Tiananmen Square Protests

Paul sings Nessun Dorma

From Microcontroller to Computer Engineering

Just finished writing the last protocol for Microcontroller. At least it's done in time. Tomorrow will be the deadline for submission. Feel released, not because of rejoicing at the completion of a course, but that it allowed me regain the confidence in having made a correct decision. After the FH I chose Computer Engineering following my interest, however I got a shock commencing my first semester of prerequisite courses. I simply have too less knowledge in this field. Certainly I started to doubt if my decision was wise to shift from Software Engineering to Computer Engineering, which will require me much more efforts than staying with the subject that I'm already familiar with and good at.

I persisted. The first semester was chaotic. During the four last years at FH, all courses were scheduled. As a new comer at TU, I chose the courses without awareness of their timing conflict or coherence, and (not) surprisingly found out weeks later that it's not possible to take some of them. At the end what I attended were three of the six I planned.

This semester is carried on much smoother. My hours were well scheduled. I started working in groups instead of dealing with problems alone, which did me good. The courses I took brought me fresh blood in vein. It's great fun to program hardware, something I definitely shouldn't let slip.

Take Microcontroller for example, it is surely not an easy-done course, requiring self-reliant studying and lots of practices. But the more doing it the more I feel joyful of doing it. (Although I will not have a very good note. I'm a nervous type, impossible to program something fast under people's observation in the test. They are very nice though.) Still remember, at the first day of the course, I met a guy in the lab, who clacked about how tuff this course was. (He already passed the course in the last year.) He described it catastrophically. I expected it to be horrifying. Today I say, what's wrong with that guy if such thing could not do him fun. Ok, I have to say it did me more fun because I first time worked with hardware. I turned on some switches and pressed some buttons, then the controller reacted, WOO, I can touch and feel.

It's pleasing to do and learn something one is interested. And it may take a long way until one finds what interests him/her the most. The field switch I made requires much time and many efforts, nevertheless it is worthwhile and I believe I'll be rewarded later on.