Struggling to find the M in Msc

Today was as expected a bad exam day. It was data structures and algorithms.. Considering I hadn't studies anything yesterday soon after the exam I knew what I was getting into today.

So while I struggled to fit in with the crowd and pretend I understand what Red-Black Trees and the intricasy of dynamic programming, it soon became evident that the only thing I could do was to go home and sleep. So that is exactly what I did!

When I woke up at around 5pm it was pleasantly raining and all I could think was sleeping just a tad bit longer :) Finally around 6p, I managed to get up and was ready do some studying. The bad feeling had died down and I knew one way or the other it wasn't going to be easy. That's when my g/f calls up and says ..What? Algorithms paper difficult? Why you been coding for 7 years! If only she understood that nowa days you don't go around implementing the algorithms found in Carmons book.

But that did get me thinking... hmmm.. Since I am going to flunk tomorrow anyways why not do it in style. So I opened up my notebook and loaded up Kdevelop and started to actually implement a few string searching algorithms. It was actually fun! Then I started using wikopedia to study about FSA(finite state automaton), Red Black trees etc. When looking for info on the Knuth Morris Pratt algorithm, I ended up learning al lot about Prof. Knuth which was very fascinating.

So how did I do today at the exam? Not good :) I am certain to repeat it next year but that seems to be the feeling for those who _ACTUALLY_ studied! They thought I did the correct thing going home early since it really didn't make much of a difference. But for me it DID! I had fun! Studying

Comments

Anonymous said…
i remember reading that Kanath kaaraya was so confident that his TeX program was bug-free and offered a monetary grant [which increased in amount periodically] to anyone who'd find a bug in there. pooh..
10:29 PM
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