moving into the second half of this degree programme creates a glimmer that tells you the end is visible, just not there yet. in tradition, my learning points are as follows:

• working all-nighters continue to present a dilemma where it is poor time management practice, but there is much efficiency in last-minute work and nothing can quite beat the high of a 4am epiphany.
• spend less time in experiments focusing on getting theoretically-correct results and more on hypothesising the causes behind actual results instead.
• the generalisation that industry professionals know their stuff is highly flawed; many have been living in a hole for far too long and their ignorance of reality is astounding.
• understanding expectations is hard work; students continually attempt to be psychologists in analysing what professors actually want to see.
• abstractions are dangerous; they should be created if and only if users will never need to understand the underlying complexity. unravelling the deep mysteries only make abstractions even more complex. (in english: don’t try too hard simplifying things, sometimes understanding the difficult parts is necessary)
• mentorship is a game of passive facilitation that attempts to elicit behaviour which promotes self-learning; spoonfeeding advice and active intervention have little value.

all said and done, here are the corresponding results for the eyes of the privileged few: