As our second semester started this week, I looked back on what happened last semester that made me exhausted and drained for the whole month of January. It was the reason for my absence from blogging and in all honesty, I missed writing, not writing codes. I could say that college was hard and as you stepped on a higher year, the pressure got more intense than ever. Most especially since I am now in my crucial year since I’m a fourth-year student and only one semester with midyear class left.
I just want to share with everyone what projects made me look so wasted. In those days, I can still remember vividly how my sleeping patterns changed so much and how my body weight drastically up. Yes, instead of losing weight, I actually gained weight faster than before. Perhaps, it was because I was surrounded by a group of supportive and nontoxic friends.
This photo was the time we were making our networking project. I think I’ve written a few blogs about Cisco Packet Tracer before and that was our project as well. The project was pretty big since there were a lot of things we include based on the criteria given by our professor. We had to make a whole networking system in the application, and make a miniature model either physically or in a 3D version.
However, we had a limited amount of time to work on it, so we decided to make a physical model of the miniature. It costs a few hundred pesos but it was okay. If ever we pursued making a 3D model, I bet we couldn’t finish it in a week given that we had to do other projects as well. What you see on the screen is the actual project in the Cisco Packet Tracer.
Moving forward, I could still remember the pain, my professor caused us during our presentation on the RPG game made in RPG Maker MV. We prepared a good storyline, new sets of items, weapons, chests, characters, animations, sound effects, and so on and so forth. But, all of our efforts were in vain because our professor didn’t even give a damn about it. She was like staring at her phone and laptop and we were left in front, speaking to no one.
We worked on our RPG game for like 10 hours a day because that was something we never did before. Basically, we watched on YouTube how things work and what should do about this particular effect. How could we have a repetitive event but not a conversation? I can say that we expect a lot from that project because we know in ourselves that we made it technically better than others. But, what happened was truly devastating on our side.
After class, we didn’t waste any time leisure and go to the malls even if we were so tempted to do. In fact, we had to confiscate our wallets, including ATM cards for our sake. Could you imagine not going to the mall for like three weeks straight even if the mall is just almost beside our university? The temptation was so real. Instead of leisure, we exert ourselves extra time to finish pending projects.
One of the most memorable moments last semester was our music video filming. We managed to finish the music video in a day including making props, shooting, and editing the video. I had no idea how we did it, but I was so happy that time. Everyone was so professional and every shoot was taken once. We made inspired by the song, How Do I Say Goodbye by Dean Lewis which he made for his father.
It was so funny because I looked really ill in the photo. We just used white powder for my hair so that I will look like an old man. Then, I used concealer under my eyes and lips so that I would look ill. Can you believe that my make-up was done by me? It was actually my very first time using and applying them. I think that although it was a low-cost music video, we nailed it in editing. How I wish I have a copy to show to everyone.
After our music video was filmed, we had to film another project that involves cinematography. It was our short film project on the same subject as well. I do not understand why our professor decided to separate the project and our finals because others didn’t. Filming for our short film took a lot of time to finish because of switching to different places. We had three settings which are the university, a house, and an elementary school.
As a scriptwriter and concept maker in our group, I whacked my brain to come up with an interesting story. So, what I made was a story of a young girl who believed that she was in a perfect family. But when she discovered that she was not a biological daughter, a shocking revelation resurfaced. She was adopted and raised by scientists and psychologists because she had a rare mental disorder. She thought she was okay but at the very end of the story, she still see something that others couldn’t see.
Aside from these projects, we had a system project that we worked on for more than two weeks. It was a small project but I know it was not great because technically, our time was very limited. Several features were not met and in all honesty, I estimated that only 70% of the project was done. So, the ending was we received a pretty decent grade for our finals.
What I realized last semester was if you chose the right and productive members for your group, then everything will become smoother. I’m not telling you it’ll be easier, but I promise you, the headaches will be lesser. At the moment, when we had subject orientation and our professor discussed the syllabus. I felt the unstoppable pressure that I had no idea where it came from. I’ll become serious since the thesis will come next.
All images are taken from my phone during our project making in the month of January.