Engineering Nightmare

Date: 31/10/2008

My exam timetable was originally this:

Mathematics 2B on 29/10/2008
Control Systems on 31/10/2008

Me blogging now....

Analogue Electronics on 11/11/2008
Mobile and Satellite Communications on 12/11/2008

The problem is this: I had 5 exam papers in 4 days. Not exactly 5. It is more like

2 + 3i

I dreamt that I sat for 3 imaginary exam papers in my dream. To wake up to find out that the stress i faced was... imaginary, is pretty disappointing.

The Math 2B paper was really some exciting crap.

Event 1: Halfway through the 3 hour paper, I wanted to pee.
(I did go to the loo right before the paper)

Event 2: I was lagging about 20 minutes behind time.

Conclusion: Didn't go to pee, cannot complete paper. This is the first time this happened to me. to resist peeing for more than an hour - balancing the tension of completing the paper and resisting to pee.

After the paper, I found out that I'm not the only one who wanted to go the toilet. Now, I secretly hope that everybody did as bad as me, so that the lecturer will be forced to moderate the paper and scale the marks up.

Let me jot down some lifeless thing I did last night with my engineering classmates

We sat down.
Took out a piece of paper.
Calculated some scores.
Drew a graph.

Using the statistics we learn in Math 2B, we started calculating the probability that our marks would be scaled higher. We found that the scale is exponential in nature, (i.e. the lower marks you get, the higher the percentage of scaling).

However, since the sample size that we used to plot the graph was pretty small (we only had 3 values to plot the whole graph), the variance of the graph would be substantial.

However, factoring in even that, the probability that my marks would be scaled up to a Distinction is less than 20% with a 95% Confidence Interval.

In plain language, the chances of me getting a high distinction, taking into account as many factors as I know, is very low.

I've been munching on salad 90% of the time for the past week - to make sure that I don't spend too much time and energy digesting my food. Going on a vege diet, I have lowered my sleeping duration from 8 hours to 6 hours.

If that sounds a little extreme for the many carnivores out there, I have a friend who pumped 3 cans of Red Bull in a day and slept for only 3 hours. Now if Red Bull is plain water, it is not so bad. The problem is that there is this warning sign on Red Bull that warns against having more than 2 cans a day.

Warning: Do not drink more than 2 cans a day. You might die of a heart attack.

She might just die of a heart attack.
Well, the warning label doesn't exactly write it that way. But it is still crazy.


Reminds me of another dream.



I was dreaming that exams were over. I was jumping and leaping for joy.





Then I woke up.




I can't wait for exams to be over. And looking up the skies, I'm thinking...



God, if it is not too trivial... please help me through this. It's just too damn scary. If I stay as nervous as this long enough, I will get constipation, or stroke, or paralysis...