#EE- Rounding Up The Final Two Years

This is a sequel to a post that I wrote two years back #EE- Summing Up two years , which was a review of my first two years with Electrical Engineering. I finished college a week ago and it only seems appropriate to pen (type) this final chapter before the next story begins.

Now that I am wiser by a few more shocks, I have plenty to say on the topic . Re-reading my last post on this subject matter, I realized that I had done injustice to the subject. But, then it was written in a lighter mood, with a glass of juice , light music and probably an active skype connection (I guess!)

On the matter of insulation (that's where I left off last time), I suggest you take it very seriously. I have recently been made aware of certain tragic incidents in the field. Play it safe, use insulation. To the lighter side, or in a more cliched sense - up the tough mountain. I'll not say much on the courses this time around. Go download the syllabus, or contact me for a pdf! 

Power Electronics, this is where electrical engineering actually got real for me. Electrical Drives in the next semester is what kept me going and  remains my favorite till date. My fascination with electric drives and the automotive world led me to select (Foolishly or wisely, I don't know!) my final year project in the same field. (We'll come to that later)

Power Systems got more interesting with the study of Power System Operation and Control, Protection, HVDC, FACTS etc. These are just fancy terms that actually stand for - High Voltage DC (HVDC) and Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS). This is where Power System design and Power Electronic devices come together.

Machines continued to be a severe pain (you-know-where). To top it all we even studied Design of Power Apparatus, which on the whole is a very interesting subject in the lab and a curse in the classroom.

SCADA and related courses were a walk in the park (not so much by examination scores, but who cares, eh?)

Two dreadful courses that I have kept for the end are Microprocessor and its Applications AND Digital Signal Processing/Processor and its Applications to Electro-mechanical Systems. The course name in each of the cases above can be broken into two - Microprocessor/DSP + applications. It is the latter that proved to be our Waterloo or Plassey or Abbotabad (whatever!) . In my opinion it should be sacrilege to conduct theory exams for such courses, a design practical would suffice. But, a man's got to suffer when he has to suffer (And so we did, Twice!)

This just about sums up Round 2 of Electrical Engineering.  Battered and bruised, the ordeal ended with the close of last month and we emerged Engineers! (result awaited!)

One additional course, (that was intentionally skipped) is the final year project, otherwise called the Major in our Uni. A lot of thought (or a trip to Janakpuri) goes into the selection of one's final year project. An interest in ED (Electric Drives) led me to opt for the development of a closed loop speed control mechanism of a brush-less DC hub motor. This machine, though the talk of the industry today, turned out to be too hot to handle! Getting it to run was tougher than anything we had attempted so far. After an agonizing wait and efforts coupled with terrible setbacks (Our karma - to pay for other's blunders with our own suffering!), it finally did run with expected performance and to say the least, we scraped through without much drama.

After the Project defense!

Looking back, these four years do not seem as tough as we made them out to be. It was more of a perceived notion that led us to believe that choice of electrical engineering as a major would prove to be our nemesis. I still continue to hold my stance from two years back - This was the best decision that I took in the last four years of my life and having attained the fulfillment of this dream, I am ready to take on the next challenge (which is another mammoth altogether!)

Closing lines :

Shocks and smoke may jar my bones
And my grades forever hurt me
I find pride and honour, nonetheless
In being an engineer of electricity!

-Anurag Arya, Electrical Engineer!

(forgive my poetry!)

Edit: Results were declared in the evening today. Cleared all subjects! (Whew!)