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.