Tag Archives: Exams

Two Weeks Left & Current To-Dos

Posted on by
Reply

Happy almost December everyone! I’m currently blogging from Daytona Beach, back from Myrtle Beach where I spent my Thanksgiving break with my family and I wish break was longer. Traffic was pretty bad coming back south and my drive ended up taking about an extra three hours! Regardless, my break was so much fun and I was sad to head back to FL alone as it was such a great experience spending time with family.

Post Thanksgiving 5K with my dad!
Post Thanksgiving 5K with my uncle! We ran together and ended up winning “medals” for fast times!

The 5K was probably one of my favorite moments over the break, other than watching Jimmy Fallon’s Christmas special on NBC – 5 More Sleeps Til Christmas.

My To-Do list before the week begins includes various errands like filling up my water bottle, taking in my bags from my Thanksgiving Break trip from the car and unpacking, laundry, working out, doing yoga, putting up my residence hall closing/end of the semester Resident Advisor (RA) bulletin board in my hall, filling out the end of course evaluations for all my classes on Canvas, and working on my Aircraft Preliminary Design group project and report.

There are about two weeks left to the semester before final exams. The last day of classes for the Fall 2021 semester is Thursday Dec 9, followed by Study Day on Friday Dec 10! Final exams this year are December 11-15 and Graduation is Dec 16! For additional semester closing information about important dates, please check out your RA’s bulletin board in your Residence Hall, as well as ERAU-DB’s academic calendar which can be found here.

In preparation for the end of the semester and finals it’s extremely important to emphasize your health. Getting enough sleep, drinking enough water, eating right, and taking care of yourself are extremely important! I too am guilty of falling into the end of semester syndrome where I drink more coffee than usual and sometimes don’t make time to workout or eat particularly nourishing food because I am too busy with homework or studying. Truly though, when you are busy it is even more important to make sure you are being kind to your body and your mind and putting energy into a healthy work/life balance.

Some tips to prep for the busy days to come – make sure you have quick and healthy snacks on hand (cut up fruit or pre-portion bags of pretzels or crackers for grab-and-go style), set timers for studying to keep yourself on as much of a set schedule as possible, set an alarm for a cut-off time each night where you do an activity to decompress such as making a cup of tea, going for a walk, listening to music or a podcast, working out, or reading a book. Additionally, you can try setting intentions for each day either before you go to bed at night or by incorporating them into your morning routine (perhaps while you drink a cup of coffee or tea). Setting intentions helps keep me focused throughout the day and can be referred back to by writing them in the Notes app of your phone or by putting them on sticky notes around your desk/study space. Remembering your daily intentions can help focus your thoughts on your end goals and re-center your mindset by helping to motivate you if you become busy or stressed! Keep on keeping on folks, will report back soon.

Autumn & AeroLab

Posted on by
Reply

Happy October everyone! I am currently blogging from Daytona Beach, Florida and Fall is officially here. Today was a brisk 85 degrees, yes that’s FL experiencing a cold front. With October, and being about half way through to the Fall semester, that calls for – you guessed it… midterms! The time has come when we are 50% to finals and testing, presentations, lab reports, and quizzes have officially begun. Recently I’ve been embracing the autumnal vibes as much as possible whilst waiting for the weather to develop a chill, by listening to some fun new study playlists on Spotify as background music while I do homework or study.

Additionally, I’ve changed the background on my computer to fully embrace October. Changing my phone and laptop backgrounds to incorporate more autumn colors help me feel cozy and happy. My favorite website to get fun backgrounds for my computer every month is The Every Girl.

Also, I’ve begun my fall cleaning! Since my residence hall room is fairly tiny this year, it is easy for my living space to become quickly cluttered, which makes it all the more important to keep things tidy and fresh. This includes the time of the year when I’m switching to more cozy scents for my oil diffuser and in my body washes. My current favorites for fresh and cozy vibes are oudh, rose, and vanilla! I’ve also recently bought some new coffee for the particularly early and chilly mornings with more nutty and warm flavors (hello Made Pecan and Hazelnut!), and have been trying to embrace seasonal eating – incorporating all the fresh fall vegetables and (the more unhealthy version of seasonal eating that feeds the soul) pumpkin spice coffee flavors, cinnamon apple teas, and salted caramel protein powders.

While I try to (pumpkin) spice up my life for fall, I still have a fairly solid school and work routine which sometimes makes it a bit difficult to add variation to, thus most of my celebrating for my favorite season has been small, yet meaningful changes. As previously noted, adding more fun, fall, festive flavors into my diet gives me small bits of joy even when I’m busy.

On the more academic side, my Aerospace Structures and Instrumentation Lab is going well thus far! We’ve completed experiments for a Honeycomb Compression Test, Straingage Installation, Instrumented Torsion, and Aluminum and Glass and Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP and CFRP) Tensile Testing and only have 4 more lab sessions until the end of the semester, meaning we’re officially half way!!

Picture from my Aerospace Structures and Instrumentation Lab of a strain gage installation on an aluminum alloy bar in a compression test.
Picture from my Aerospace Structures and Instrumentation Lab of a Hydraulic Wedge Grip used in tensile testing for aluminum alloy, GFRP, and CFRP samples.

I hope everyone is enjoying the weather getting colder and the joys of being half way through the semester. Running in the 70 degree weather is my favorite, so I am very excited to be able to not only prepare for my end of November PT test in the perfect climate conditions, but also get ready for my Thanksgiving morning 5K race with my family. Wishing you a focused, productive, and restful midterm season! Will report back soon folks, keep on keeping on!

Online Classes & COVID-19

Posted on by
Reply

Happy March everyone! I am currently blogging from Northern Virginia, and here’s how my schedule has changed since COVID-19 come in effect and I began taking online classes:

I still wakeup early and drink coffee and I still begin working from the very beginning of the day until the end of the day.

I spend more time working on class things now than before. This is partly because I had to spend two days packing and vacating from living on campus to moving back up north by myself. Usually move out occurs at the end of the semester, after finals, and I am able to have my friends/family help me pack. This time was extremely expedited, solo, and very stressful . . . on top of up in the air RA responsibilities and professors starting online classes and uploading lectures and assignments that I began to fall behind on. Moving out and going to a safe place where I was not at risk of becoming sick (from exposure to thousands of students returning from traveling over spring break) began taking precedence over me trying to stay on top of 60+ priority daily email notifications. 

So to say the least, my personal transition to online classes was very abrupt and sort of felt like I was running to keep up with a moving train. Quarantine preparation and move-out time were not originally factored into my Spring Break plan.

A selfie from the airport quickly traveling back from Daytona Beach to IAD, not pictured: a lot of hand sanitizer and a row to myself on the plane.
Flashback to waking up stress free and looking outside in Key West over Spring Break.

Once I traveled back home and transitioned to actually having time to spend on my online classes though here are a few things I’ve noticed:

Typical in-person classes in Aerospace Engineering are difficult, especially ones that are traditionally not offered as online courses (in the fall/spring as well as summer semesters) because they are too challenging. Now, take these courses with professors who are not the most technologically savvy, and force them to transition to teaching upper level engineering courses via a digital platform. In your head you might be thinking, that doesn’t sound like an idea that would flow very smoothly, and yes, I will tell you, indeed it does not.

Thankfully, however, flexibility is the key to Air Power and AFROTC has smoothly transitioned to hosting online classes and digital assignments to compensate for not having in person Leadership Laboratories, Physical Training sessions, and Air Force classes. That being said, it is significantly easier for classes that frequently rely on digital assignments and communication over online platforms to quickly and easily make a transition to solely remote learning.

I’ve had my first Solid Mechanics test online since digital courses began and even though most of the material was taught before spring break, it was still significantly more stressful as the constant worry of technical issues, distractions, or everyday life problems that occur in a home setting were looming around me (think power outages, that yes, of course happened to me 20 minutes prior to starting my exam).

I have come to the realization that I spend more time on my coursework now with online classes than I did with in-person classes because even with power-points, notes, and recorded lectures being uploaded, I am pretty much teaching myself material in addition to completing homework, projects, and “in-class” assignments on my own.

Verdict: I prefer in person learning to online classes.

Will report back soon folks, keep on keeping on, stay safe and stay well!

It’s Crunch Time

Posted on by
Reply

Next week is the last week of classes of the 2017 Spring Semester! This also means that “It’s Crunch Time” before we head towards summer. It is time to finish those last semester projects/presentations and study for finals.

On Monday, I have a presentation in my Social Responsibility and Ethics Management class. During the semester, we had to volunteer and do ten hours of community service hours as part of a project called Civil Engagement Project.

The following day, I have a group presentation in my Strategic Management class. We will report on how our company did during the eight rounds simulation. During those rounds, we produced sensors and sold them on the market. We were competing against other groups in our classroom.

Thursday will be my last day of classes at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University!

There are no classes on Friday as this day is dedicated to studying. My professor in my Aviation Labor Relations course will post our final exam on Canvas (online); we will have two days to complete it.

I will have a total of four “real” final exams that will take place during finals week (Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday). My other exams for my other three classes will be taken online.

In just about two weeks on May 8, I will be graduating!

Here are 10 Study Tips to help you prepare for your final exams:

  1. Do not look at the course material for the first time the day before the exam. Most professors mention the dates of assignments, quizzes, and exams during the first week of classes.
  2. Take notes in class and review them on the same day you took them.
  3. Start looking slowly at the material a week or a few days before the test. You will learn and memorize a lot more if you study a little bit every day.
  4. If you created a study guide, try to break it up and study one part at a time. It will be easier if you study it in small chunks instead of reading the whole study guide again and again.
  5. Create a short song or a series of letters when you have to memorize things involving steps or chronology. One time I had to memorize the 6 types of religious conversion. So I just remembered the first letter of each word and it sounded like this IMEARC.
  6. Repeating things loudly or writing them down many times on a sheet of paper will help you to remember the information for the exam.
  7. Quiz yourself or get a friend to ask you some questions. I often use Quizlet to test myself. There is a test option where the website generates a set of questions from the data you have to learn.
  8. Get all the information possible you can from your professor. Sometimes, they will tell you the format of the exam (multiple choices, true or false, short answers, short essays and/or long essays) and the number of questions.
  9. Take a break. Don’t study for hours in one sitting, but take some short breaks and move around.
  10. The night before the test, don’t stay up late at night to study. You should have studied a few days before and be ready. You will do better on the on the exam if you have a good night of sleep.

Good luck on your exams!

Nicolas

Don’t Get Behind

Posted on by
Reply

Last week was so busy and it felt like it was finals week. I had a total of four exams during those five days, including three exams on Wednesday.

I had a test in Social Responsibility and Ethics in Management, Aviation Labor Relations, Elements of Biological Science and Business Quantitative Methods. Most of the tests I had were multiple choices. My Science exam was take-home and it was online so it was not that bad!

Before last week, I didn’t really have a lot of work to do, but I can now say the workload officially kicks in.

Don’t Get Behind

Do your homework and other assignments in advance instead of doing everything the day before it is due. If you don’t understand a question from the assignment, you’ll have time to either meet the professor or send him or her an email. You won’t be confused and on your own at midnight before the assignment is due the next day. Sometimes, the homework can look easy at first, but it can require more time than you think to complete it. It happened to me a couple of times where I thought simply answering questions from the textbook would require less than 30 minutes. I was wrong.

I’m not saying you have to study weeks in advance before an exam, but you shouldn’t teach yourself the material the day before the test. I think the best way to learn the material  is too study a bit every day. Writing stuff down also helps you to remember it.

On the days you don’t have anything to do, think about if there was anything you could do to get ahead of the game. This is my piece of advice for this week.

Until next time,

Nicolas

10 Study Tips

Posted on by
Reply

Hello readers!

Last week, I had my first exam of the semester in my Comparative Religions class. This week and next week, I will also have other tests in the rest of my classes. I’ll take this opportunity to give a few study tips to ensure you do well and don’t stress during the days leading to the test.

  1. Do not look at the course material for the first time the day before the exam. Most professors mention the dates of assignments, quizzes, and exams during the first week of classes.
  2. Take notes in class and review them on the same day you took them.
  3. Start looking slowly at the material a week or a few days before the test. You will learn and memorize a lot more if you study a little bit every day.
  4. If you created a study guide, try to break it up and study one part at a time. It will be easier if you study it in small chunks instead of reading the whole study guide again and again.
  5. Create a short song or a series of letter when you have to memorize things which involve steps or chronology. Last week, I had to memorize the 6 types of religious conversion. So I just remembered the first letter of each word and it sounded like this  IMEARC.
  6. Repeating things loudly or writing them down many times on a sheet of paper will help you to remember the information for the exam.
  7. Quiz yourself or get a friend to ask you some questions. I often use Quizlet to test myself. There is a test option where the website generates a set of questions from the data you have to learn.
  8. Get all the information possible you can from your professor. Sometimes, they will tell you the format of the exam (multiple choices, true or false, short answers, short essays and/or long essays) and the number of questions.
  9. Take a break. Don’t study for hours in one sitting, but take some short breaks and move around.
  10. The night before the test, don’t stay up late at night to study. You should have studied a few days before and be ready. You will do better on the on the exam if you have a good night of sleep.

Good luck!

Nicolas

Thanksgiving Break

Posted on by
Reply

For some, the American Thanksgiving is a time of the year where families and loved ones reunite at a table and have a big meal. For me, it is totally different since my family is not American!

I still go back home for the break which is nice, but we do not celebrate any type of festivities. Our Thanksgiving (Canadian) is actually on the second Monday of October and we only have that Monday as a holiday. For us, Thanksgiving is not as big as in the United States. Our biggest holiday is Christmas and this is the time when we eat turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, pie, and all the good stuff.

During this break I mostly spend time with my family and see my friends from home. I also have free time to do school work since the finals are approaching very quickly. When I come back from the break, I will only have four days of classes left. Then the finals are the following week. I will be busy during the last week of classes. I will have three presentations to deliver and a group project to submit along with other assignments. I was supposed to have three back to back finals but I was lucky that one of my professors changed the schedule and put the exam during regular class time.

After I take my last final, I will fly back home for the long winter break. This year, the holiday will be longer than last year. Embry-Riddle added a week of vacation in January! This is awesome for students but it also mean that we will end the spring semester a week later in May.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nicolas

 

 

More Mapping – Mars! And Other Stuff

Posted on by
Reply

Hello hello!

I’m starting to run out of creative ways to start these entries. So let’s just dive right in, shall we?

Because I can.

Midterm season is upon us, and I’m pretty sure I escaped the first round unscathed. I had three exams in two days last week: Astronomy, Spaceflight Dynamics, and of course my open-everything Thermodynamics midterm. Which was pretty cool. Any exam that lets me google the answers on my cell phone is a winner in my book (in my defense, I knew the material and didn’t actually google anything.) For my astronomy exam I made 158 flashcards and studied like mad – it was weird for me to have an exam where you just had to know things and not do math. Haven’t had one of those for a while. Though my Software Engineering process exam on Monday will be like that – 12 essay questions, 3 hour midterm. Gotta love grad school….

A plot showing altitude above sea level and the corresponding vertical wind speed. This is for a location in the Andes Mountains, at 31.8º S latitude.

Enough about all that stuff, I have way more exciting things to talk about, such as my mastery of MATLAB’s mapping toolbox. Guys… I made Mars. I didn’t think it was even possible, but I actually got it to work! (Which is especially impressive considering I did so without access to any NASA databases – #penny4nasa) I managed to generate a full-world topographic plot of the Martian surface. I also finished a model which takes surface topography (mountains, etc.) and calculates the vertical wind forcing based on horizontal wind. It works on Earth, so now it’s time to see if we can get a plot for the area over Olympus Mons! This data is useful because vertical wind forcing generates gravity waves, if you remember that information from my first couple entries.

So as you can see I’ve been pretty busy (and successful, I might add) in classes and SPRL lately. Which is great – I will likely get to be a second author on a published paper! For my vertical wind forcing model; I’m super excited, and glad that I’m starting to make headway into real research.

MATLAB plot of Mars Topography! And no, the blue isn’t water – it’s just colorized based on altitude. Green is approx. sea level, blue is lower, and yellow is higher.

My boyfriend and I with The Pretty Reckless at the VIP meet and greet. Doing our best rock concert faces. (We are the two on the ends)

Besides doing awesome physics stuff and making bajillions of flashcards, I’ve been doing some fun stuff too. I got to go to another rock concert (it’s been a really good year, all my favorite bands are touring!) The band is called The Pretty Reckless, and if you haven’t heard of them I suggest you go check them out. They played at a little club in downtown Orlando called The Social, which was really great because it was such a small venue, I could literally reach out and grab the guy’s guitar if I had wanted to. And we had VIP passes so we got to do a meet and greet afterwards with the band!

The openers were great too, the first was Louna, and they are a band from Russia. In fact this is the first time in 20 years that a full Russian rock band is touring in the US. The second band was Heaven’s Basement from the UK; they were crazy. At one point the singer tried to do the thing where they walk out on the fans’ hands, and the security guy yelled and ran over and tried to pull him back by the ankles. Then he ran into the pit, grabbed him, threw him over his shoulder, and brought him back on stage. There was like a tug of war of this guy between the guard and the fans. I guess that club doesn’t allow crowd-walking. The singer was just in awe, it was hilarious.

Doing my #RLShrimpStache for Endless Shrimp. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m kinda crazy.

Other than that everything is about the same as it was last time I wrote. Still working my way though Breaking Bad (and trying to avoid spoilers!), enjoying my Pumpkin Pecan Waffles candle, and eating lots of shrimp at Red Lobster – we made sure to hit up Endless Shrimp one last time on Sunday (its last day). I’ve also been doing some scrapbooking… I’ll post some photos next week after I buy more photo corners.

Another cool thing to mention is that I was invited to join Tau Beta Pi, which is the National Engineering Honor Society. As a physics student and a member of the College of Arts and Sciences rather than College of Engineering, I didn’t think they would want me, but I suppose having “engineering” in the name of my major was good enough!

For my closing statement, I’m going to mention that I’m super bummed about NASA being all closed and stuff. So let’s hope the government gets rolling again so that they can get back to work! I’m really hoping their MAVEN mission to Mars doesn’t get affected too much. That launch is scheduled for November 18th and the window extends until December 7th – if they miss it, they can’t launch again for over two years! It’s really a bummer when the sciences get caught up in politics.

That’s all folks – until next time!

-Lynsey

December 1, 2008

Posted on by

Hello again, I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. I know I did. I just got back from a wonderful 6 days off! I went to my roommate’s grandparent’s house for Thanksgiving in Ocala, FL. What a wonderful trip. The food was so amazing and they are pretty much like a second family to me. It was definitely a well-needed break. The week before Thanksgiving was extremely busy for me. But, weekend before full of studying and hard work really paid off. I got A’s on all of my papers, presentations, and tests! Anything is possible if you put your mind to it. Just work hard, have fun, and anything is possible.

I now have 3 days left in the semester! Wow, all that is left between now and Christmas break is one test and one paper. Success!!! If I can recommend anything to you future college students, I would urge you to work extremely hard in the beginning of the semester. Therefore, the stress level is lower at the end. If you work hard at the beginning of the school year when you are extremely motivated, you can maintain a high grade point average before finals hit. As a result, you have a buffer for the extremely high workload at the end of the semester. This has worked extremely well for me. A lot of students get extremely stressed during finals. However, if you make a constant effort to succeed during the semester, you’ll be just fine. Don’t wait until the end to start cracking the books.

This will most likely be my last entry of the semester. After December 4th, I will be halfway through with my senior year. I’m so excited! I will then jump on a jet plane for Dallas, TX to see my family. I will be back at Embry-Riddle the 5th of January to finish up my last 4 classes. Wow, what an experience. I look forward to sharing my memories and experiences with you all next semester. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

November 18th, 2008

Posted on by

Hey guys!!!
It is FREEZING here!!!! Well for Florida it is freezing at least! I have had at least 3 layers on every day this week! AH!

My week this week began with a test at 8:00 am Monday consisting of a project, a physics test, a physics lab final, a weather test, a math test, and me trying very hard not to go insane!!! This week is also the first week flight team picks back up since Regionals, so that will be fun!!! I am excited to get back on top of things. If you all have read anything about our flight team published by people at the school, it is to their knowledge apparently that nationals are in San Jose in May, well they aren’t. They are actually in Saint Louis.

I don’t remember if I have mentioned it but there are some roommate problems within our suite… so one of the girls is moving out. Actually to my knowledge she was supposed to leave already but she’s not gone yet… I am not sure what the hold up is to tell you the truth. We thought everything would be fine and dandy after our first little meeting with the RA and RD but…. NOPE! It’s almost impossible not to have trouble with 8 girls in one room. A little life update as well… 6 of the 8 of us came here with boyfriends from home.. now 5 of the 8 of us have new boyfriends haha– and one of us is in the works of having a new one. My how things can change.

As stressful as things have gotten with classes and tests and all, I am still trying my hardest and won’t trade Riddle in for any other school. It’s amazing still!!!! Ohh yeah and the shuttle launch = AWESOME! Even though I have seen them before because I am from Florida.. they are still amazing every time you see them! Have a GREAT Thanksgiving!!! and I will be back in touch with you all after the break… when I have a major report due 🙁 AHHH
-Elizabeth