Second to Third year

Although I have opted out of undertaking the sandwich course, I believe it was probably the best decision I made now.  This is because when continuing onto my third year at university, I can gain all the knowledge from my lecturers and then be able to decide in what field or area I would like to get my practical experience.  For those of you that do not know what the sandwich course is, well I can tell you.  The sandwich course is an additional year added to the normal 3 year undergraduate programme.  Furthermore, a sandwich course is referred to as the 4 year course (1 year industrial placement included).  It is where you can take a year out of your university studies between the end of second year and start of third year at university to join a company on a work placement.  

Even though I have not gone for the year industrial placement, for a month over the summer holiday I got a part-time work experience in a small organisation where I could develop and project my skills related to IT.

For third year, I have seen the modules that I will be doing.  Ahh my worst nightmare is back… Hardware is back in my life and guess what? It’s Advanced Hardware.  Although I did ok overall for my theory exam, assignments and my practical exam was as I expected, I still don’t like it much.  I preferred every other module in second year even though my hardware lecturer made the module very engaging; my mind rejected it to an extent.  I thought I would never have to do that module or anything to do with Hardware again because I found it more to be on the electronic side of the hardware with the main part of getting down to the core of the hardware which wasn’t so bad.  Overall experience of second year was good especially gaining knowledge and friends from the electronics course.  They knew loads when it came to the Hardware lectures.  I was amazed.  I can take away a few bits from Hardware in terms of the different levels of a system i.e. low level to high level.

The first year to second year experience was a quite a change compared to going from college to first year at university.  In a way, the first year to university experience was easier to adapt to rather than moving from first to second year.  Hopefully, second to third year will be good.  Thinking positively.