Calgary Exchange
Gord's Exchange to the University of Calgary
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Show off
|
I would like to show off and say that I topped my class for the mid term for ENEL 465, which is a more advanced EE2005, about transistors and stuff. Surprising, cause I don't know how to do the assignments and I just blindly went through the test, even leaving earlier cause its giving me a headache. Apparently, the rest of the class struggled too, allowing me to top the class. Well, I don't know if the lecturer mentioned anything about it cause I skipped the tutorial and was late for lecture, so I got the exam paper much later than the rest. Maybe I can show it off to Suzanne D, the exchange coordinator from UofC who disallowed me initially to take 6 courses cause "most exchange students will not be able to handle the differences and hence should take less modules." (Eventually, I dropped to 5 modules cause the 6th module has a very siong project which does not allow me to slack :p). She also said that many Asians may know English very well, but will still find it hard to struggle in a mainly English-speaking society, the bloody frog-in-a-well who thinks that we speak and write only in Mandarin in Singapore. Haha after ranting, I have to say that she is actually quite a nice person la, showing concern for a poor little exchange student. Even though I have this feeling behind my head that tells me she does not allow me to take an extra module because I do not pay school fees, and the fees here are charged by the course, the more courses you take, the higher the fees. ANYWAY.... Goes to show how extreme my grades can be, topping the class for 1 engin module (just the mid terms, the assignments I was below average, quiz I was normal), struggling to pass the other one. Well, the other engin module is electrical machines, and requires memorising formulas and standard solutions (until I realised a 1 page cheat sheet is allowed, damn!), and constant practising of questions, which slack me obviously never. It is rather similar to the first year EE module, which is probably my worst scoring module so far together with MA1506, both of which also require constant practise. University education should be about understanding! Not memorising. Not practising the same old questions over and over again. It should be emphasizing on analytical skills, not on regurgitation of information. They say Singapore's education system is bad for emphasizing on exams and memory work, I think its still a problem worldwide (maybe not so for Australia, the slackers). Or maybe its just an engineering problem, this emphasis on memory. Singapore's education system is meant (imo, at least in the past) to groom potential engineers.. Hmm.. |
posted by Gordee @ 3:49 PM
