I had 7 exams which were stretched to 4 weeks, basically there were lots of free days in between, so I was talking to one of my friends on tumblr during the intervals of Accounting and Programming, and I sent her this;
heart = fine;
do {
heart = heart/2;
}
while (heart > empty);
and you know what's funny? It came out in the exams.
Well, of course heart was an actual variable with a given datatype, and fine was a tangible value, and empty represents 0, but still it essentially is the same. A recursive function with decrements in halves. This was so amusing I almost made a gurgling noise in the middle of the exam hall.
Exams were a bliss. I mean, I'm not confident enough to say that I can score full marks, but Alhamdulillah it wasn't
that bad. Aside from BM which I have absolutely no clue of an approximation, I estimate my marks to be decent enough to maintain above 3.5, although it could potentially drop judging by my barely there carry marks. Accounting was quite hard, my adjustment entries were balanced so I was fine with the whole exam, but my ratio essay was so gibberish I'm not even counting on an A- for that subject.
Programming was fine, had more subjective theoretical questions than codings which is a shame because I'm more confident in coming up with the latter, but most of the questions were past years which I've done half-heartedly so I was able to answer them, I just can't say for sure that I'm acing it.
ICO was surprisingly quite easy if I may say so. Almost half of the questions were on the quizzes, and half of the subjectives were on our previous assignments, and there was this one question on instructions sets that was in the other class's last assignment, and I noticed that my classmates had a hard time answering it.
Basically, we needed to create our own binary & hexadecimal instruction set for a hypothetical computer, which means we can assume anything. The downside of questions like these is that, people don't know what to do. They don't exactly know what the question wants because we learn instruction sets, but not
how to make them. The upside is that there's so much liberty in the answers. We can assume literally anything and as long as we write them down (and they're logical in the scheme of computer architecture), then the lecturer cannot argue. I remember consulting with Sir Wahab about how he said the positions of variable x,y,z in instructions sets vary depending on the design and that really confused me
Like how MUL X,Y,AC → X*Y = AC could bring the same syntax for MUL AC,X,Y → X*Y = AC depending on the design. But that was what confused me,
what design? How do we know? And sir just simply said "You come up with it yourself. If the question asks you based on a hypothetical computer, you can assume anything and as long as your answers correspond to your assumptions, then I'll have to give marks. I'll probably give more if you come up with something very simple."
I had the decency to ask my seniors for their assignments and compare the two lecturers' questions, so I had a privilege (but to be fair, I did tell the others I was doing so, they didn't respond so I assumed they didn't want my copies of the assignments), alas it all ended with a high note.
I can't be certain of my results, but I worked hard and I should believe that I learnt something, at least an idea of what I was supposed to learn, at least I carped some diems, or so I think.
Labels: college, exams