Bob Eager wrote:

On Tue, 21 Apr 2015 10:59:10 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

And I'd start by crossing out Physics on the UCCA form and put Computer
Science (with a strong electronics component).

Except you'd be hard pressed to find a Computer Science degree that year,
I think.

Simply because I wasn't too keen on chemistry, my A level
subjects were physics, maths and further maths. That wasn't my
best choice - resulting in an A in physics, E in maths and fail
in further maths. This was not a great surprise, and I had set up
my UCCA choices to cope with this. OTOH it may have been that
only with the double exposure to maths did I get to scrape
through at all.

One thing I never realised was how much of a university
engineering course is actually maths. There is just so much that
I never understood, and even the bits I did grasp are lost in the
mists of time. I remember my disappointment, having chosen a
"Machines" option (1), to be presented with a large matrix and
being told that, for the purposes of this analysis, the design
details were pretty irrelevant, all large machines reduced to
this grid of numbers.

It was also clearly my personal ceiling for physics - I had to
re-sit in my first year at university.

I think I had managed A level on what (to me) seemed like common
sense, and managed to avoid too many proofs. The university focus
was rather different, and additionally I suppose I allowed myself
to think I could get away with less revision than it actually
needed.

Luckily, I managed eventually to find myself in a field where, as
one of the old hands once told me, "All you need is Ohms law and
25 years' experience."

I was fortunate enough to find myself in some positions where my
engineering, organisational and computing skills were all able to
be used at once. Sadly, others were less rewarding, and
eventually VR was very welcome.

I never had a calculator with buttons more complicated than
square root, and that was quite sufficient for my needs.

(1) This was actually a second choice as I had originally
selected Computer Science, but this was over subscribed, and I
was persuaded to think again.

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK


Plant amazing Acers.