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| FINDING MY FEET |
| Friday, November 24, 2006 |
Picture this:You are an engineering student.A month before the end semester exams,you sit down with your notes and textbooks to study assiduously with the hope of getting only Ss and As in all the subjects which leads to a GPA of 9+.Just five minutes into the notes is all you need to take your mind off them and go online.Just when you switch on the PC,you hear a meow in the distance.You hear it again.And again,and again until it turns into a loud roar that paralyses you for the next few months.
The last two months were devoted entirely towards preparation for CAT(which ultimately turned out to be a kitten).Neither was my presence in the blogosphere frequent nor was my absence felt.In the end,blogosphere breathed easy,salaries at IIMs' summer placements touched astronomical figures and Australia won the Champions Trophy 2006.
CAT is a wonderful exam.Not because it lays the foundation for a career in management but because of the structure of the test,the type of questions and the amount of reasoning one puts to use.My preparation for this wonderful exam has not been a smooth journey.Now and then,potholes, in the form of college subjects,emerged.Given the nature of a subject like Advanced Manufacturing Systems,one is forced to revert to "Manufacturing Technology for dummies" for better understanding of the former.
Only four papers in a semester is no reason to be relieved.A look at the syllabus clearly proves that the portions to be learnt over 2 years has been squeezed into a semester.A typical case is that of Advanced Manufacturing Systems.(For the uninitiated,I'm a student of Industrial Engineering). This subject can be understood only if you are aware of the fact that probabilities lie between 0 and 1.It's all about drawing network diagrams,compiling a 4 x 4, or at times 10 x 10 matrix and then determining what are known as steady state probabilities.On many occasions these probabilities have come out to 367.87 or even -0.75.The probability of clearing this subject is as low as 0.00000000023%(yes.it's percentage).It's considered equivalent to Optical Communication which is an equally dreaded paper in the ECE department.
The absence of a correlation between the syllabus and industry practices is visible in a subject called Total Productive Maintenance,a subject that talks about industrial maintenance practices.This is what you think,upon seeing the name of the subject.But the fact is that 50% of the syllabus is devoted to the study of reliability.One could find the phrase "Pillars of TPM" written on the pillars of any manufacturing facility.The subject could have been devoted to teaching the so-called pillars of TPM,rather than dwell on reliabilities.There is portion on Just-in-Time(JIT) systems but this has been dealt with from a philosophical perspective rather than from a pragmatic one.At the end of the semester,it makes you say 'Shit'.
Computer Simulation was thought of as an interesting subject as it had to do with a lot of analytical reasoning.I was looking forward to this to complement my CAT preparation.This subject talks about simulating day to day activities,for instance queueing models(!!!???).Using a set of predefined commands,one has to determine how many transactions were made in a given period of time,how many entries waited in the queue and for how long,how many arrived the night before to reserve a place in the queue...Except for a few probability data that hampers the thinking process,an exciting subject overall.
The only saving grace for the past semester has been Total Quality Management,for the plain reason that one could write reams and reams of stories.And every story would begin with "Top Management Commitment" and conclude with "Therefore TQM is the recommended solution."The case studies and a highly proficient professor made it a lively subject.
There are tasks lined up for the vacation,the most important of them being the groundwork for the Technical Fest,Kurukshetra'07.I've managed to swim my way through a semester that was believed to be insipid,but for my pals from the ECE department who helped me discover myself,during the many afternoons I spent in their hostel block.No wonder they are called Enigmatic Coolers of Engineering. |
Property of Sheks @ 10:26 am   |
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Name: Sheks
Home: Madras, TamilNadu, India
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