The IT Student Blog

After a long summer and a long break from this blog… school is about to begin again.

SO it’s time to fill up your cup with hot coffee, plug in your machine and start absorbing new information. A fresh start! Now you’ve got the chance to do all your assignments on time, pre-order the new course literature, be the first to borrow what you need in the library and avoid the snooze button in the mornings (as the mornings are still quite sunny, and it’s nice to get up).

As to all the new students…

My absolute best advice for you guys (including everyone else) is to start up with things early. Even though you might get a soft start… do pick up your books. Google the things you don’t understand. Ask questions. Be curious. And never underestimate the power of Wikipedia. Keeping yourself up to date is invaluable.

Time flies and the exams always come faster than you think… so start up your work right away and you will increase your chances of surviving itu.

Act NOW, tomorrow might be too late. You don’t want to catch up with re-exams, trust me.

I wish all new students good luck with their studies and don’t run away if the more experienced guys talk about stuff you haven’t heard of when you’re having your first lunch breaks. Eventually you’ll undestand just as much… or even more. Just hang in there. Be cool. Keep on reading.

Buttersonic with Sub6 is a current favourite. Great psytrance for real concentration.

Some say that studying in silence is the only way to really keep you concentrated. They always claim: “It is scientifically proven!” You can neither question or doubt it. Nor could I. After years of (apparently) bad study habits, I had to make a change. I had to stop listening to music.

I tried hard for a long time to resist my iPod every time I opened up my books. It wasn’t easy at first, but little by little I got accustomed to work in silence. But I realized that silence is uncommon; there are noises everywhere. Buzzing fans, ticking clocks, my own breathing… It got even harder to concentrate than it was before. And the worst thing of all: studying became boring.

But then I heard of this woman who studied to become a physician. Future doctors have a lot to read! This lady had in fact seventeen books to memorize for an upcoming exam. The interesting thing about her is that she always listened to music. She says that music together with reading make the whole brain work instead of just one hemisphere. Music in that sense increases your capability of remembering what you read.

*wonder where I put my iPod*

I’ve spent the past few month in a blur where almost everything circulated around researching and producing a thesis, which was an extraordinary experience. However, that experience is not the purpose of today’s writing. It is about the feeling of waking up to a reality which is long forgotten, with plenty of loose ends to take care of as well as an unknown future.

I have now handed in my very last paper to the SE&M program and my three years has passed by so fast. I wonder how that could be? Could it be because I’ve had that much fun? It is said that time passes by quicker if you have fun but it haven’t been only joy and laughter, its been plenty of hard work and frustration besides the fun. Now that I am waking up from my thesis blur, I think that it is rather due to the level of focus. I was so concentrated on the tasks at hand that I didn’t reflect upon how much time had passed by. It has been three intense years, not only have I had many courses but also one project each term, where we worked in groups to achieve something new (at least to me) each project.

For example the first term project we developed an application in Java, which was to be used by dentists to share information with each other. Another example is the fourth term, where we worked as a whole class with Lego NXT in an embedded project to create different support systems for a car. I was in the group of adaptive cruise control who, amongst other things, made the robot slow down to follow cars in front of it automatically.

Each project has been very interesting and brought new challenges. This often lead me to a point where I got surprised if the doors to the university weren’t already locked for the evening when I headed home. Putting that much effort into the projects made me always feel a bit lost in both space and time when the projects came to an end.

How do you feel when a project that was important to you have ended? And how do you handle it?

Keep it clean around you. Clean spaces are good, because your eyes are more likely to stay on the task you’re doing. Having a mess around you will cause a mess in your head as well.

Drink water. Keeping your brain in a cool bath of fluids really helps it absorb more information.

Make it fun. Taking notes in coloured pens or listening to music can really help eliminating the dull atmosphere that comes with strict studying. Eating candy is also a good thing as you will associate your studies with something you like.

Take small steps. When there’s too much to do, it’s easy to just make it worse by not knowing where to start and thus lose control over the situation. When losing control you’re more likely to give up. But instead, try starting out taking small steps. You’ll then see that small steps take you far and in the right direction.

Try your best. If you think that you’ll fail your exam or what else it may be, you will do so. That attitude makes you give up already before you have given it a chance. But by trying you’ll always get nearer and nearer a pass. And even though you might fail the first times, you have gained knowledge during the way there and it will get easier for each time you try.