So I recently finished off my first year at university and though I'd let you guys in on how insane the finals were. To give you some context, I'm in the engineering faculty- which is the hardest faculty to be in due to the sheer work load as well as the 6 classes minimum we are required to take (the average is 4). So ill let you guys know about the second semester since this is where I actually tried to get better grades to balance out the first semester. The classes that I was taking were: Math 101 Math 102 (linear algebra) Eng-phys 131 (Physics/Mechanics/Dynamics) Chem 105 Eng 101 (This was a chill class, but its prerequisite Eng 100 was intense af from last semester) Intro To Ancient Rome (This was my option class I picked as I wanted to get away from all the math- heavy memorization in this one) So my finals were starting on April 13 and ended on the 24th (the Tuesday that just passed). But the stress starts around beginning of April because no matter how busy you get, they never stop giving you homework. Every week, we had to do 3 assignments for Math 102, and 1 assignment for Math 101 with a long written assignment due every 2-ish weeks. Now this wouldn't have been so intense if it wasn't for that math 101 written (this is like 5-6 pages of work at a minimum). This assignment was due on Wednesday 18th and the online assignment for 101 was due on Thursday. I also had a math 102 quiz and assignment to had in on Wednesday. Then i had a chem 105 lab final on Friday along with the math 102 written (yes the written for this one is equally long). But i was stressing my balls off so i decided to skip the written and study for my math finals coming up on Monday and Tuesday as these are worth nearly half my grade. So Monday rolls around and I find out i did really good on my chem lab final. I was in a good mood and had a good study session over the break. At this point I was feeling happy and finished my Math 101 test thinking I did pretty decent. Then Monday comes around, this is the day I had to write the Math 102 test- arguably the hardest class the first year. I sit down at my test behind my friend. They announce we can start so i flip over the first page to the questions and I start sweating bricks immediately cause I swear to god we never learnt anything on that page. I look up at my friend fearing for my life and see him with his hand on his head flipping through the pages looking equally stressed out. At this point it was like a blast of nice cold air, cause this meant that he had no idea what was going on either. *Break from the story* The thing about Engineering is that you don't need to get good grades to succeed. All you need to do is do better than everyone else. So you can still fail a final pass the class with a B+ or something. Which is like a 3.3/4 GPA.(Average for engineering is a 2.5). *Back to the story* Now after about two hours I think I probably finished around 3 of the 10 questions correctly and guessed on every one of the multiple choice cause I didn't understand what was going on at all and hand in the test feeling like crap. Managed to talk to my friends after the final and none of them knew where we had learnt that stuff (we aren't dumb kids, my friend group has an average of around 3.6/4). This makes me feel slightly better. I get home and take a seat and realise we have 3 days to study for the next test- EngPhys. "Plenty of time" I thought, and make a mental study schedule to maximize my studying efforts. The thing is, at this point i realized I had no idea what the heck we were doing in physics and start to panic immediately. I needed to make some time for studying chem/Rome which were happening next week but scrapped that idea and studied full time for physics. Saturday rolls around and I felt kinda ready for it, I had done a crap ton of examples and thought I wouldn't do half bad on this test. When they announce that we can start the test, the first thing i saw were the multiple choice/short answer questions and they were quite easy. "This is perfect" I thought, "I'm gonna nail this test". Then I get to the long answer portion- the part thats actually worth a lot... It almost went as bad as the math 102 test.... After it was over, I got up and took off to the nearest door. My friend runs over to me looking wide-eyed and sweating and telling me they genuinely thought they failed that test. Now under normal circumstances, you would feel horrible and tell them that they would do okay. But this is engineering.... we aren't normal human beings around here... so I did the only thing I could at that point and laughed my heart out. I felt so happy I couldn't stop laughing and neither could any of my friends cause we all knew that everyone else failed that test too. After that all the other tests went fine and now im just relaxing and taking a break from everything. This was probably the most stressful year of school I've ever had. What about you guys? Happen to have any Finals week horror stories?
Not an engineering student but like 70% of my friends are and if I’ve learned anything from their constant moaning, it’s that colleges will usually throw hard as hell core classes at you early to weed out the weak. After that it’s pretty easy until you get to your senior project if you’re doing that
oh yeah ive heard that as well lol keep goin for it. As long as you are good with math, chem and physics you're set. Remember, all u gotta do is be better than the majority xD
My roommate is a part of University of Illinois’ Engineering program. I have not seen him at all the past 5 days because he has been sleeping at the Engineering library studying for his finals
At my school this is sorta true, though the hardest classes come at year 3 and first year classes are pretty simple
oh i just finished first year, we specialize during our second year. Im hoping to get into software engineering but idk yet xD
