A first for me....

It was an amazing week! Though I have begun to lag a little in doing my daily lessons, I'm thoroughly enjoying this new process! Well, yeah yeah...Its understandable that I'm learning something new and all ... But this week was even more special..
This Thursday I had my first lab session! Wow! I can't believe that I'm saying that - inspite of it contributing to 10% of my final score!!! I, who used to think labs were 2 periods of fun till my 10th; I, who dreaded practicals in my 11th and 12th!
I guess it was the exciting aspect of doing an experiment all by yourself...Till today, I have never experimented' on my own. I did give my practical exams for my boards alone! But it was not the first time I did the lab you see... So this time, even though I was experimenting on signals - after all a stimulation experiment - which involved no equipment as such, just software - I realized what 'experimentation' 'observations' and 'conclusions' meant!
I studied signals - their waveforms and spectra. Periodic, aperiodic, sampling, A to D conversion ,what aliasing meant and retrieval of the original signal from the digitized one. I really learnt these by observing the waveforms, studying the patterns, inputing different numbers and equations and reaching my conclusions. It was very very exciting. All signals - speech, sight, eeg, ecg which I've learnt about are studied in this manner - and then their traits are altered and modified to suit our needs. Like burning a music CD - what actually happens to the voice signal? What happens once it is digitized? How do we retrieve the original signal?
Ultimately, I still don't know if all my observations and conclusions are correct! I don't know if I'll get my full 10% for the experiment! But I do know that I learnt a lot. If anyone asks me today about spectra, waveforms, A to D conversion and vice versa, I'll be able to tackle the questions confidently. That's what education is all about - knowledge. And you truly learn only by doing.

I ultimately got 9.5/10 for it!!