Today I finished the course “Envariabelsanalys 1″ (Calculus in one variable, course 1). With great results. I just looked at the solutions and found that I should have about 17-18 points of 21 total, a result that will give me a 5, the highest grade possible. I am just so happy and grateful! This is the first exam that really worked out for me . Previous math exams the last six months have been quite bad, but this one really hit the spot.

The course in calculus is also coming to an end. Ending as in “we have one week left now let’s throw in something way new and let them students sweat a bit”-ending. Todays lecture in Calculus introduced the standard integrals, as compared to the indefinite integrals that we have consumed the last three weeks. And all those assignments! They really require you to stay focused during the whole lesson, and mistakes are costly because you lag behind quicker than you imagine.

There, I needed to vent my thoughts a bit. Y-linjen is a difficult education, just as I wanted it to be, and I do thrive. The last six months have given so much more understanding of mathematics, now that I look back to high school that feels like children’s games to me.

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On the 20th of December I will have  the examination, and  although there are three weeks left I already started studying. Going back to the beginning of the course does feel easy now when I have started to understand the topics and the notation. Scalar and vector products are no match for me anymore. It is strange how different every thing feels now after doing these abstract calculations for months, it just flows naturally now.

Tomorrow I and my project group present the Leaky Bucket project for the teachers. It is a project where we study control engineering and solve a simple problem. Our problem was to keep a level in a water tank constant with variable outflow. To do this we used a PID-regulator, a water pump, and a sensor.

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During the project, we visited Tekniska Verken, the local power plant, to see how they use automatic control in their systems.  It was interesting to see the fully automatic garbage ovens burn the garbage that comes from the city and produce electricity and heat that is fed back to the city. And those helmets really make you look hot!

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Credits to xkcd

Back to the books for more studying now, no time to blog…

School is going great! I have completed my first half-semester and its examination week quite well. I still have not got any results from the exams, but I am very hopeful.

Now I am sitting here in my apartment writing these few lines down. I just had some delicious self-made chinese beef with curry, got my room cleaned out, planned the weekend and bought myself a front light for my bike, not counting my large shopping round at Maxi.

This morning, when I left my bed, I heard a loud cracking sound from underneath the mattress. Apparently, the inner frame was nailed to the outer frame with just a few nails, and these broke through the wood from the stress. My bed was partially broken and trying to sleep in it would mean it would be even more difficult to fix. I borrowed a hammer from my roomie and tried to beat it back to where it used to be, but it didn’t do much.
Tonight, after my delicious meal, I found some nails, screwed in two screws and hammered ten or so nails into the construction to make it last. I do believe it won’t fail me tonight, but I will still be extra careful.

I got a phone call today from Karin. She invited me to come to the Youth conference at Word of Life in Uppsala this week and offered me a ride sinc they would pass Linköping on the way from Gothenburg. Unfortunately, compared to like the rest of the country, we don’t have the week-long autumn vacation that otherwise is so common here. I first thought of declining, but then thought at coming for just the weekend. So now I am in Uppsala, starting from Friday!

Math has been very interesting lately. Not only has the linear algebra been most challenging with all the vectors, matrices and determinants, but the course in calculus has also proved interesting. We currently learning about all different kinds of limits of functions and continuity. This knowledge will later prove to be the foundation of all derivates, primitive functions and integrals and much more. For fun, I wrote the formal limit definition as the headline for this blog entry in Unicode.

Last and not least, I have finally finished my “overall”. The overall is an integral part of campus life here in Linköping, and you wear it during parties, competitions and events. Every education program has its own colors and symbols on the overalls, and for every event you participate in you get a fabric “mark”, unique for each event, that you sew onto your overall. As the years go by you fill up your whole overall with lots and lots of symbols from everything you have done, like an open log book. The catch? You are by tradition never allowed to wash it. The only time it may become wet is if the wearer also becomes that.

That’s all for today, see if I can keep updating more often. See you later!

Yesterday we had the test of German strong verbs. The test was a lot easier and less complicated than what we believed, it was all over in fifteen minutes and not two hours. Either way I got some neccessary repetition of the verbs and now I am a lot more confident using them. After the test we starting going through conjunctions and how they differ from their Swedish counterparts. Swedish is quite similar to the German language when it comes to grammatical constructions, but you have to be careful when it comes to conjunctions. The German language is more precise and therefore requires some more learning.

I have a lot of German studying to do. I really want to improve this mother tongue of mine from the time I lived in Switzerland. Grammar is where I am really lacking, so these formal studies are just what I need. I will hopefully spend the year 2009/2010 in Switzerland at the ETH in Zürich studying natural science.