FINALS 1000 Words.txt

In the daily life as a computer engineering student, many things are frequently asked to me. Can you fix this? Can you make this device? Can your erase this computer virus? Do you know how to hack computers? Those questions made me feel so far from what people imagine a computer engineering student may be doing. Facing the fourth year life in Bohol Island State University is kind of fun and at the same time, frustrating. Yes, frustrating, by the fact that I almost do four projects at the same day. Luckily, a subject that is so special, I don’t need to frustrate myself. Since honesty is the key to better future, I will be enumerating all the things I learned in Troubleshooting of Computer Systems Subject. No sugarcoating of words, no cheesy lines, just clear understanding and learning. So here I go.

First stop, reporting in front of the class. This may sound so boring but for me that reporting really added confidence in myself. Making and designing a PowerPoint presentation with 40 slides really boosted my creativity since I added extra unimportant animations that gives the report more fun to watch.  I learned more about the history, facts, architecture, importance and troubleshooting microprocessors that made me happy since I also have a microprocessor subject and that would mean an advantage for me. Though in the troubleshooting part, I wouldn’t really know how to troubleshoot because I don’t have the device for following those procedures but at least I encountered those for future needs.

Hearing all those reports in this subject is indeed great for getting information about different types and parts of a computer system, but I realized what we lack in this subject is the real troubleshooting of damaged parts one by one to really explore and create a practical experience of those things with errors. But with those realization in my head, I also think that the subject doesn’t have all those things to prepare and the availability is close to none so I really understand and accept that. The important thing is we read the handouts carefully in order to pass the exams at the same time understand what we are reading since that’s what exams are for, read and understand to pass and with that process, learning is the output.

As far as I can recall in my memory, we did some checking and evaluating of a system unit to test if it is working and functioning correctly, well I cannot remember what we’ve done in that session since it’s a group work I couldn’t barely touch the unit because I arrived late and they are already crowding the unit so I only watched and take a look on what they are doing. To be totally honest, really, I am writing this paragraphs down only with the best of my memory without scanning my notes and exams so I apologize that I cannot express all those topics one by one. Oh, also I remember that the other group evaluated a Raspberry Pi but I could not get a gist of what they are doing but it is also to test the functionality of the device.

Another set of topics where given to us to be researched and passed to our instructor. I encountered several troubleshooting procedures about the hard disk drive and windows file system but then again I only researched it, read it and print it since we don’t have time to explore those things using damaged systems. I understand that this subject cannot do the practical troubleshooting since again as I have stated in the earlier paragraphs, we do not have the equipment and system, so that would explain my knowledge and information in this subject truthfully. Being introduced to those many topics really demands more time but considering the total time in this semester, it is not enough. With many major subjects in the way, I find it so difficult to study regarding this subject since this institution focuses on project or output based one with so many deadlines to chase. Although we have a short time in this subject, I highly appreciate the effort of our instructor to lead us in this subject, have fun, and also learn new things from his perspective as a former computer engineering student.

I may not expound the detailed topics that we had since this is a “what you’ve learned essay”, but I am truly honest in writing this paper with all my heart. The interesting part in this subject is that the more you dive into the computer systems there’s so much more to unravel and discover without being tackled in the class itself. The mere fact that we will be finishing this subject with learnings is much more pleasant to hear than just passing to take the next subjects. I think the subject needs more time and tools to build up excellent development of students taking it and be able to fix their own systems when they encounter it in the future especially when in emergency situations like a data recovering, replacing parts and over-all system maintenance. I know this is just the beginning for the subject’s betterment, maybe the next years or semesters would be much more exciting and interesting for the future computer engineering fourth year students.

What I love and will never regret about this subject is that it made me relax and think more clearly about other things since it didn’t demand so much in our time and with that this semester is really exciting and helped me achieve so many great things as well as troubleshooting ideas that I can go back and scan it again using our topic notes or using search engines with the help of our past handouts. Troubleshooting of Computer Systems is important as a computer engineer soon because it adds up to the fact that we computer engineers has a knowledge or know how to fix or maintain these kind of systems.