Morituri te Salutant II
To kick off my exam study, I took an overview of what might be covered in my International Finance and Process Equipment Design exams.International Finance:
This is the first time in about one and a half years that I ventured back into the world of Finance, and I have been reminded of why I hate it so much. The material is bland - not mentally stimulating. I probably should have changed subjects before the Census date. But as it is, I'm stuck with it.
Looking at what it is I had to cover, it seemed daunting. The fact that I haven't been to a single lecture past week 6 may be a factor to my feeling of helplessness. Bryce believes that International Finance is the best chance we have for an H1 - I beg to disagree. Judging by the past exams, the material tested would be heavily based on concepts - and we probably have to know it thoroughly for that H1. I think my method of tackling this would be to read the subject material heavily and take in as many of the concepts as possible. One and a half days of full on reading (**and NOTE TAKING, I cannot stress this enough, people who want to copy my studying habits. Reading without note taking is like flushing time down the toilet**) should be able to do the trick.
Process Equipment Design:
What I said above pretty much applies to PED as well. However, the concepts are slightly more stimulating, and they seem less daunting - I've actually been to *some* of these lectures, and immersed myself in this subject through the assignments. The exam, also, is only worth 40% (though it is a hurdle requirement). If all goes well with the last assignment, there should be less pressure on this subject to perform well in the final exam.
I definitely feel more at home with engineering concepts - they're a lot more tangible than finance concepts. Tthe only financial concept that makes tangible sense to me is the 'time value of money' - arbitrage makes no sense because it doesn't exist, risk is highly subjective and impossible to evaluate completely (that's not what actuaries would tell you though). To that extant, some note reading/taking and practise problems should be able to hammer PED down. Knowing that calculations for designs of pressure tanks, heat exchangers and distillation columns are unlikely (since we've already done them for assignments) leaves us with pipes, compressors, pumps, packed and fluidised bed columns should make studying more focused. We'll still need to know concepts for the other three units, however.
So that's what I think so far. I'll be going through notes for the next half a week or so, so I'll be disappearing for a while. We'll see how things are going on Thursday.
P.S The sermon at church today by Ps. Chris Fields was incredible - it gave me an epiphany of sorts, i.e. God speaking into one's self. I'm going to see if I can ninja a copy of his presentation, then rant about it, sometime. Just not now.
posted by Celestial Vision @ 10:04 pm
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