I think I have found the key to cracking this course, it's still going to be really hard but it certainly makes things easier. It's plain and simple teamwork. It was stressed to us greatly in first year but only now do we really see the benefits to working together. Because something you might not know, someone else will, and it's a lot easier to study in a group than work on your own. Being honest, if it was not for my class mates this year I honestly would have been struggling badly this semester, and it's almost an unsaid rule between us that if someone is struggling at a subject you automatically give them a hand and help them out. One of us falls we all fall and we work and have a laugh together too. If someone was working and was not able to meet a deadline then we throw our lab report or assignment at them to help them out because you know they would do the same for you... Plain and simple, it's all about teamwork...
Finally I've finished my exams until after x-mas, where we have to sit engineering maths but I'm not too bothered about that because at least we have time to study for it. The last few weeks of college were absolutely hectic, I found it hard to find time for work, study, college, sports and girlfriend (which everyone knows is very time consuming, ha ha she's going to kill me now for saying that). Then we had a couple of last minute projects to get in, one of which was for the subject of transfer processes. I was given methyl-chloride @ 293 K and I was to calculate the optimum pipe diameter to use if i was working for a company. We were given this big formula that we had been deriving the last week in class and we had to calculate the most cost effective way of doing it. We had to take into consideration of using stainless steel pipe over galvanised, the cost of it, the maintenance of the pump, and so on... We cracked it easily enough once we got working in a group, even though it was in individually assigned project. Other subjects just finished up with the labs, and trying to get our lab reports in on time was a task in its self - never mind the exams we had to study for (I was a bit guilty of late reports myself)... I found this semester harder than either of the two semesters in first year so something had to change, and that's when we started to really study together and assign study tasks for each other and then photo copy each others notes and past exam papers which we had been working on, saves everyone else time, and you feel like doing it in better detail because you want to give the lads good notes and answers... I found with this semester that the subjects became very chemical engineering specific and in my opinion i think it will be an interesting job... Only time and work experience will tell tho... Anyway, I'm on my Christmas break, (YEEEES!!!) so have a happy Christmas and a happy new year and will talk to you in my next post....
Johnny Twomey
2nd Year Chem Eng
Cork Institute of Technology
