Exam results

Just got my exam results for the first semester of the second year courtesy of Kirk via Mike (seeing as I have no lectures today and therefore didn’t go into uni). They’re varied across the board but here we go:

• Imperative Programming—the C Language: 81%
• Operating Systems: 69%
• Computer Networks: 50%
• The Implementation and Power of Computer Languages: 44%
• Software Engineering 1: 68%
• Labs (for all units): 78%

Obviously I was pleased with the C marks (both the labs and the exam), based on the general estimate of 70% for a first I did pretty well, but then imperative programming in almost any language is one of my strengths.

Operating systems wasn’t a surprise, nearly got a first there and I was half-way through writing a detailed answer to one of the bigger exam questions when I ran out of time so to be fair I think that was mostly down to not being able to write concise answers quickly more than a lack of knowledge.

Computer networks is perhaps the most disappointing result—I expected to get at least 60% in that module (although the labs, in which I did quite well, count separately). Again I ran out of time in the exam just as I was explaining one of the questions worth the most marks, which I was seriously annoyed about because it was on the subject of DNS which I’m fairly comfortable with (I run my own DNS for the sites hosted off my server, and secondary other people’s domains as well). It probably didn’t help that I forgot my calculator for this exam (you weren’t allowed one in any of the others so I didn’t bother taking one with me) which resulted in a horrible mess of long multiplication and division and I probably made a mistake somewhere along the line.

As for the Implementation and power of computer languages, well it was chock-full of theory that never really clicked to be honest. I was annoyed at myself because I couldn’t do the yacc and flex stuff in the exam either, even though I’d had very few problems in the labs. However, I’m just glad to have passed that module so I don’t have to resit.

Software engineering wasn’t too bad, especially seeing as I had to work in a group for most of it. I think I probably did well on the Z part of the exam but dropped a few marks in the UML part because I just can’t stand UML and that makes it very difficult for me to learn it.

Finally, in the labs there were no real surprises, I was generally aiming for 75% in each lab (i.e. all the “standard” parts, perhaps occassionally doing the extras if I had time) so that turned out about right.

Overall, a poor performance in networking and slighty worse than expected in operating systems but I think I would have done a bit better if I’d had more time in exams or they’d weighted the labs a bit more (the labs hardly count for anything this year because of the stupid way they calculate them—you get loads of marks and then they just scale them down which is really annoying). C has definitely pulled me up from the sinking feeling of implementation and power of computer languages, in fact every semester I’ve had a bad module that I’ve just scraped through and an excellent one that I’ve got 80%+ in. Perhaps if the course structure was a bit more flexible and didn’t have so much compulsory stuff that I’m not good at I would have done better on average.

Ah well, nothing I can do about it now, I’m just happy that I have no resits coming up in the summer.