Introduction

I am writing this blog post in the winter break of my second year. Although I intended to write this at the beginning of this term, I could not find the time. This article contains a lot of my personal opinion so this experience might not be the same for everyone.

I study electrical and electronic engineering (EEE) at Imperial College London. The first thing that struck me what how diverse the university is. With over 60% of students from outside the UK, I was exposed to a variety of mindsets and opinions. The university itself is located in central London near some historic landmarks like the Royal Albert Hall, Hyde Park and couple of museums. However, in the first year, I did not get to see anything since university was completely remote.

Image of Imperial College London taken by Shadowssettle from Wikimedia

Remote classes

Attending university in my pajamas was a strange experience. I felt quite demotivated at times since I barely knew anyone and did not have a proper routine. The internet connection was also poor which caused me a lot of frustration. For example, during my oral exams, my connection would drop unexpectedly and cause me to lose focus as I try and fix the issue.

Our labs were done entirely remotely as well. This was done through the lab-in-the-box scheme where each student was mailed a box with lab equipment. My experience with it was mixed. Having the lab equipment with us gave us more time to work on the labs. However, since we were working remotely, we could not easily ask for help from TAs. Instead, we had to arrange a video call or create a comment in Teams. Furthermore, not having another group member to bounce ideas off really slowed down the process.

First Year Modules

• Analysis and Design of Circuits: In the first part of this course, we learnt about the basics of circuits and learning how to describe them mathematically. In the labs, we created circuits such as filters and amplifiers and recorded what we observed. The second part of the course covered transistor circuits and our lab involved creating an entire operational amplifier in LTSpice. I found the problems in this module were very difficult and in the end I did not perform so well for my exams. However, I feel that this module has given me a good foundation of circuits.
• Digital Electronics and Computer Architecture: Digital electronics covered the basics of digital logic, which is the study of computers at a binary level. It included truth tables, Boolean algebra and finite state machines. Our lab work involved using a circuit simulation software called ISSIE to simulate digital logic such as multiplexer, adders and counters. For the final project, we created a simple vending machine system using a finite state machine. The simulation software was pretty buggy and frustrating to work with. However eventually the professor fixed these issues. For computer architecture, we created a simple arm-based virtual CPU. I was really proud that we could run simple programs on this virtual CPU. Overall, I really enjoyed this course but the computer architecture part was difficult to understand at first because there were so many new terms .
• Programming for Engineers: This course covered the fundamentals of programming for beginners and was taught in C++. We learnt about some data structures like binary trees and vectors as well. Although I had some programming experience before, I really enjoyed this module and learning such a low level language.
• Topics in Electrical Engineering: This module consists of 4 smaller modules covering PN diode, power electronics, waves and signals and communications. It was designed to give students a flavor of electrical engineering. Power electronics was my favorite submodule perhaps because the lecturer was really enthusiastic about his subject. The problems were also not too difficult after a bit of practice. PN diodes was fairly difficult since it covered a huge about of content in half a term. To be honest, I still do not understand a large portion of the content but the exam was restricted to some core concepts. Overall, I enjoy this topic since it delves into physics and hope to explore it in the future.
• Mathematics: We learnt about complex numbers, calculus, differential equations, multivariable calculus, sequences and series, fourier series and transforms, vectors, linear algebra and other topics. Although this module was designed to cater to students of different educational background, I felt a little lost for some topics such as differential equations since it was not taught in IB HL math. Also, my time management in the first exam was poor which caused me to perform poorly. However, with a lot of practice, I managed to do decently in the final exam. Overall, I feel that learning math is really essential for nearly every other part of electrical engineering.
• Electronics Design Project: We formed a group of 3 and chose the analog music synthesizer project to work on. I have written about this project in another article. This project was very open ended apart from a few guidelines. We worked very hard on the project and report and ended up winning the best project in this category! I believe it was down to having good team effort and documentation. Having to work entirely online and with people in 3 different time zones was strange but we coped pretty well.
• German Level 1: At Imperial, we are given the opportunity to take an additional module in the humanities or languages. I chose to try learning German as it seemed like an interesting challenge. I enjoyed meeting people outside of my department and learning something beyond engineering and math.

I like that the modules are very focused on the subject and that we do not have to take modules like basic Physics or English that are required in other universities.

Notable lessons

1. Keep stuff organized. I decided to use one note to organize my lecture notes, problem sheets and lab log books. I also bought a Wacom graphics tablet to go paperless which was a really good decision. This allowed me to have every piece of work in one place during revision. However eyestrain definitely was a problem.
2. Make sure to do problem sheets. For most modules, there were problem sheets with questions to solidify the content taught that week. I found that doing the questions (sometimes redoing them) and reviewing the solutions contributed perhaps even more to my understanding than the lectures themselves. Having this base of understanding certainly helped me when preparing for the final exams.
3. Ask questions and clarify doubts. In university, there are a lot more students in each lecture than in high school. Also professors do not mark problem sheets. Rather, there are problem classes and office hours where the professors go through questions and clarify doubts. It is vital to engage with these since many answers cannot be easily found online.

Conclusion

Many people have asked me if I enjoy university. Usually I answer that I like the course but not the remote learning part. I think that pretty much sums up my feelings towards university.

If you found this article interesting, feel free to head over to the contact page and drop me a message.