Power Spectra

Here we are, on the last day of BDR work. Whatever deluded ideas some of us may have had about finishing on time to get some sleep, they were definitely wrong. Most groups hadn’t finished by now as expected, and by the end of the day, it’s a couple of groups in F211 slugging it out, drifting slowly into a manic desperate state. The typical all-nighter vibe really, it tends to fluctuate between weird ecstatic states and depressed dazed periods, interspersed with truly productive hours that blast by. Not so much for us though, somehow we got ourselves into a rowdy and hyper mood, which made for quite a night. We were killing it somewhat as well. Funny how productive yet in many ways useless the mind gets when pushed to the limits.

Needless to say, there was still a LOT of work to do. We were fueled by coke, the damn bombay mix and several costcutter trips. Olly was on the latex code like a maniac, pulling through all the work I was putting together and the stuff I was proof reading with Ashley that the others were doing. Mahfood was going at the images and photoshopping while some of the other guys busted out a cost benefit analysis, the CBA. Turns out the CBA is worth 20% of the overall project mark, and in a fun turn of events, we realized twelve hours before deadline that our massive gantt chart, courtesy of Sudeep’s long hours, had been entirely wrong the whole time. When we realized this, we reached a sort of peak, where we couldn’t stop laughing at how painful this was. Sud had gone to take a break, so it was up to Mahfood and Anirudh to take on the job of learning how to use Microsoft Publisher and busting out a legit passable gantt chart that would encompass the whole eight months of project work, including costs and individual contributions of every member. All that pretty much from scratch and in less than twelve hours. I still feel bad months later. What a blast they had (and we had). By the time we were handing it in, Mahfood was in some other weird state of mind, which I’m sure he can barely remember. Anirudh was gone.

Anyway, halfway through the night, a couple of us realized that our CBA wasn’t gonna pass, gantt chart or not, so we proceeded to start the whole thing from scratch again, that was Olly and Robin. Meanwhile, I slaved away at the main report, driven by a sick Pendulum mix found earlier in the week. I managed to slot in three hours of sleep, at Kris’ house when the sun was rising, but it was back at it from 8am. At that point, there wasn’t too much left to write report-wise, but a lot of proof reading and formatting. Olly and me had the blunt of the work there, although the other guys were doing the CBA as well, which was important. I think we had a good hour left at the end to take it easy, while printing and handing it in. By then, Anirudh was killed and had left to sleep, but the rest of us dragged ourselves to the handing-in tray and then to Petr’s to let him know we’d succeeded. This was at about 2pm tomorrow, by the way, but as always, all nighters just squash 48 hours into one day… It’s hard to say why, but that night was in many many ways the pinnacle of university. It ended up being a hilarious night all round, mainly because of the people I was with. We may not have gelled so much on our working abilities, but we sure as hell got on and managed to turn much of the night into one big joke. And get the damn thing done.

Retrospectively I can say this because we achieved a first class in the project, something none of us were expecting before the results rolled in. We scraped it, at 71%. Big thanks goes to Petr, for making it possible. He also checked on us a couple times in the evening, before letting us do our thing, although giving us some extra work too. He had a big part in us getting the first and I think we did end up achieving more than he expected from us, or anyone else expected from us really. In that, it felt good to prove so many haters wrong. It may sound weird, but the whole time we did feel somewhat oppressed by some of the academic staff, who seemed to think we were some kind of joke or something. Only the technicians seemed to really like us, despite us flooding the labs over and over. At the end of the day, it was a hard project, and we didn’t get it easy throughout the year, despite a lot of people thinking so simply because we had a 63-page report at the end of it, as opposed to 150+ pages like most others had. Well there you go, the CBA and report both came through, as did the presentation, making up for the disappointment from the poster and its re-marking.

It was a hell of a haul. It felt amazing to be done. Bubble Drag Reduction on Biofouled Surfaces, it was a good one. I do hope something comes from our work.

peace