Second Year…Second Term

It was like a dream that make you out of breath, but you enjoy it a lot when you weak up. It was second year second term. I'm now a third year student in Computer and Systems Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University in Egypt. Our department is known as the hardest one over all faculty departments. I feel working under pressure day and night is one of our department goals besides being a qualified engineer. Sure we saw a lot of continuous work pressure over our terms in our lovely department. The most imaginary was second year second term.

Really this term our teaching assistants exceeded all rates of pressure we have seen before (at least our class). It was usual to have three or four assignments at a time in file structure, digital design, numerical analysis, system programming and/or automatic control. It was more wonderful if you work in four different groups with different circumstances, available time and working style. You can be close to madness edge in this case (which I think some of my class already reached last term).

Really this term cannot be forgotten. The main characteristics of that term was lack of study and lack of sleep. Lack of sleep is somehow obvious as we continuously work day and night. Lack of study was because of the same reason of course which may be strange when you waste study time in faculty work :D:D. I can mention many of situations faced me in that interesting term, but to keep post not very long I can talk about one or two of situations I cannot forget at all.

First is SIC/SICXE Simulator assignment, we worked somehow well in this assignment. Its due was three days after mid-term exams. As we almost don't study, before mid-term exam we were forced to ignore working in assignments and study for exams. After mid-term exams we resumed work in Simulator again which was not about finishing. When you study for exams after ignoring studying for many weeks, it makes you tired enough. Now you have to deliver an assignment after three days with new IDE you have never used before (VS.NET 2005) and you discover that coding in it is not simple as you are familiar in other visual IDEs. I and my group-mate Tarek had to work two successive days with almost no sleep (a little to still standing up). In third day, delivery day, we was so tired and nervous (lack of sleep makes a lot). But, unfortunately, we have to deliver Huffman Coding Compression Program after tomorrow :'( :'( . He was not Tarek this time, he was Amr Kabardy. We had written approximately half of code which contained many bugs. Bugs in bit manipulation are so painful. I slept for 3 hours after Simulator and wake up to begin Huffman fun. I can forget a lot of tracing bits inside program data structure and a lot of instability of compression program, but what I can't forget the last 12 hours before delivery. Delivery was Tuesday at 12:00 PM . Amr Kabardy came to my house at 12:00 AM that day to trace and finish program together. I was about madness at this moment. Almost no sleeping for 5 days is a horrible situation. We worked the whole night this day. Sometimes we work together and other times work in different tasks one on PC and the other on my laptop. The most interesting thing in that 12 hours that both of us fall asleep. When one work on computer he talked to the other but there is no response. When he looked at him, he was asleep. This situation repeated for both of us. Finally we left at about 11:30 to faculty to deliver and we delivered it better than we expect (thanks Allah). I remember that I slept much hours after that, but it was great experience with no doubt.

When we finished this term, we felt that we gained a different thing. Now we have an experience about how to work under incredible pressure, how to deliver at time and how to work with different people in different projects and quietly handle each group issues. It was a great unforgettable term.

Amr Magdy

5 / 2 / 2007