My final exams for this semester started today, and the first exam, Software Engineering went well!  I'm quite happy about it, and I will talk about that a little later.

This set of exams is going to be a bit different from all the exams I have been writing these past years in Engineering.  This time, the University has come up with a scheme they call EDEP (Electronic Distribution of Examination Papers).  The conventional method of sending printed question papers to all the colleges on the day of the exam is over - now things are more hi-tech!  The details of all this is available at the JNTU website.  But in short, this is what it means.  The University prepares four question papers for each subject, and all these papers are sent to various colleges on a CD in encrypted form.  One hour before the exam starts, they'll send the password to decrypt them, to the colleges, then the colleges have to print out the question papers and give them to the students.

As a result of the new system, not everyone gets the same question paper!  Depending on the seating arrangement, you get either paper 1, 2, 3 or 4.  The problem is, that the questions in these papers are not of uniform difficulty!!  Someone might get a paper that's dead simple, some will get a paper that is very troublesome!  And also we are all supposed to be present in the college by 9:15 AM.

Now why I am relieved today is that inspite of all this, things went smoothly.  I had to get up at 6 AM today (and I went to sleep at 2 AM), but there was no problem in going to the college.  And I'm the second person seated in my room (my roll number is 2), so I will get the Paper numbered 2 always.  And paper 2 today happened to be an easy one compared to the "deadly" paper 3 and 4.  So I'm happy!

Anyway I hope I'm lucky in the other five subjects too, and I hope I get good marks.  You see, no matter how you think you did in the exam, you can never predict the marks.

Coming up next - Distributed Systems on 9th!