End of the semester evaluation

School = done. It's been a week since finals week, and I have been enjoying it even though I feel very unproductive. The resulting labor of my last semester as a sophomore didn't look so great in letter form, but it was what I expected, and no surprises this time.

ME200 Thermodynamics
Overall, I liked the materials covered by thermo, because it was very analytical and involved mostly math. I wish I wasn't stuck with such a shitty professor, because I really think I could've gotten an A in the class otherwise. The final was my last one, and I totally raped it, so it left me with a damn good "I'm done" feeling.
The tutorial/help room helped greatly for me to not fail the exams. I went in every Thursday after my ECE lab around 2 and sat in there finishing my thermo homework till about 5 or 6. Kevin is the TA around that time, so it made things less boring.

ME273 Dynamics
Dynamics started out alright, when we were doing kinematics, but it kind of went downhill after kinetics started. I don't know why, but I just wasn't so interested and ended up skipping out on a lot of lectures. The final for this class was the one I was concerned about the most. Overall, I didn't think I had a grasp of the basic concepts and didn't know how to do a lot of the homeworks. Nonetheless, the final was reasonable but took a lot of brain juice out of me. I'd like to think I got a pretty solid B on it.

My favorite part of the class was that we had a course blog which posted homework helps, solution videos, exam prep, etc. The solution videos definitely saved my ass on tests since I didn't goto a lot of the lectures and really had no idea what was going on. I think it's great that classes are pushing for the "HigherEd2.0", because it really utilizes the advancement of web2.0 with education.

EPICS201 Engineering Program in Community Service: Habitat for Humanity
I was looking forward to this class, because of all the great things I've heard about it. Oh boy.
Things started out great. We took a trip at the beginning of the semester down to Atlanta to visit the HFH international headquarters and discuss projects with the personnels. I was really intrigued by my subteam's project "Biotown", which involved building/designing a green HFH home in Reynolds, IN. Unfortunately, things weren't so great, mostly because my project leader sucked. I don't want to bitch about it, but we didn't make much progress in one semester. Let's just say I'm glad this class was over. It definitely was aaaaalot more work than I had expected/wanted to the point where I seriously consider dropping it, because much of it was documentation/presentation/technical crap.
I think I may join EPICS again in the future, but maybe I'll be more careful about my team selection.

ECE201 Linear Circuit Analysis
It was only towards the end of the semester that I started liking ECE, probably because the material was more mathematical with 2nd order RLC circuit analysis, phaser response, and frequency dependence. I wish I had learned the basic materials better, because it really hurt me on the exams and finals. I probably should've taken the initiative to use the tutorial room early on. I liked my professor in the sense that he was really nice, but I didn't think he was very organized in his teaching.

ECE207 Electronic Measurement Lab
After 15 three-hour labs, I can say I'm pretty good at using ammeters, oscilloscopes, and voltmeters, and building basic circuits. The lab was fun at times and tedious at others with the lab reports. My partner was dumb, and I pretty much did everything during each lab. I was pretty happy about getting an A in the class, because I failed my first practical. Fortunately I did decent on the 8 page formal report and aced the 2nd practical. w00t.
I'm not gonna lie and say I like building circuits and playing with different component and instruments; all that technical stuff. But I don't think it's enough for me to want to be an ECE major or take another lab. From what I've heard, ECE gets to be a bitch that make people want to kill themselves.

COM144 Fundamental Communications
Finally, the dreaded but required COM class. Though easy, it was still a pain. Fortunately my teacher was pretty good, and my class wasn't retarded. Our final speech was a good project, and I hate group projects. Somehow I got delegated as the leader and had to guide everyone.
What I'm most disappointed about the class is that the sole reason I received a B was because I missed one too many classes. I have COM 3 times a week at 8:30 in the morning. I had my circumstances for not going to class, and I only have myself to blame.

CGT163 Graphic Communication in Manufacturing
I almost forgot about this class, probably because it's pretty worthless. Sure I learned how to model in CATIA, but I could've done that on my own in a few weeks. It's hard to describe what kind of character professor Miller is, but I wasn't a huge fan of him. Lectures were worthless, and I fell asleep.. a lot. I can talk more about this class, but I really don't want to, so that's the end of that.