year after year the subjects kept getting tougher and we all were struggling to cope up with the curriculum and the aero prof's who ensured that we had a real tough time... I guess we were the only department at M.I.T, Anna University who were deprived of sleep for months together and spent all nighters for the sake of submitting assignments and preparing for the assesments and exams. firstly there was Engineering Drawing and Machine Drawing (MD) using drafters and a variety of pencils (and not design software!) and the assesment tests where every prof competed with the other in setting "impossible" question papers. And how can I forget Theory of Elasticity (dough theta by dough x plus dough pi by....) where it was expected everyone had additonal RAM slots in their brains to memorize the stuff before assesments, Theory of Vibrations where the mam saw to it that she set the papers such that every question was from each book she knew so that we students go through books written by ten authors and numerous assignment sheets before tests and exams and yet be unable to attempt a single question in the paper and there was this very interesting course Finite Element Methods (FEM for short...) wherein, I for the first time in my life got to see 12 X 12 matrices on the black board!
Whatever be it in academics, we all had great fun visiting numerous labs throughout India. we got to visit labs and centers of the ISRO, DRDO, HAL, CSIR, IAF and NAL throughout India from kanyakumari to kanpur! On a positive note we really learnt a lot in the most technologically advanced field man has developed "aerospace". Got to work with huge wind tunnels testing aerodynamics of wings and missiles, hybrid rocket propulsion with HTPB propellant grains, fabricating composites, testing properties of materials etc... And very stimulating courses to both the mind and the heart in Propulsion and Aerodynamics. The course I enjoyed most in these four years is the year long Aircraft Design Project where I worked in a group of five and took a real time project of designing a 220 seater civil jetliner with a range of 7000km. This really brought out the dormant aeronautical engineer within me and gave me a real world work experience.
Now i'm in the last semester of my engineering and wondering what path I take for the rest of my life and where to go as i keep waiting to hear from the universities where I have applied to pursue my Masters in Aerospace Engineering.......
