Engineering in MMU - a pissy and poorly analysed perspective.

I haven't been blogging these few days. Blame the exam schedule. 4 papers in 3 days. Thats as bad as exam rules would allow, since MMU made it a point not to give us 3 exams in 2 days. But I guess I can't really blame anyone but myself for this. Apparently, the law students had a screwed up schedule as well. They wrote a letter, and got it changed. The mechanical engineers sat down, sulked and ultimately suffered. Oh well. 4 papers later, I'm glad its over. Mostly over, that is. Another semester almost passed, and another one that I have learned almost nothing. Control engineering is what I consider the best representation of learning in the FET. Go to class to learn a bunch of vague rules of a game. Go home and practice the game. If you do enough, you get an A for playing. At the end of the semester, you can forget all the rules, because you are going to be playing a different game very soon. Don't believe me?

Rules to drawing a root locus diagram. (The ones I can remember)

1. Modify the given transfer function to the general form. (Before that, pray that the equation is in a form that you can recognize)
2. Identify the poles and the zeros.
3. Plot the poles and zeros on a graph.
4. Calculate the angle of asymptotes by using the memorized formula.
5. Calculate the break off points by differentiating the transfer function.
6. Calculate the angle of departure by using the memorized guidelines.
7. Draw the loci, keeping in mind that they cross the real axis between odd numbered intervals of poles and zeros. Use the calculated values to help you, while hoping that there is no contradiction in the conditions that you have determined.

I have to point out that I have no idea what a transfer function, pole, zero, break off point or a root locus diagram is. And neither does anyone that I know. We just do it for final exams. And after that, we forget it all.

What it ends up becoming is this:

Rules to a pointless little game that you have to master to pass. You get one shot at it, with failure resulting in having to wait another year before you can play again. Failure would also mean that you cannot play the harder, equally pointless games that await you in the future.

The last time I've seen scenarios like this, they have been a test of will, and not part of a learning process. Its like some challenge on a game show that we have to excel in to win this prize at the end. Since when did learning ever become a test of will?

Yep. Thats what engineering in MMU has degenerated into. Grab any Control engineering A student and ask him what a Bode or Nyquist plot is for. 99% of them will tell you "I don't know". Or "I don't give a flying fuck" depending on how cynical he or she is. Also, if you give them a question that only slightly different from the covered patterns covered in the tutorial, they'd get stuck.

And its not only control engineering. Any electronics subject that mechanical engineers have to take are so woefully surface that no one but the most technically gifted students actually learn anything. And yet, they insist we learn as many advanced concepts as possible. WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT?

My grades have been slipping these past few semesters. Am I getting stupider? Or lazier? Or am I still too heart-broken to study? /snort (lulz)

I think the most likely explanation is that disillusionment has taken its toll. Engineering isn't evil. Its just the version that I'm learning.