Done at last!!!!!!!

I am done with my PhD qualifiers at last!!!!!!! Man !! thats a good feeling....I have been studying like crazy for the past couple of months and i am glad that I am done with studying for some time now.....atleast i feel I have done well so i should clear the exams!!!!!!!!!

It was one hell of an experience which i would not even like to repeat even in my dreams!!!!!!!! It was an exam marathon of 7 exams in 6 hours.......the dreaded day started at 7:30 when i got out of bed lazily and by 8:30 I was ready to go as i had the exam at 9 am.....I needed Sindhu's help to take the huge pile of books that I had....some of the exams were open book so i didnt want to miss any book concerned to that book....it took 2 trips up and down my apartment to get the books down to my car.....when i stepped into the office in the department the secretary was stunned to see me with a ton of books and going back down stairs a couple more times to get the remaining books!!!!!!!!!!! she was laughing and couldnt understand why i was getting that many books!!!!!!!! I was set up to write the exam in the department library.....I got the morning session papers at 9 am.....I was told that i will have to find another place to write at 11 am as there was some kind of meeting at that place!!!!!! I found that very strange as I was writing my PhD qualifiers (which was a big deal for me)and the department couldnt even reserve a room for me!!!!!!!!!

The morning session comprised of Physiology, Biometry (I hated both the subjects) and Biomedical Instrumentation....all these are core courses and i did well in them when I took them in my first 2 semesters!!!!!!! but now it was a diferent ball game......I dreaded Physiology as it entailed all the systems in the body and many other things!!!!!!!!! I studied real hard for that and I was surprised to see one of the questions from the first chapters of the book!!!!!!!!! it was an easy question and the next one was hard but I did well in that subject and i was thinking....that wasnt a bad start for the day....one of my dreaded subjects out of the way and I am feeling good!!!!! But little did I know what was in store for me in the next paper.....It was biometry....statistics.......yuck!!!!!! i am not a great fan of the subject but i can do with it......but t my shock....I saw alll theor questions in the stats paper!!!!!!! my heart sank!!!!! i was expecting to get atleast 1 or 2 problems to solve but Dr.Sheffer (instructor of the course) had other ideas!!!!!!!! I could make sense of 2 questions but the other 2 were bouncers to me!!!!!!!!! i answered the first two and then decided to get to my instrumentation paper....that I was expecting to be a cake walk.......when i looked at the questions I thought I will breeze thru them but when I started doing them i realised that it wasnt as easy as it looked...and my neglectance and over confidence in the subject was now showing as i realised that I wast prepared enough to answer the question.....I struggled to get the Fourier Coefficients for the given signal and I didnt manage to get them....I was disappointed but the second part of the question was a bit better as it had Laplace Tranform....I got the answer and I was elated but in the mean time i lost track of the time and I realised that I had 15 minutes to answer the 2 questions in biometry!!!!!!! i wrote what i felt was appropriate as i wasnt sure abt either of the questions!!!!!!! i had to dig into the reserves of my skills honed over the years of writing crap in the answer paper in India!!!!!!!!! when U didnt know the answer beat around the bush and fill up the pages!!!!! thats exactly what i did but anyways, i was done in time and I had an hour's lunch break.

Had lunch at Sindhu's place and came back for the second innnings!!!!!!!! this time it is 4 papers in 3 hours!!!!!! the subjects were easier than the morning session....Circuit Analysis, Signals and Systems, Numerical methods and Analysis and Linear Algebra....I expected linear algebra to be a easy but it turned out other wise.....I answered the first question and the second was a bouncer......if A is a matrix then find A power n........I had 4 books for linear algebra and i couldnt find a answer to that question!!!!!!! I started with Signals and systems which turned out to be Signal and Image processing!!!!!!!!! now that was a blow below the waist as I was told it would be only signal processing!!!!!!! it was 1 and half questions Signal processing and 1 and 1/2 questions of Image processing.......I thought I was doomed but the only good point was I had to answer only 2 questions of the 3.....so i thought I will try my best to answer the signals part and answer the half Image processing question.....thats exactly what i did.....the i started with Circuits next......It was like clock work as I had practiced a lot for that stuff!!!!!!!! It went smoothly.....I was left with numerical methods.....I saw the questions and was stunned as I didnt now a lot of them.....but I had abt 45 minutes left so i decided to think calmly and went abt answering the ones I knew and finally I finished the exam on time and the feeling was amazing!!!!!!! it felt like a big burden taken of my shoulders and then i got to watch the Ind-pak match so i was very very happy....though it was a close game we could have played better and should have won the game.