Not going to lie, this semester was a hard one. I had some difficult classes, so it feels great to have made it through! I always find it kind of cool to think back on how much I knew at the beginning of the semester and compare it with how much I know at the end. This was an eventful semester! I got an internship lined up for the summer, I took my first upper division electrical engineering class, and I got to be a TA for the first time. All in all, pretty successful I think!
Finals were tough, but the cool thing about this semester was getting to work on design projects. Although it meant more work come finals time, it was a lot of fun too. I wrote a while ago about my FPGA project with Steve working on designing a Pokemon battle simulator using an FPGA. It turned out pretty great actually and was a lot of fun to design. In the end we came up with a six-on-six pokemon battle in which two players choose Pokemon and actions using the switches and buttons on the FPGA. Got a great grade on it too!
I also researched methods of edge detection in image processing for EE301 and worked with two other group members to code a couple different edge detection algorithms in Matlab. Then we compared how the different algorithms worked with different images to see what the pros and cons of the methods were. We gave a presentation to the class and wrote a report as well. It was interesting, and helped bring together the material learned in the class with actual applications.
With the design projects and the more advanced classes, this semester was academically the hardest so far. But it’s kind of amazing that every semester seems to get harder, and every semester I adjust to handle it. I’m looking forward to a nice break, and then an exciting new semester after the holidays!
