LSM1401 and beyond

Just finish the paper at 7pm.

Just wanted to jot down some of the insights that I get after taking this module.
It’s an open book exam, and so far this is only my second open book exam.
I’ve come to realise that Open Book exam has little or nothing to do with the books when you are in the exam hall.
It’s all the preparation work that you’ve done before hand that matters.

literally speaking, you could not afford the precious time to flip through the books trying to look for answers.

Some of the methods to tackle an open book exam that I’ve gathered are

1. Make your own notes.
   1. summarise the key points
   2. use tables, charts and flow charts.
   3. mind maps … hmmm not sure, might be too time consuming to make.
2. Memorise everything
   1. ok maybe not everything but it’s important to internalise some of the concepts.
   2. Some of the concepts where you know it’ll be too time consuming to search around in the book for answers
3. MUST read through the whole text book at least once
   1. to get a big picture of what it is really about
   2. lecturer’s notes are literally just guidelines
4. Gather a few friends to draft notes and draw charts
   1. that really saves time!!! a lot of time

Oh ya, although the lecturer kept on reminding us that the questions that will come out in the exam will be conceptual questions. Not much of memorising facts or answers vividly found in the notes. I really have no idea how is it really like until I took the paper just now.

Question that came out are those IQ type questions. Asking you stuff from a different perspective, reverse the normal process.
Most Question gave you a situation, some clues and you have to solve it with what you know. So that’s what they call conceptual. Without a good grasp of the concepts, you really cannot answer the question. Either you know it or you start to flip through the notes to find answers. That is quite a bad move considering you have only 120 minutes for 60 questions, approx only 2minutes per question.

Oh ya… this particular module you can’t afford to skip lecture or fall asleep during lectures because lecturer’s will always let out hints during his lecture.
In fact, there are some area that is not in the notes but the lecturer mention it in class. Those will become potential exam questions.(I did not copy it down… too bad)

Well… next semester, all of us will be back to the 47 people bell curve. I don’t think we’ll be taking any module with people outside engineering science. It’ll be interesting!!!
Let’s see, we have

1. ESP2106 Principles of Continua
2. ESP2109 Design Project (Mechanics Properties for first half and Energy "Heat and Mass Transfer" for second half)
3. MA2501 Differential Equation & Systems
4. PC2230 Thermodynamics & Statistical Mechanics
5. one SS - Changing Landscape? Evolution of a Global City State?
6. one arts GEM - japanese? well….. or psychology

Study ooo~ study~!!!
I like to study~!
Study gives me knowledge ooo~
Study makes me smart~!
Study ooo~ study~!!
^^