President's Barbecue Fall '08

Posted at 11:20 AM, Monday, August 25, 2008

I had a fabulous time! Tastey food and lovely people with fantastic speeches..... I enjoyed every bit of it. The event started with my good friend Judith's speech - she spoke about her experience as an abroad at AU exchange student, and when she mentioned that she actually shook Obama's hand there was a huge round of applause! The deans of each school (Dean Kah - SITC, Dean Smith - SBE, and Dean Laawal - SAS) and the DSA (Director of Student Affairs) gave a speech, as well as the SUG (Student Union Govt.) president Soji. Dr. Garofalo and President Smith also spoke at the barbecue. I loved Dr. Garofalo's speech best, but the others were just as wonderful. In any case, the food served after the speech was superb! We had chicken, rice, vegetable and fruit salad, and cake, with soft drinks. The quality of the food was really good. Hmm, I guess President Smith was somewhat correct in saying he was standing between us and the barbecue (in his speech) haha....just joking, actually I liked the speeches so much that I didn't even remember the food Thank God Hamman got to take pictures for me to post . I also gave an interview after the event not knowing which channel it was for. I found out after the interview that it was for  AIT! I hope my interview wasn't too bad cos I didn't really think while answering questions  Actually they intended to interview Judith, but they asked me to join the interview. It was cool actually .......

Elijah and Damian in the left photo & Judith giving her speech in the photo on the right

I feel that becasue of the presence of soo many new people and of course better planning, this orientation has been the best so far. The only hitch was that a lizard ended up in the Admissions check-in room! Haha! Mr. Edwin (one of the Admissions staff and a good friend) said that the poor thing had only come to register! It was really funny..... all the staff at admissions, and in fact, AUN is just soo friendly and funny. I'm having a great time, thank God! Another thing that I really liked about this orientation was that the Finance department got rid of some of the manual process - we (me and my siblings) developed a Finance Module for the Finance department to computerize some of their student records. You know, I just love to see automated and improved processes  I only pray registration is just as smooth. There will be some improvements in registration as well, but that's supposed to be a surprise so I can't mention it right now. At any rate, I sincerely thank Lord Jesus for everything.

I will talk about faculty and staff that left us this semester, and new ones arrived in one of my later entries. There's a whole lot of new faculty and staff that has arrived. And we have 2 exchange students from AU, Washington, and 2 visiting students. This semester looks promising......

This Summer

Posted at 10:20 AM, Friday, August 15, 2008

What a Semester! (Spring 2008)

Posted at 10:12 AM, Thursday, May 22, 2008

What a wonderful semester indeed! Thank you Jesus! I didn't expect to get such good grades in all courses esp Ethics and Leadership (PHI 300) and IS Security & Auditing (INF 351). You know when I started the semester, I never thought I could get such good grades  If you recall, I mentioned courses I'm taking this semester in one of my ealier entries. I also said I might drop the World Literature course if things got difficult. Well, I did drop the course cos I knew INF 351 and PHI 300 would take up all of my time; thank God, otherwise I might have ended up with lower grades  The other courses I took were Operations Management (QBA 202), Process Modeling and Solutions Blueprinting (INF 361), and Psychology (PSY 101). I had a personal and a group project in most of the courses plus lots of exercises, homeworks, quizes, and exams. Most of the time I had to stay up late (till 2:00am) or get up very early (3:00am) to finish a paper or read for some exam. There was a particular day when I didn't get to sleep throughout the night...It was quite stressful . But at any rate, God has been merciful and has granted me a very good GPA for the semester. I think I'll discuss what each course was like and let you see for yourself how Spring 2008 has been (I've decided to be brief about all my courses this time).

PHI 300 was a very good course and Dr. Osam Edim did a great job teaching it. Almost all the students I know liked his way of teaching, which is saying a lot as students generally like to complain about professors. We were each of us required to present a world leader of our choice; leaders ranged from Ben Carson, Alexandar, Nelson Mandella, to Bin Laden. I chose William Wilberforce; I think he is one of the finest people that I know, I really praise God for such people. Saima chose Susan B. Anthony and Nayyara chose Ben Gaurion. Hamman's taking the course Summer I and he's presenting Atiku Abubakar. Apart from individual presentations, we also did group presentations on failed leadership in different sectors of Nigeria. My group presented failed leadership in Nigerian Banks. We also wrote a mid-term and about 5 critical summaries of different articles including Bertrand Russell's Appearance & Reality and Michael E. Brown's Misconceptions of Ethical Leadership among others.  

PSY 101 was entertaining, really. A lot of concepts were very new to me. Dr. John Carroll also did a great job teaching it. Sometimes we watched presentations by other Psychology professors in other universities. I usually enjoyed that. I think I like everything about the course expcet Sigmend Freud's theory. But anyways, there were good concepts that I learned like I got to understand how psychologists think and view the world. We wrote about 5 exams in the course and did various exercises in class. I took the course as a free elective.

QBA 202 was very enlightening. Dr. Botchway's style of teaching was different from what it was in the previous semesters; I loved it! This time, we did a personal project on Peugeot Nigeria and a group project on Virign Nigeria. We were required to present details about the company, identify problems with operations, and recommed solutions as operations managers. We also wrote a midterm, a final, about 5 quizes, and did about 4 group exercises. All of this work made everything easier to understand. On the whole, I would rate the course with 5 stars!

INF 361 was also very enlightening. Dr. Bollou did not give us too much work in the course apart from one midterm, a few in-class exercises, and a personal project. We didn't cover as much as we should have which resulted in the personal projects not being very strong, but not bad either. However, we did learn a lot of new things in the course like cycle time analysis and capacity analysis among others. The course textbook was helpful in understanding everything. Some of the in-class exercises we did were very entertaining; I particularly like the business games that Dr. Bollou gives us in most courses.

And finally, INF 351 was a very important course cos it was the only course on security that I've taken. Dr. Kah gave us just as much work as he did last semester; however, he was not to strict on us. We wrote two exams and thankfully, I completed both exams in time. In fact I was the only one who completed the second exam within its time limit. Some students said the time given for the second exam was not enough, but praise God, I was able to finish. Apart from the exams, we wrote about 3 homeworks. We also did a personal paper and a group project. I wrote a paper on the Student Repository system (Samuels' Student Repository system) that we have developed for the university. The group project entailed carrying out a IT securiy audit of AUN! It was executed in a very nice way; the entire class was divided into 3 groups and each group was given part of AUN to study in different phases. The entire team got together for analysis and compilation of findings. I enjoyed it eventhough our group (me, Saima, Radiya, and Jennifer) did a lot of work, in fact more than any of the other teams (our team was assigned areas that required more work). Each one of the 3 groups submitted about 3 different reports, not to mention the 7 status reports, documented interviews, and other project management docs. And finally, a final report that was composed of the 3 reports and all the documents created in the course of the project (a 112 page document!). On the whole, I enjoyed the course. I had prepared my mind for a B+ this time cos I didn't want any negative surprises; however, I worked for an A. I can't thank God enough that I did eventually get an A.

So you see, it wasn't very easy, but praise God! I could never have gotten through with such good results! And look at my entry! Isn't it amazingly brief? I think I've acquired better summary skills after writing soo many summaries last semester haha!

PS - Just in case someone browsing this blog happens to need some information about work I completed (e.g. if you are researching on Wilberforce, or Virign Nigeria, or want to understand the Samuels' Student Repository system) you can email me and I'll send you some helpful info depending on what you request. You know when I was researching on Virigin Nigeria, I really needed to get information on the organizational structure of the company but couldn't find enough resources; I feel that the least I can do after going through that disappointing experiecnce is to make my work available so that it can be of help to someone.

My Most Difficult Semester Yet - Fall 2007

Posted at 12:36 PM, Monday, May 12, 2008

Fall 2007 was the most stressful semester yet. The ending was nothing like what I expected – I thought that I would not be able to get an A in my STA 301 course, but it turned out that the only course I could NOT get an A was IS Project Management! That came as a shock, really. At first I was very upset with my grade (B+) because I had worked very hard in this course, especially on the project. I mean I spent so much of my time on the project; I had to walk over to the Community school with my group members for interviews and what not. I even had to stay late at school or miss out lunch/dinner for the project. I even kept on bothering Dr. Sergey to set up the site on the server (he was really very helpful as always, he’s also one of my very fav. profs). The project was about developing a web portal for the Community School. We concluded the project successfully enough because the client (Dr. Elspeth Smith – Director of the AUN Community School) was really pleased with the outcome. She’s such a nice person, always very clear about what she wants. Anyways, at the end of the semester I never even once thought about my grade in INF 321 cos I was sure of an A. I was disappointed with the outcome of the examination because Dr. Kah didn’t give us enough time to finish the exam. From what I recall he gave us less than 1 and half an hour. And believe me when I say that the paper was one of the longest I’ve written. We were all surprised when Dr. Kah said that the time was up and we should all submit. Actually he was taking us for dinner after the exam so most of us let go of the exam papers, but we did protest. I guess I have to be more careful next time cos I couldn’t get over the shock of the grade for like 2 days. But with time I realized that I shouldn’t be complaining for 2 reasons – #1 it is written: “Give thanks in everything for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” and so I stopped struggling with trying to accept this grade. In fact, I realized that if I thank God for an A, then why not for everything else? And to be frank, B+ is not bad at all. I guess I was just being greedy and selfish. #2 reason: my grade in STA 301 was way better than what I expected so I praise God for that. Can’t tell you how foolishly I was acting over this grade in INF 321. I ended up writing an email to Dr. Kah to get details of my grade and telling him how happy I was with the project I had done in the course. To be honest, I really am very happy with the web portal project for ACS. I acquired some web development skills doing it. At any rate, Dr. Kah always says that it’s unfortunate for anyone to be in his class. In my opinion, it’s the opposite – I think it’s a great pleasure to learn from him (of course I would have been happier if I had had a better grade, but who cares).  

My first elective was the Database Systems course. Unfortunately, CSC 348 was just as stressful as INF 321. In fact, I’d say that CSC 384 was the most difficult course in the past semester. The project took more of my time than any project I’ve done since I came to AUN. I still feel tired when I remember how I used to be writing queries and doing functions, procedures, triggers, etc every where and every time – in classes, during lunch, during dinner, during group meetings, during club meetings, at home late at night, very early in the morning, and what not. But fortunately, it was also the BEST course I’ve done at AUN. And I really really love the way Dr. Grakhov taught the course. He is just one of the best professors at AUN. Really good at explaining, he also makes sure that everyone participates and learns what is required. The project forced us all to practice and learn what we’d studied in the course. On the whole, along with being the most stressful course, CSC 384 was just awesome! We also did final presentations for the project assigned to us in the course. My project involved developing a database that would help store information about labs and could be used by the lab supervisor – Dr. Sergey Butakov. Our client as always was very helpful and was very pleased with the final outcome. We also developed a little application. Faiza was my group member. Dr. Vladislav, Dr. Fonkam, and Dr. Bollou were also present at our final presentations. I was very surprised when everyone commended us for our work. In fact, all the professors were very pleased with the work all the groups did. I really thank God for that. Can’t tell you how relieved we all felt (esp Nino, me, and Oma – group leaders) after the final presentations were over. To make things even better, Dr. Grakhov took all of us (including the professors present at the presentations) to dinner at the Faculty club. We had a really good time chatting, eating, and thanking God that the course was over, haha. Discussions varied from jobs opportunities to education and life in Russia. We also chatted about IT stuff and lots other things. I really really had a good time. I’m so happy I was in Dr. Grakhov’s class, he’s very nice. He even let us order for any amount we wanted; so I asked him “Can I order the whole menu?” And he said “Yes, if you can finish it, why not?” Plus he said that ice cream was mandatory for everyone! He remarked “Eat, so that this food will help to regain the blood that was sucked by the work you did on the projects” Haha. What a wonderful semester indeed! Thank you Jesus!

The History of Art course (CMD 131) was also very enjoyable.  Dr. Parker is also one of my very fav professors. His style of teaching is very good and his classes are very entertaining. Some of my most entertaining class moments in AUN were in this class. I remember two such lessons – one was when Dr. Parker was giving out chocolate cookies for correct answers, and another was when we had a kind of a quiz-game for some chapters in the course text. Everyone was doing something very funny in both lessons esp the cookie-prize class. Some of the students were making so much effort to get the answer right, haha and one student remarked “See what people can do for just one cookie”, hahhahaha. Another very funny comment the same student (Umar) made was when he saw Donan smile after getting a question right and receiving a cookie – he said he’d never seen Donan soo happy before in his life! And then there was this instance when Dr. Parker asked one student “Why was King Tutankhamon’s coffineete very famous?’” and the student said “Who is Tutankahmon?” And everyone just bursts out laughing cos we’d studied it lots of time in class. So in an attempt to remind the student who Tutankhamon was Dr. Parker posed like the Egyptian paintings to illustrate that Tutankhamon was an Egyptian King, haha – his head and legs were in profile while his shoulders were frontal. It was very funny, I couldn’t stop laughing, haha. Oh I’m really going to miss being in that class. I met Nicolas Caroll there too. He’s very cute and sweet, more like a younger brother. The students made the class very lively and enjoyable as did the professor. One of the finest classes I’ve been too. The course was also wonderful. Believe me when I say that I learnt more in this course than in any other course. I mean I leant a lot of new things, and I still remember them – Arichitecture, art, and sculpture; Greek, Near Eastern, Roman, Middle ages, Bzyaantine, Reinascence, and Christian. My favourite were the cathedrals, the most amazing piece of architecture ever! I love the cathedrals at France and England. They are all truly beautiful! If you read my entry on my trip to Abuja, you’ll see how much I appreciate having done this course. Once again, thank You LORD!

The other three courses were Enterprise Resource Planning, Fundamentals of Accounting, and Probability and Statistics. All of these were difficult. I had problems in statistics, had my worst ever score of my entire life on the first test in STA 301 – I got 30% L Later on I improved by God’s grace and miraculously I ended with an A in the course! I Praise God for giving His servant what I do not deserve – how wonderful is God’s mercy. I remember telling a good friend of mine Peter C. about the difficulties I was having cos the course text was not available. He suggested that I use one online that was similar to the course text, really nice of him. I actually came to know him through this blog. He came across my blog as he was searching for Professor Cheryl Pavlik, but that’s another story/entry. On the whole, I enjoyed the class, esp the final exam. Dr. Monday Datong (our professor for the STA 301 course) was really nice and funny too.

The Fundamentals of Accounting was another elective course I took. However, ACC 201 was a free elective unlike CSC 384. You see, my catalog does not require me to take accounting, but I decided to do it anyway cos it interests me.  Dr. Jonathan Muterera taught this course. He is really good at teaching, and very funny too. In fact, I feel his style of teaching is just one of the very best; he breaks down the problem and explains it in such a simple manner that even a complicated problem looks easy! We (the Samuels') really like him a lot. He talks about partying lots of time; his attitude made me thoroughly enjoy being in his class. I was grateful to God for my grade in this course. It was difficult I must say, esp the final exam. But God is faithful, and He granted me a good grade in the course. I loved everything I learned: preparing financial statements, analyzing financial statements, etc Nino and Noshi love accounting and such stuff. Really, I think Dr. Muterera's teaching style is the best I've ever seen. He makes everything soo simple and quick to understand :)

Enterprise Resource Planning was also a really good course. I mean it laid a very good foundation for courses I'm taking this semester. Dr. Bollou did a great job teaching us; he introduced us to SAP (which wasn't easy to learn) and the fianl project was just wonderful. There were three groups in the project - one studied the ACIT, another a bank, and my group studied AUN. What we were meant to do in the project was to study an organization, identify the problems, and propose an ERP solution showing how an ERP would help solve the problems identified. The best part was that I got to learn new terminology that is proving to be of great help for courses I'm taking this semester. I enjoyed the course, thank God. I think I like all my courses last semester (as usual)........yawn..........

Uufh, I don’t like writing such long entries, but kya karein? (what to do?) I hope I didn’t bore anyone with this.  

Out of Yola after 12 Years of Waiting

Posted at 1:12 PM, Tuesday, March 18, 2008

12 years - yeah, it’s a long period alright but then, I’m glad I finally got the chance to travel to another state. I went to Abuja with dad and my siblings to see Nousheen and Hamman off to AU in Washington DC (as you may recall they are going there for the Spring semester as exchange students). I was expecting Abuja to be so much better than Yola. Abuja is actually better than Yola, but guess what? I found Abuja to be less interesting compared to Yola. I believe my reason for liking Yola is the fact that I grew up in Yola. I have too much here in Yola that I hold dear, too many memories, and I really like the scenery here. The greatest advantage Abuja has is the buildings and the good order of things, perhaps even job opportunities. I love the way everyone follows rules (so unlike Yola), and the way people are dedicated to working and making Abuja a better place. But the prices are very high in Abuja. Food in the hotel was like super expensive; Nino keeps on saying that Abuja has made her fat, haha.

This is Mona, Noshi, Me, and Raju outside Wonderland

This is Nino, Noshi, Mona, and Raju walking aroudn in Wonderland

This is Raju, Mona, Noshi, and Nino at Wonderland

This is Mona and Nino walking around Hilton Hotel

This is Noshi in Wonderland

This is Raju, Noshi, and Dad at Transcop Hilton Hotel

 Abuja is very clean too, with lots of places to go. We visited the National park where we had a close-up view of Aso Rock (the rock, not the presidential house), Wonderland, Millennium Park, Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Amigo shopping plaza, and the most beautiful thing of all – the Central Church! It was the most magnificent building I have ever seen! Looked like it dropped straight out of heaven! Especially the interior; chandeliers looked like they were made of crystals. The rib vaulting was fantastic as were the flying buttresses and the huge organ for playing music. It had a very large capacity for believers from different denominations to come and worship. Dad was overjoyed when he saw the Church. Really, I wish I’d taken pictures. I couldn’t cos the camera wasn’t working. I’d say the interior looked pretty much like the Cathedrals we read about in our History of Art course – Cathedral of Reims in France, St. Dennis, Chartres Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral of England, etc. Thank God we were able to visit such an awesome site. The other places we visited were also lovely – I enjoyed Wonderland and Millennium Park a lot. One thing I noticed (apart from the rest that I’ve already mentioned) was that there are a lot of Lebanese people in Abuja, esp at Wonderland and Amigo. I guess they own those places. It was nice to see a whole lot of foreigners in any case.

Anyways, the trip was good and beneficial in the sense that I realized that I had a lot to be thankful to God for - AUN being in Yola, living in Yola, and growing up in Yola. Perhaps I might want to work in Abuja; I don’t know yet, whatever God wills

                 

                                                                                   These are some of the pics we took while touring Abuja

I remember dreaming of going in an airplane, flying to Europe for the holidays with mom, dad, and all my siblings. I had this desire after the trip in 1992 to Pakistan when we all traveled through Switzerland. It really was beautiful; I enjoyed every bit of it, Praise God! I never traveled out of Yola after 1995. Even after 1995 I still dreamt of going to Europe or the US, but my dream never came true. It does feel sad at times cos wishing for something and not getting it really breaks your heart. But then I cheer up after a while knowing that it is God’s perfect will for things to be this way, and I end up thanking God for everything He has done for me. The thing that cheers me up most is that I know I don’t need to travel anywhere on any airplane cos in the end I’ll actually fly up to heaven with my family and be with the Lord forever. Isn’t that the most amazing thing ever? I mean it’s more than a dream come true; it’s the best that anyone could wish for. And I thank God that even if I don’t have everything I desire in my lifetime, He will fulfill my dream of heaven. Thank you Jesus!

Do you have a dream that you would give anything to fulfill? Ask God, and He will give it to you according to His will. Even if your dream never comes true, always remember that there are greater things in store for you; if you fight the good fight of faith, God will surely reward you with greater joy than what your dreams could ever give. Trust God always and lean not on your own understanding.

Spring 2008, Different.....???

Posted at 1:27 PM, Thursday, January 31, 2008

I'd say this semester is different, in certain ways. For one, Nousheen and Hamman are not here with me. We miss them a lot! But I'm soooooo glad they're in the US enjoying all the wonderful things there! Thank God for that :-) Secondly, this is the first time I'm taking a course all by myself. Not that it's anything strange/special, just feels different. Usually, I have either of Nousheen and Saima, or Hamman and Nayyara in my classes. But anyways, this semester looks weary already, haha. I'm taking Leadership and Ethics (PHI 300) with Dr. Osam Edim; Introduction to World Literature in Translation (ENF 231) with Dr. Andrew Rooney; IS Security & Auditing (INF 351) with Dean Kah; Procedural Modeling and Blue Printing (INF 361) with Dr. Felix Bollou; Operations Management (QBA 202) with Dr. Benjamin Botchway; and Psychology with Dr. John Carroll. It all looks exciting right now, but loads of readings to do. All the same, I think it's too early to decide what this semester is going to be like :) Thirdly (you must have thought I was finished, haha), Dr. Sergey won't be here this semester. That's really going to be a loss for the university. I mean he contributed a lot in the school of ITC - managing the moodle site, managing all the IT labs, supervising in the ACIT, etc. And we students are going to miss him the most, esp those in Software Engineering and Computer Science. He always helped students with any problems they had with getting software to be used in different courses. I heard that he might still come back next semester. I pray he does cos he was very helpful to everyone and so good with everything.

Talking about Hamman and Nousheen, I've had lots of pics and info from them about the US already. All the exchange students that went from AUN spend most of their time together - Nousheen, Hamman, Oma, Judith, Lydia, and Luke (I see them all in pics together!). I just have to mention that all of them saw Obama live a few days back! He came to AU with the Kennedy family to deliver a speech! Judith actually shook hands with Obama! And seeing the Kennedy family too was great! I guess I can't write about all that (or post pics) just yet. I'll definitely add an entire entry on everything that's going on over there soon. You see, the semester truly is super busy. I don't know; I might end up dropping one course next week if the load gets too much. God willing, I won't have to :)

There're about 5 entries that I haven't finished writing and so haven't posted yet. I'm waiting to finish compiling pictures for some. I've finally gotten my own camera!!!! Now I can take all the pictures I want, anytime. Praise God!!! I've even signed up on flickr. I'm looking forward to adding more entries with lots of pics :) Got to go now, I've over-spent my time on this entry already (8 minutes over). Have lots of assignments to finish.......Hoping to post soon :)

Programming Competition

Posted at 7:59 PM, Monday, November 19, 2007

Remember I mentioned a programming competition to be held in Abuja in one of my previous entries? Well, I have too much work on my hands and have decided that the best person to talk about what happened at the competion is Nino. Isn't that good for a change? You must be bored to death by now cos of my usual boring writing. So here is what Nino had to say about what happened:

The result wasn't as good as we expected. We came 7th (my fav number); surprisingly at the competition the number assigned to our team was also 7. I thank God for it as it was His will. Some agriculture university won the competition; good for them especially given they are just an 'agriculture' university. However, there were reasons for the competition and results ending up the way they did. The organization and the setup was not altogether as should be and this presented alot of road blocks for our team and probably others. On the whole if these problems in the setup has been prevented, it is hardly questionable that the results would have been VERY different indeed. There were 25 other universities altogether from across Nigeria who took part in the competition.

Nevertheless, having taken part in the competition was a great experience. Having the support of Dr. Kah and Dr. Fonkam was the best part. They both showed their appreciation of the effort we put in the competition. Despite our ranking, we all really felt very glad with the confidence our mentors put in us and their encouraging remarks. We are really blessed to have such people with us to be our mentors in AUN, who don't just excel in their profession but are such wonderful people. So you will see (from the award pictures) that we all looked happy at the end of the day!

Our team was in Abuja for four days. The compeition's results were announced on the third day's afternoon. After all the burden taken off our shoulders, we were able to do a little bit of sight-seeing in Abuja. Faiza took us around Abuja and introduced us to a lot of her family members; it was wonderful to meet them all and her brother and sister accompanied us on our trips.

Abuja is very scenic and beautiful especially the architecture and roads. The plantation is wonderful and the trees you see on the road kerb and with the street lights are not indigenous to Abuja, but I think were brought in. However, you can see them all around the city.  Abuja is built on a town plan and all new building projects are aligned with this  - a lot of construction is still going on there, so people say that it keeps on changing every visit they make. Among the places we visited were Wonderland (an amusement park) at night on Saturday, and the Ya'aradua center and The Millenium Park on Sunday.

It is a marvellous thing that the government cared to make the place look so grand! For me what I liked best was the rides and looking around at the buildings - banks, hotels, churches, etc and of course the stadium. However, I was so absorbed with just looking that I don't recall where what was located. I only remember that the entry point to Abuja city has the stadium. The smooth, three-lane roads are a complete contrast to Yola roads and so is the traffic. People are law-abiding in terms of driving rules and I think there would be little chance for road accidents if people in Yola were the same.

Isn't she just great? Maybe I say that cos she's my sister. All the same, I'm sure having a different writer made reading my blog a little more interesting, hmm? Ycan decide that while I finish the entry with pictures of the the event.

AWARDS

This is Dr. Kah, Faiza, Hamman, Nayyara (Nino), and Dr. Fonkam (left-to-right) I think the rest of the pics become quite obvious now :)

WONDERLAND

That's Faiza and her sister. This is not so obvious :)

MILLENIUM PARK

This is Hamman, Faiza and Nino (your left-to-right), and Hamman, Faiza's brother and Nino in the picture above it

YARADUA CENTER

ON THE AIRPLANE

FINALLY

My Birthday.........

Posted at 1:43 PM, Friday, November 2, 2007

Well, my birthday came and went, and I didn’t tell anyone at AUN about it. When most of my friends found out it was my birthday the previous day, they were like "Why didn't you tell us?" Actually, I didn't want to give anyone the impression that I was requesting presents, or stuff like that. Anyways, the day started in the normal way, then it went from normal to bad, and sometime in the late afternoon it became worse. But then suddenly in late evening, everything changed! I was just sitting outside all alone waiting for the bus remembering my past birthdays. Couldn't stop thinking about mom, I really really missed her. Then I looked up at the sky and saw exactly what would cheer me up - I wasn't expecting it but here were the clouds I had been praying for! God blessed us with rain that night. Actually, I had been praying for rain on my birthday for like 3-4 days. Thank you Jesus for sending the rain, it made my day! It didn't end there; after a few minutes I was off to ride my bicycle when Dr. Evgeny Grakhov (my CSC 384 professor) comes up to me and wishes me a very happy birthday. I hadn't expected anyone to care really, especially not one of my professors. And then, here is one of my favorite professor wishing me happy birthday! I felt really glad (he even gave me some sweets as a gift) I found out from him that 5th October is also Diana’s birthday. Diana is the daughter of Mr. Stanislav Kublakov, the administrative assistant to the President. She is a cute little angel! I just love to see her with her mom and dad; it's just so beautiful.  Wish I had some picture of her to post here. But unfortunately, I don’t.

When we got home I got 2 more surprises – Mona, Nousheen, Nino, and Hamman gave me a beautiful jewelry set! It was just lovely! I hadn’t expected it. Then dad told me that he also had a present for me – he had ordered a cake on Sunday for my birthday! I was so happy cos I just love cakes! Hmmmm, I knew that things would soon be well and thanked God for everything I got that day.

Then, finally, the best gift of all came later that day. At night before going to sleep, I prayed to God to change me and make me who I was before mom passed away; to take away all bitterness and sadness, to make me joyful once again. And in the next few days I changed! It was evident even the next day, I just felt different - much more cheerful! I can’t thank God enough for His mercy. I wouldn’t be who I am today if He hadn’t changed me. "Thank you sooooooooooooooo much Savior!"

My friends also wished me when they found out it was my birthday the previous day. Thanks everyone. Thanks for making my day special. And above all, thank You Jesus for everything I have, and everything I am. I love You because You first loved me. It’s just the best feeling in the world, to know that God loves you. It’s amazing, so amazing! There’s nothing that can compare to that, absolutely nothing! To make you understand what I’m trying to say, I’ll leave you with this wonderful poem to reflect on (got it off a greeting card) :

You ask why I follow this Jesus?

Why I love Him the way I do?

When the world’s turned away from His teachings

And the people who serve Him are few.

It’s not the rewards I’m after,

Or gifts that I hope to receive

It’s the Presence that calls for commitment

It’s the Spirit I trust and believe.

The Lord doesn’t shelter His faithful

Or spare them all suffering and pain,

Like everyone else I have burdens,

And walk through my share of rain.

Yet He gives me a plan and a purpose,

And that joy only Christians have known,

I never know what comes tomorrow,

But I do know I’m never alone.

It’s the love always there when you need it;

It’s the words that redeem and inspire,

It’s the longing to ever be with Him

That burns in my heart like a fire.

So you ask why I love my Lord Jesus?

Well, friend, that’s so easy to see,

But the one thing that fills me with wonder is

Why Jesus loves someone like me.

     

That's me with my gift from dad (first pic), and me again with my gift from Raju, Mona, Noshi, and Nino (jewellery set - white top)

AUN Staff Leaving

Posted at 12:40 AM, Monday, October 29, 2007

At the end of the last academic year, more faculty and administrative staff left AUN. Among these were Dr. David Huwiler (President), Dr. Banerjee (Economics instructor) and his wife Animita Roy (Registrar & Accounting instructor), Dr. Jennifer El-Mattrawy (Director Student Affairs), George Peterson (VP Finance) and his wife Paula Peterson (Faculty Club Manager), Svetlana (Logistics Director), Abubakr Buera (Management & other Business courses instructor), and Amy Greene (Writing instructor). I’m really going to miss them all cos I like them a lot. However, Dr. Banerjee did say he might come back after a while since his leave is only temporary.

Dr. Buera and Dr. Banerjee taught me, and I enjoyed their classes very much. I’m going to miss the funny (& sensible) things that Dr. Banerjee used to say. Like Dr. Banerjee, Dr. Buera was also really nice both in and out of class. Dr. Banerjee’s wife was also really nice. I still remember the times when we went home with her in the university bus at night. I can recall an excellent guessing/riddle-solving game we played with her and Dr. Evgeny. I'll definitly miss those times. Amy Green never taught me but she was a very lively and sweet person. I know I'm going to miss her too! I feel the same for Jennifer Mattrawy - I feel the university won't be the same without her. She made me feel very much at ease in discussing whatever issues I had. And Dr. Huwiler is one of the nicest persons I’ve ever met. Mom and Dad also liked him a lot. I pray that at least one or two of them attend our graduation ceremony. 

The first picture (on left) is Dr. Banerjee, the second is his wife Animita, and this third picture shows both of them and Cheryl Pavlik

First picture is Jennifer Mattrawy and Maria, second (left) is Svetlana, and third (right) is Amy Greene

First pitcture (from left-to-right) is George Peterson & Dr. Garofalo, second is Dr. Buera, third and fourth are Dr. Huwiler 

The new people occupying some of the empty positions are Dr. Smith (acting President), John Carroll (registrar and director of student affairs), Dr. Tarek (acting dean of arts and sciences - I’m happy for him), a few others that I can’t recall at the moment, and a few whom I don't know by name.

We also have some new faculty this semester - Dr. David Parker (my CMD 131 professor, a really nice person), Dr. Jonathan Muterera (my really exciting ACC 201 professor), Monday Datong (my STA 301 professor, also very friendly), Dr. Vladislav Scherbinin A. (another cool Russian professor!!!), Dr. Norman Wright – Dean of Business and Enterpreneurship (he’s totally cool), Dr. Bollou’s wife Artlet (just as nice as Dr. Bollou), and lots of others. I hope that that no one leaves at the end of this academic year, or at least not before I graduate. I know I’m being somewhat selfish cos I know that people leave only cos they have to. But I hope that most of them are still here when I graduate, God willing.

Look at the time! It’s 12:38am and I’m still not asleep. I don’t know why the pressure of exams is beginning to worry me. I have a CSC 384 midterm this coming Thursday. I only pray to God that this exams goes well. Can’t wait to see my scores on the History of Art exam . And by the way, I wasn’t feeling too well last week and that is why I didn’t post any entries. I didn’t even write the programming exam. I just needed time to revise, and since I wasn’t feeling well, I never got the chance . The exam was meant for selecting students that would participate in the programming competition. I just heard on Saturday that Nino, Hamman, and Faiza are selected for participating in the competition.  The venue is Abuja and the competition takes place around November 3rd, 2007. I was very glad for all three of them. God willing, one of the AUN representatives will win .

Anyways, I have to go and sleep now (yawn). Hope to post soon...........God bless you

Ready for the Exchange Program?

Posted at 1:20 PM, Friday, October 5, 2007

CONTINUED - A Look Back at the Semester Spring 2007

Posted at 2:37 PM, Sunday, September 30, 2007

Hmmmm, I’m really enjoying this 3-day holiday. Right now am at home. It’s 12:50pm and I’m listening to the wonderful song “Amazing grace how sweet the sound” by Chris Tomlin. Can’t tell you how relaxed I feel. I thank God for his mercy and love and pray that the Lord will be with me always.

Here is the continuation from last Friday’s entry...........

System Analysis and Design by Dr. Bollou, like the other courses, was a very important course for my major. I thoroughly enjoyed the course, especially the project. I was very glad when the instructor gave us the option to choose our own group members. My group was totally cool! I had Nousheen, Saima, and Oma in my group, which made work a whole lot easier, phew! We worked on doing an analysis of the bookstore here at the university.  We stopped at the design phase because the course was not supposed to go into coding, implementation, and testing. On the whole, I loved it! Some of the amazing things that we learnt in the course were doing a DFD, an ERD, and cost-benefit analysis. There were lots of other topics like systems planning, requirements modeling, data & process modeling, development strategies, output and user interface design, data design, system architecture etc. I guess I learnt a lot of important stuff in this course. I loved the exams, especially the questions where we were required to do a DFD and ERD on a case study. I didn’t like the multiple choice questions too much. And oh, Dr. Bollou promised us lunch at the Faculty club, but due to one thing or the other, it didn’t happen. I hope we have one this semester though. I do like Dr. Bollou a lot because he makes sure that his students know what they are doing. During the project he scheduled meetings with the groups so that we would know what we were doing, why we were doing it, and how we should do it. I mean he wasn’t required to spend that time explaining things to us, but he really set time apart only so that we would understand the whole thing well. I am really grateful to God that we got a good grade on the project, and in the course! I guess it wouldn’t have been so good if Dr. Bollou hadn’t taken time to explain and guide us. Thank you Jesus for such wonderful professors

Dr. Felix Bollou

QBA 201 was pretty much like Intro to OS in terms of the flow of the course. Dr. Botchway was the instructor for this course. He made everything so very easy for the students. I mean he went through each step again and again just to make sure that every student understood what was happening. He did try his best and I was very pleased with that. Dr. Botchway is one of the nicest persons I’ve met. Anytime anyone of us had a problem we just went to office with our concerns and he was always there to listen, help and even adjust his own schedule to help us. We learnt about descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, graphical & tabular techniques, sampling techniques, probability, probability distributions (random, discrete & continuous) etc. The course text was also wonderful; I think one can learn a lot from the course text alone because it’s very self-explanatory. I think I’ll also go over the course text this Christmas holidays to refresh my memory, I will be needing lots of stuff from that text in the near future.

Dr. Benjamin Botchway 

And lastly, MGT 201 was a very different course from the ones I had taken previously. It was a pure business course. Dr. Buera took us in that course. The best thing about this course was the class session itself. I really enjoyed listening to Dr. Buera because it felt like listening to some argument or story rather than studying in a class. His examples were just wonderful. He focused on problems in Nigeria in most of his examples. Some of those were very funny too, especially those that about corruption in Nigerai. He would always question “Why, why is it like that?” I can understand that, I mean it’s true. Most people here don’t care why things are bad in Nigeria, they just continue to live their lives. Anyways, back to the course – Dr. Buera also emphasized discipline and obedience in class, which I really liked. I also liked the idea of the extra point assignments. Furthermore, he gave the choice that some students could do a project instead of the final, this helped lots of students to catch up. I however, chose to write the final cos he adviced me to do so. In the course, we learnt about functions of management, evolution of management thought, principles of management, managers, planning, ethics & social responsibility, organizational culture, communication and negotiation, diversity, human resource management, organizational control etc. Dr. Buera was concerned about the students and always gave them advice in a fatherly manner. I think I’m going to miss those class sessions with Dr. Buera. At least I can go over the course text to make sure I remember the important concepts (if not all) before next semester.

 Me, Dr. Abubakr Buera, Saima, and Nousheen (left-to-right)

Well, there you have it, every course I took last semester. I was very pleased with all the grades I received. All the glory belongs to the LORD because without Him, I could never have had those grades. So "THANK YOU JESUS FOR EVERYTHING!"

I kept to my plans this week and have updated my blog. Why, isn’t that surprising? My next entry will be on the good news I talked about in my entry last Friday. That'll be followed by "the summer I spent in Yola" (with loads of pics). Thanks for your time and God bless

Spring 2007 - A Look Back at the Semester

Posted at 1:25 PM, Friday, September 28, 2007

This week was one of the busiest I've known! So much work! Not that I'm complaining or anything. Dr. Kah's homework was the longest homework I've ever done in my entire life! I enjoyed doing it of course, especially reading the Standish Group article - CHAOS Chronicalls 1995. The article was all about why IT projects fail, and how to prevent failures from occuring. The part that I really like was the comments given by different IT professionals. When interviewed about why IT projects fail, an application analyst commented "Brain-dead users, just plain brain-dead users." HAHA, that's the funniest comment I've heard coming from an IT professional! A project manager described a very funny situation - "The project was two years late and three years in development. We had thirty people on the project. We delivered an application the user didn't need. They had stopped selling the product over a year before." - This is what IT projects can end up being, haha. Chaos, chaos, chaos, everything is chaos - That's what the whole article is about. I enjoyed all my classes. I think this is going to be one of the finest semesters ever! Accounting, ERP, History of Art, Project Management, Database Systems, and Statistics - all are just totally awesome! Thank you Jesus for giving me such wonderful courses AND professors I sincerelly praise God for everything in the past week and am looking forward to a good week ahead. My next entry might come sooner than Friday this time, God willing. That's cos I have very good news to share......

Anyways, moving on to the purpose of this entry ............ 

Last semester I took 5 courses - Telecommunication & Data Networks (INF 252), Introduction to Operating Systems (then INF 350; now INF 250), Systems Analysis & Design (then INF 360; now INF 260), Quantitative Business Analysis (QBA 201), and Fundamentals of Management (MGT 201). The understanding of each of these courses is crucial for an IS major. The knowledge gained here will form the foundation for many courses ahead, so I had to be cautious to carefully understand each one of them. Unfortunately somewhere in the middle of the semester I kind of started forgetting stuff in 2 or 3 courses. But thank God, I did well in all of my finals and earned my highest GPA ever! Praise the LORD God Almighty! I never thought I could do it, I just kept on praying to God to help me during the finals because that was the time that mom had passed away. I knew that I had to be just what the LORD and my parents wanted me to be, and God did answer my prayer! Isn’t that just amazing? I can’t thank Him enough. "Thank you Jesus!"

Let me begin by describing how the Telecommunications and Data Networks course went. INF 252 was taught by Dr. Augustine Odinma, one of the most highly qualified professors here at the university. He worked at Bell Labs as the Director for Africa and Europe. Now isn’t that amazing or what? I was like totally impressed when I realized that a person who had had such a high position would be willing to come and teach in our university. I really like him beacuse he is always concerned about students learning the course, and not just passing it. He treats everyone in a fatherly manner and that’s one of the things that sets him apart. I like his style of teaching cos I learnt a lot. Infact, I learnt everything so well that I remember lots of it even after such a long time. I’m sure that if I just “brush” over the course text I’ll recall everything. The course text that we used helped a lot. I think it’s one of the best (or possibly even the best) textbook I’ve read. The author did a great job. Anyways, we learnt about network connections, network cables, data & signals (conversion techniques), LANs (topologies software, & internetworking), data packets, network traffic, network architecture (OSI & TCP/IP suite), multiplexing, errors (detection and control),  MANs, and WANs. The exams and tests were done in a different manner - we had only short/long answer questions. This was great for me cos I don’t like multiple-choice questions. One of the best things about the course was the field trip we had. That's a whole new entry on its own so I'll leave the description for a later time. For now let me give a brief description of what it was all about -  we went out to town to the various appartments of the university to view the equipement kept for internet connectivity. We also visited most buildings on-campus (both temporary and permanent) for the same purpose. You can read details and see pictures in one of my later entries. On the whole, I really enjoyed the course and am looking forward to the part II of that course i.e. Telecommunications & Data Networks II.

Dr. Augustine Odinma

Moving on to the next course, Intro to OS was a very easy-going course. Dr. Okunoye took us in this course. He was a visiting professor and is not returning this semester. There’s one thing about Dr. Okunoye that you have to know, he is one of the funniest person ever! Infact, I can't recall ever seeing him upset. He always said funny things in and out of classroom. The atmosphere in his classes was one of great ease. I really miss his jokes. We even gave him a surprise birthday party organized by our classmates. Everyone (except myself and Saima) danced in the party, I think someone even shot a video of the whole event. I’m sure Dr. Okunoye must have been pleased with everything the class did for him, and we were all happy to have him as our professor  Back to the course, we learnt about different processors, comapred various OS, also learnt how to do different installations, and lots of other stuff. The best part was the group presentation we had to do at the end of the course. Every student was required to pick a topic and make a presentation. Me and my group picked memory management and gave our presentation. Though it wasn’t as good as it could have been, it was ok. The good thing was that I learnt more about memory management than I would have if I just read it from the textbook. Making the presentation required research and that’s how I got to know a lot about it. Actually, my sister Nino was taking Computer Organization and Architecture that semester and she was the one who gave me a very good source for my information. She also helped me to understand various concepts. I was really glad we had done all this work. In essence, it was a good course, and I’ll try and go over it again this Christmas holiday so that I don’t forget everything 

This picture is taken in the Mac lab, and in a very funny way. As you can see cute Patricia was going to take her own pic when Dr. Okunoye just jumped in from no where. Seriously, he is very funny and I miss his jokes

I'll write about the other 3 courses in my next entry. For now, I'm at the Admissions office for my work hours. So let me continue doing that. I only pray that I'll have enough time to do everything I want over this weekend. I'm so greatful to God that Monday's a public holiday! It's Nigeria's independence day on 1st October. My birthday will be 4 days after that, can't wait for it! Hmmmmmm, no classes today. I can relax as much as I want, yes! Thank God it's Friday!

Courses this semester - Fall 2007

Posted at 12:53 PM, Friday, September 21, 2007

Well, this entry is going to be super-short cos I don't have enough time for anything these days with all the readings, homework and other stuff going on. This semester I'm taking six (6) courses. History of Material Culture I (CMD 131) with Dr. Parker, IS Project Management (INF 321) with Dean Kah, Enterprise Resource Planning (INF 341) with Dr. Bollou, Probability & Statistics (STA 301) with a new professor, Database Systems (CSC 384) with Dr. Grakhov, and Fundamentals of Accounting (ACC 201) with Dr. Muterera. That makes a total of 18 credit hours, which of course is not a big deal. The problem starts when I have to go for 10 hours work-study every week. That's not all, I have joined the media club and I think that too will take up more of my time. In addition to that, this semester every course is just about readings. I mean we are required to read a chapter before we come to class and we can be given a surprise quiz any moment. I've been struggling hard to keep up with the readings by loosing sleep and leisure. I guess this is what it feels like to be a junior - totally time and sleep lacking, haha. God willing I'll be able to cope with everything and earn good grades.

Registration and Orientation, Fall 2007

Posted at 1:57 PM, Saturday, September 15, 2007

For once I don't have pictures of registration and I don't think I have time to go looking for those either. Anyways, this semester things went as usual, actually I wasn't very involved with anything so I can't say if there were any improvements or not. I do know that Admissions check-in was smooth as always. We accepted about 300+ students but only about 190+ have showed up for registration so far. I'm not soo sure of the statistics cos I'm concentrating on my classes which have already begun with loads of readings. All the same, registration for new students was very good, better than ever. But registration for returning students was the usual not very good process. But who can I blame for that? Don't ask me cos I can't say. God willing, next time it'll be smoother.

Here are some pictures of orientation that the admissions staff took:

Coming back to registration, returning students are never really content with the classes they get, they just have to keep coming to change an instructor, section or course. It's the same complaints and reasons they have (Students here just never stop complaining)  - "I don't like instructor X cos my friend told me so"; "8:00am! How can I get up soo early in the morning for classes?"; "I don't like afternoon classes cos I'm not an afternoon person"; "I can't do 4 classes on Moday!"; "Is there any space in a section of Instructor Y? Could you please move me there, I can't go to the Dean to get permission. Please, won't you do this for me?";"I've been here all morning and no one's attending to me, I can't stay in the long line of waiting students";"Can you please give me afternoon classes, and please make sure I don't get Instructors A and B" and it continues, I wish they understood that we have no control over what section, time, day, instrutor and what have you. It's almost impossible to make them understand that WE don't have the authority to change anything. You can see the kind of answer they give when we refer them to the Dean or advisor. Nevertheless, I guess they'll understand someday, God willing. There was some incidents that got me really upset. One was when a student said that she had to take a course and that there was no other way. We did tell her that all sections for that course were full and that she had to take SPECIAL permission to get there, cos it just was not possible. After making all the trouble and finally being admitted to the section, when I printed her schedule and gave it to her can you believe what she did? She had one look at her schedule and said "I can't take this course, drop it please I don't like the instructor!" I got soo upset that I just spoke and said "First you make us go through all this trouble and now you don't want the course?" I mean why do people have to be like that? I can understand that certain professors might not be too welcoming, but I can assure you that if only you pray hard and work hard, everything will go well for you. From my experience, it's not soo much the professor that one needs to consider, it's the effort, time and dedication you put into the course, and your faith in God. If you have these two things then you need not be afraid of taking a course with any professor. Of course I know that certian professors are better than others, even I have my favourites, but I wouldn't mind going to any professor's class if it is what God wants me to do. I just end up liking the professors for one reason or the other, that's God's blessing because on my own, I can do nothing or be anything. Just like the Bible says "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me". Students say that Dr. Quarccoo is tough, but when I was in his class, I can tell you that he was one of the finest professors I've known. I mean calculus was exciting and I enjoyed the class sessions soo much that I looked forward to being in class. I don't know I managed an A- in his course(Calculus I) cos students tell me it's almost imposibles to get anything like an A- or A in his class. My sister Nino had a B+ in his Calculus III class, she really enjoyed his class, and she still thinks that he made Calculus a very interesting course. You see, if you trust the Lord Jesus, He always makes a way for you. Sometimes the road may be rough, but the final destination is soo beautiful that you forget whatever you had to go through to get there. As it is written "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding". Pray and everything will go well with you, just as it went with me because I wouldn't have gotten anything close to a B+ in many courses of mine if I did not trust in God to help me through. Change courses and sections if you want, but don't do it on the basis of your friend's opinion, cos "you are not your friend" as my little sis Mona said to one student. Even Ben Carson describes PEERS as "People who Encourage Errors Rudeness & Stupidity" in his book The Big Picture. You don't always need to listen to your peers cos sometimes these so-called "friends" might lead you astray. Listen to God, and it will go well with you.

Anyways, I guess that's about all that happened during registration this semester. My next entry will be on courses I'm taking this semester, and other entries about Yola will follow soon. I've decided to blog every Friday as I don't have any classes then. God willing, this time I'll be able to keep with my plans. Thanks for your time!

Summer Work - 2007

Posted at 9:59 AM, Friday, September 14, 2007

This summer I worked at the ACIT (African Centre for IT) and the Admissions office.  At the ACIT I was part of a team of 9 (then sophomore, now junior) students - Hamman (technical/project manager), Patrica (designer and assistant project manager), Oma (analyst), Nayyara (coder), Nousheen (designer), Fiza (coder and analyst), Judith (analyst), and Osaetin (coder). I was assigned the job of a designer along with Nousheen and Patricia. however, I was also part of the analysis and programming, as were others like Oma, Patricia, Nousheen, Faiza and Judith. It was like most of us did a little of everything just to get the experience and believe me, it did helped a lot. I mean I've learnt a lot after working there. We were working on 2 projects - one was about developing a healthcare information system and the other was about creating a portal for a group of organizations to enable data sharing. We used JSP and SQL in both projects. Both were web applications and we used the hibernate concept in jsp to link the web interface to the database. Anyways, I'll write more about it in another entry and might possibly put some snapshots of the protoptype (if given permission to do so). We had fun too, wasn't like we were working around the clock! There were some very funny moments, some boring moments, some lonely moments, and moments of frustration. On the whole, I enjoyed the experience, Judith says she'll definitly miss it all, I think I will too. I can remember one very funny moment when Oma, myslef and Judith were discussing on the way Chineese people talk and the way Japaneese talk. Then Oma imitated how the Japaneese speak and I couldn't control my laughter, it was just too funny and all of us were laughing soo hard that Oma even fell off her chair! That only made things worse, cos I had to run out of the room to catch my breath, haha, I just couldn't stop laughing! It's was all really very funny.....Anyways, here are some of the pics we took from back then........

In the first picture there is Nino and Patrica (left-tp-rig