Aapo in NA: Winter is coming

It's starting to get chilly (=rainy and windy) out here. There has been exciting events such as Curtis day (I live in Curtis House), which I do not dare talk about here, but also more virtuous activities such as intramural football (not the American kind) yesterday. And I didn't even break any of my fingers! Also my parents visited me about a week ago, and we explored around St. John's and the Avalon Peninsula (pictures of cliffs below). But perhaps the most noticeable change in my everyday life has been the start of the NHL season. It's weird not having to wake up at 2 AM to watch a game, and that's probably why I've watched about 20 hours of hockey in the past week.

First impressions of courses

Since this blog should be focused on studying and school, I figured I might write out first impressions of each of my courses. I'll discuss them in more detail probably late November or December, when I've completed term papers and other assignments. Before that I should mention, that the university system is a bit different here. Rather than completing your Bachelor's (~3yrs) and Master's (~2yrs) degrees like in Finland, most people seem to go for only a Bachelor's degree (~4yrs). So I'm actually completing both undergrad (Bachelor's) and grad (Master's) courses here.

English 1020: Writing for Second Language Students (undergrad) is a course that is pretty well summarized by its title: it's an introduction to academic writing and reading for English as second language students. Most of the theoretical stuff in this course is taught in high school in Finland, but there are some things that are specific to English or Canadian academic writing. And by having to write stuff in English, you obviously get better at it both in grammar and in fluency. So in retrospect this might not be the best course to take as an exchange student, unless you're new or unfamiliar with academic writing. The teacher (at least in my case) has good expertise and is one of the better teachers I've come across here.

Engineering 3941: Production Technology (undergrad) is an overview of production. The lecturer is actually the only one of my teachers that speaks English as his first language, which makes following the lectures much easier. The content is new to me, so the lectures, projects and labs are interesting as well. Or as interesting as something not energy tech related can be. There's a lab each week in a machine shop, where you get to do operations such as turning, milling and drilling. By the end of the course you should have an air engine you've build and machined yourself, which is pretty cool. Projects include e.g. designing a few objects that are 3D-printed and laser cut, and reverse engineering e.g. an electric motor. The course is actually quite a lot of work, but it's also intriguing since you get to do something other than sit in a lecture or in front of a computer the whole time.

Engineering 9614: Renewable Energy and Resource Conservation (grad) is an interesting course (at least for me) on paper, but the reality is unfortunately a bit disappointing. There are appealing subjects such as hydrogen storage or tidal power, but the lectures are not that useful and you'd have to look up publications or books yourself to get a reasonable understanding of a subject. I'm guessing the lecturer doesn't have much experience in teaching, since she tends to get tangled up on irrelevant details or fails to give proper instructions for assignments that results in people asking the same thing (e.g. where to return it) over and over again individually, when she could just post proper instructions online. Half of a lecture might be spent on discussing what a Stirling engine is, when a couple of pictures or a short animation clip on a lecture slide would provide much more clarity than discussing the subject with a single student after going through 10 bullet points in a lecture slide. So, overall the subjects and the outline of the course are fine, but the implementation is lacking.

Engineering 9627: Environmental Systems Engineering (grad) is about optimization modelling of different systems (at least so far). I've taken quite a few modelling courses in the past couple of years back home, but apparently I've managed to dodge optimization modelling altogether, since this is the first time I'm actually learning about the theory behind it. So it's a pleasant surprise, because I wasn't sure what to expect when I enrolled on the course. Again, the lecturer is new to teaching, not speaking English as a first language and sometimes the explanations are not that clear. That creates some challenges when there's stuff like Lagrange's equations (which is not something that is freshly imprinted on my mind) implemented in actual engineering problems, but so far I've managed to hang on. And hopefully the focus will shift towards computer aided modelling, which should make things easier. Overall the lectures are fine, and I think this will prove to be the most useful course for me this Fall.