The fall semester is over. I believe that I had done well with my classes in Embedded Systems, Discrete Structures, and Software Engineering, which is good. Looking back at it, this ran pretty differently than my previous semesters during my undergraduate coursework in aerospace engineering.

This semester I was only enrolled in a total of 11 credits worth of classes (Embedded Systems – 4, Discrete Structures – 4, Software Engineering – 3). Since my status at the university is a non-degree graduate student, full time is set to 6 credit hours, so I was a “full time” student. But technicaly, since I was taking undergraduate courses, I was taking what normally would classify me as a “part time” undergraduate student. This was the first semester in which I had taken anything less than what my normal course load from before of 14-18 credits. Yet, despite only taking 11 credits, the classes kept me busy and on my toes. Academics still took about 30-50 hours per week (yes, I do time logs), and that I still came across those seemingly inevitable nights of studying, working on homework, labs, projects, etc.

Since my focus was strictly to satisfy my course prerequisites for the MS Computer Science program, I wasn’t involved on any on-campus clubs this semester. Previously during my undergraduate years I was deeply involved in organizations such as student government, publications, and clubs. But disconnecting myself from that to focus on academia certainly freed up more time towards doing well in my courses.

I actually ended up enjoying all of my classes, where my favorite one was Software Engineering. I particularly have this keen interest towards software requirements and analysis over design. It’s not so much that I don’t like designing products because I do — I woudn’t be an engineer if I didn’t. Just, I feel that it’s in my nature that I focus a lot on “future-proofing”, because one thing that I don’t like is having to change a design halfway (or more) through because requirements weren’t clarified. Also, I’m interested in looking into propective future software life-cycle models. Considering the history of software engineering, it’s pretty interesting at looking how life-cycle models have evolved. And as software companies are working in what seems to be a very popular object-oriented life cycle model, it’d be some food for thought as to what sort of model companies would be working on 10-15 years in the future.

Embedded Systems introduced me to lower-level programming, particularly Assembly language. I actually found myself not hating the language as it seems most people around me seem to, and I enjoyed the labs. I bought the microprocessor board the lab uses (Dragon12-Plus) as my justification to save gas money since on a typical morning it’d take me 45 – 60 minutes to get to campus. To me, the cost of the board (~$100) and the documentation ($0) was a much better expense than the text, and I’m happy that I do have a microprocessor board on me for future projects that I want to take up myself.

Discrete Structures was a class that seemed as if it took basic principles of logic and turned it over its head. I found the homework, quizzes, and exams to be not so much math problems but as puzzles instead. Boolean logic, set theory, proofs, and graph theory was the most interesting to me, but I never seemed to get combinatorics right. Even despite studying and practicing countless combinatorics problems, I was always bound to get something wrong! Even though the class is already done a part of me still wants to continue studying the topic by doing a problem a day or something around that sort. I do have a lot of respect for the instructor for this class since I perceive it as a class that would be difficult to teach without having the material get too dry for the students. Her heart is devoted to the topic, as it was also the area that she specialized for her Ph.D, and I wish I had as much passion in logic, algorithms, and the sort as her.

Taking just three classes with no other outside obligations was the perfect number. It certainly deemed itself as such come the time of final exams. Both Embedded Systems and Discrete Structures’ finals were both comprehensive. In the past, comprehensive final exams were the worst. There always seemed to be so much material to cover, and the stark realization that there was material that needed to be covered that was uncovered. However, studying for both of the classes wasn’t so painstaking as I initially thought. Reviewing the previous two exams for the classes and going through notes and homework for the later end of the classes were enough, since I had spent so much more time on preparing for the first two exams. Also, somehow by taking just three classes made it feel like there wasn’t enough material that was covered, and the structure of topics for my classes just seemed to make sense.

That all said, I did remarkably well in all of my classes, with multiple instances where I’ve scored well above the curve. However, I didn’t do quite as well as I had wanted because I had been working for a 4.0, and fatal screw ups in the combinatorics section of Exam 2 of Discrete Structures I feel inevitably will bring me to a B. So, I am expecting as my grades this semester as an A in Software Engineering and Embedded Systems, and a B in Discrete Structures bringing my semester GPA to a 3.64.

But I can’t complain. It was a good semester.