I remember back at university during MS. I enrolled on the course Coding and Information Theory from the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute but I was not part of that institute because I was from the Computer Science department.

My MS adviser, I call him Einstein because of his hair. He just wore sandals, sometime long pants jeans but usually he just wore a cargo jean pants with an old T-shirt. He asked me why I would enroll on Coding and Information Theory. I said the field is part of the Theoretical Computer Science track but the department has never offered one so why not take it from the Engineering institute. He agreed but he never told me a cultural secret that there is a competition between the engineering institute and computer science department which I think is triggered by grants that is why some projects that are electrical and electronics engineering in nature ends up in the computer science department and some projects that are computer science in nature ends up in the electrical and electronics engineering institute.

The consequence is that because I was the only MS Computer Science student among the MSEE and MEng EE in the class, I was isolated. For instance, there was this problem on Galois Fields and we had a machine problem to solve. The groupings were 6 to 8 individuals but no group took me in. I was alone. I was isolated. Worst, they all know how to use Matlab and I don't so what I did is use Java to solve the machine problem. It took each group an average of 8 hours to solve the problem with 6 to 8 people per group, I managed to solve the problem in 5 days alone. They use Matlab where things such as polynomials are already models that can be used, while in Java I have to construct ideas from scratch even before I can manipulate the polynomials.

It was a very interesting course as I've learned a lot of things about Shannon's information Theory where information gets corrupted in a channel as information travels from point A to point B. Hence you can't send information from spacecraft that landed in Mars back to Earth without having some form of error correction to enable preservation or retrieval of the original information from the corrupted data.

We also discussed the use of entropy along the way in measuring how far each information say a bit or a character deviated from its original during receipt.

Another problem there was that at some point I went to enroll while in military uniform and because of the long queue, I had to rush from camp to the university without changing to civilian attire and due to that naïve action, I was identified and curious enough, the instructor on that course didn't gave me considerations specially during the Ondoy Flood disaster where I missed the final exams because I was deployed for relief operations.

The start of the relief operations fell on the same day as the final exam schedule and I was deployed with our unit to clear the roads of thick muds at San Mateo in Rizal. We started plowing thru with our shovel along the highway because no vehicle can pass thru, even the military vehicles carrying relief supplies. We been clearing the roads from afternoon up to 0400H next morning under heavy rains and we only stopped when a heavy machinery came thru and started clearing roads. It didn't end there, we were then deployed to Marikina to help clear the debris again so that relief vehicles can pass thru.

I reached out to my instructor, but even after explaining that I was in active service and was called for the Ondoy Disaster to help on the relief operations, that instructor didn't give me a chance for the final exam.

Turns out I still passed that course even without a final exam. The grade was initially incomplete, but later on 2.75 was given to me. After many years I took requested another TOR but the change was surprising, it went down to 3.0 🤣. I think the university lost the updates that was submitted in the grading system late which is supposed to be 2.75 on record but the system somehow after loosing track default to 3.0. I have the receipts from my old TOR to the recent copy both original from the university.

Imagine if I was given the chance to take the final exam, the grade would be much higher, maybe around 2.25 or even 2.0.

I am not really sure if the situation was a result of the culture differences and competition between the Electrical and Electronics Engineering institute and the Computer Science department or it is because I was being singled out after I was identified as a military personnel. Communist subversive materials have been found circulating the Electrical and Electronics Engineering institute although that is not the case in the Computer Science department.