Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Those days: Part1 "The myth called 'S&S !!"




I always had the instinct of doing different things; doing things which *seemed* difficult. Probably this was one of the reason that made me to take up a not so obvious elective for a compSci student: S&S - Signals and Systems! The name did sound attractive. Signals, Systems!

Well - I wasn't alone in this bandwagon. S&S, offered as one of the elective's in 3rd year of our graduation did attract atleast a few dozen people from non-electronics domain. Few had long-vision with respect to carrier! Learning electronics concept for compSci student would boost their resumae !!!  For few more (naveen duo, pomp's, jaiHind et al) - the fear of HOD taking up other elective made them opt for S&S!

The classes rolled on. Our lecturer was no expert in this subject. Guess she just took this subject coz none else was available. All of us, till now were wandering in the world of programming --  having fun with if's, else's, while's and for's - dataTypes and protoTypes, Objects and classes. And suddenly we were given with hard-to-digest concepts of pulse-impulse, analog-discrete, Fourier-Laplace, and Nyquist's! Ufff -- 

Nyquist's sampling: "The highest frequency which can be accurately represented is less than one-half of the sampling rate"

Even this simplest statement by Nyquist looked rocket science for us!

Every single person (that I knew) were baffled, dumbfolded, bemused, confounded, flummoxed, befuddled, graveled, perplexed and bewildered! Confused? Confused - That's what the rest of the GRE words in previous statement meant (almost).




In no time, internals started creeping in. To make students listen, our lecturer had came out with a great concept! 'Important topic for internals'. We used to have 5-8 such important topics every month and that's it. One of us used to prepare answers for those and we were done with our preparation for internals. The concept of 'important questions' ( and their answers ) helped us a lot in scoring mind-boggling, emotionally overwhelming marks in internals !!

One can imagine our situation when the finals came. Every one had good marks in internals - but yet none was confident of getting through finals. Scary days. We reverted to age-old tried and tested formula for such difficult situation - 
Step1: Collect last 3-4 years papers.
Step2: Rank the questions based on their "number of appearance's" in previous exam papers.
Step3: Prepare answers for all the not-so-difficult-to-byheart questions, in their respective ranking order.
Step4: ByHeart.
Step5: Read prescribed syllabus document properly. This would help one identify 'out of syllabus' questions. Just attempting such questions would fetch you marks! Given the complexity of the subject - this wasnt going to be a easy task.
Step6: Properly read and understand non-mathematical chapters (like applications of DSP, evolution of DSP et al).
Step7: Pray - Pray and Pray! Pray that the topics that you read should come in exam papers.







Target 35:
The D-day had arrived. Morning 5 AM, the final preparations were in full swing (still!). As-usual, it was group study time. We had assembeled in my room - koli's adda. The famous one-stop solution for all the group study activities. The scene was pretty scary. Kalli - with cigarette in one hand, and pen in another hand. Text book to his right and ash-box to his left. Me - trying hard to control sleep, and taking some inspiraton from aKalli's. I had sleep just for an hour while other's didn't bother about that. We never understood the subject the way we should have, but still taught each other what we had assumed - we had learnt.

Exam hall - Nervous face's everywhere. The Q-paper was finally given in our hands. For some time, it looked like I was attacked by *kind of* famous disease of TaareZameenPar fame - 'Dyslexic'. Although it was written in english - the questions appeared alien! I read the Q-paper twice trying to find the questions that I had prepared. Hardly could find couple of them. The paper wasnt carrying much of previous year's questions - and neither it was carrying much of step6 contents! All questions looked closest candidate to Step5!

Pushed hard and scribbled what ever i knew for all the questions that looked familiar or relative to what we had studied. One hour - it was all over. I read Q-paper again and again. Invain. Rest of the questions were Dyslexic. I just came out. The fastest completed 3-hr exam in my entire 16 years education history. And the scariest one as well.

Wasn't surprised to see couple of my SaS friends already standing out.

2 months down the line ---- surprise was over and the results were out. Was suspecting a run-out, but the third umpire verdict was other wise. Managed to enter the crease just by a whisker.

The best part of S&S - Made some good friends. One became one of my all time best buddy and my Guru. kuntS. It was highly unlikely for me to make it out of engineering without him. Other - my biggest crush till date! Probably she too never understood the subject. All the SIGNALS sent by me were never understood by her SYSTEM !! :-)

Signals and Systems -----  The subject which harassed me in those days is still continuing to pretrify me. My job since past few years is closely related to the same. I think I have a destiny to tame S&S some day - still working on it. 

Wish me all the best!