Exams Begin, 1 of 5

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: May 9th, 2011 | 0 Comments

Today I began the first of my 5 final exams for college. As I thought, today’s exam (in Service Orientated Architecture) was very difficult. I was confident going in, I had covered everything that I needed to, but the thing that always gets me with exams is the way the questions are written. Questions are always written using words that I don’t always fully understand; I don’t know why lecturers insist with trying to confuse us! I know that on numerous occasions we have said to some of our lecturers that some of the language is a bit to hard to understand, and yet they still refuse to do anything about it, maybe they just do it to annoy us! I made a decent enough attempt at the exam anyway and I am confident that I have done enough to pass. Whether or not I get a high score is debatable, but for this module I would simply be happy to pass it. On the other-hand, I am happy to know that the hardest exam out of the 5 is out of the way! Tomorrow I have no exams so I will be putting together all my notes into one organised file for Wednesday exam, because my next exam is open book! It is strange to have an open book exam for a final exam; I never had one before, other than in class open book exams. The thing about open book exams is that more is expected from students, it is easy to think that there is no need to study for it, but I wouldn't be happy if I didn't at least take a look at the notes! So tomorrow I will be making sure I revise for that open book exam. People always say that since it is open book that it will be easier, I don’t agree at all with that, I think it might have easy questions, but for the answers a lot more is required so an extra difficulty level is added in!

Dissertation Presentation

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: May 7th, 2011 | 0 Comments

Yesterday i had my presentation for my Dissertation. As i said in previous posts, i was not really looking forward to it. I was anxious, but i always am. Thursday night i was in a rush, i was just in from work and had to prepare my entire presentation for Friday morning, i should have done it earlier, but that's just how i get things done. Pressure seems to be a good motivator for me! I managed to get the presentation and my word for word speech all typed up and into PowerPoint by about 1am. I then went off to get a bit of sleep before i got up Friday morning at 8am so i could memorise the speech i had come up with. I was still adding in extra bits as i read through it. I had originally thought i would only be talking for 10 minutes, but after saying it from start to finish it took me about 25 minutes and then i knew i was going to have to do my demonstration on top of that. I was glad i went through it before i went into the presentation, it gave me time to re-work some words i felt wouldn't work. That’s how i like to prepare, i always have everything i want to say completely written out. That way i won’t have to look at the slides and determine what exactly i should be saying at any particular time.

The Presentation

So the actual presentation went really smoothly. I was really relaxed once i woke up Friday morning (surprisingly), and once i was in the presentation room, it just went perfectly. I came across as a person who knew what they were talking about and also that i had prepared well for it. Exactly what is expected from us. The dress code was a lot different than the usual presentation; the norm would be to simply wear a pair of jeans and a top, not for your Dissertation though! Smart clothing was required, that means suit and tie! I met them half way! I wore no suit jacket, just a shirt, shoes and trousers. During the presentation i was asked questions now and again, we were told previously that they Q&A would be at the end, but i suspected that they would want to question as i went along. I felt confident answering the questions asked, i had prepared for lots of questions on security, since my dissertation supervisor loves that topic and was present at the presentation. For the demonstration i presented two things, i demonstrated a cloud application called MobileMe, i am sure many people are familiar with that. The second demonstration was of a cloud operating system called Jolicloud! Both spectators of the presentation were interested in the demonstrations; i feel that it breaks up the presentation for them! In the end i was told that they were really happy with how i presented the Dissertation and that they found it interesting and i was also told that the Dissertation itself was enjoyable to read! I was delighted to hear that. I am not sure if i get a result for the dissertation before the final official results later this summer. Either way, it should not be too long before i get all my results as my exams begin this coming Monday!

presentation progress

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: May 4th, 2011 | 0 Comments

I have still yet to fully put together my presentation which i will be using this Friday for my Dissertation meeting. I have a few titles here and there of what i will be talking about but nothing as of yet in terms of talk-able content.     To make the presentation i needed to have a full read through of my Dissertation, this is something, up until tonight, i had not yet done! Even though i have had it bounded and sent off, i never read it from cover to cover! I read through each part as i wrote it and if my supervisor thought it was okay then i was happy. After reading it tonight i think it actually reads fairly well there are one or two spelling mistakes i had missed but nothing worth worrying over. Now that i have read through from start to finish i have a better picture as to what i will discuss in my presentation. Tomorrow i will be getting up early to hammer out the presentation to free up the rest of the day for practicing it and also to fit in a bit of studying for my exams next week.