) it means I can spend more time revising.
Friday
Huzzah, freedom! The final day of the week, with nothing between me and the weekend but a mechatronics lab. Also, Mechanical Engineering had a lunch where undergraduates from all four years of the course got together and talked. Here are some things I learned:
- Second year is harder than first year (uh oh…)
- Try and get an internship or experience wherever you can, because experience is really sought after in engineering
- Don’t spend nearly as much time as I have been spending on reports (this doesn’t surprise me, I definitely felt like I was spending too long!)
Saturday
On Saturday, I decided to be mega productive and get work done. Also, I made pizza. It was tasty.
Sunday
Also known as the day I realise I haven’t done a lot of the stuff I need to do. I committed myself to take the tube into imperial, and get some work done (if I work in my room, I inevitably waste time procrastinating). Afterwards, I returned back to Woodward, played some accordion, watched some Netflix, and began the whole weekly cycle again.
2 comments for “My Week”
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Hi I was wondering how much electronics and programming is on the course?
Hi Dennis!
I would say quite a reasonable amount of both.
Our Mechatronics module is essentially electronics. We have that once a week, and then we have a 3 hour lab for it around every 3 weeks, where we apply what we have learned practically.
In regards to computing, we pick up MATLAB in the new year, and we have a lecture and 2 hour practical tutorial in this every week. If you are interested in other languages, I don’t know whether any are used in the following 3 years of the course, but there’s no harm taking one up out of personal interest 😀 .
If you are daunted by either, I wouldn’t worry, because I was the same at the start of the year, and I can happily say that I now enjoy electronics and programming.
I hope that answers your question 🙂