For my junior year, I decided it was time to focus on involvement in the engineering community here on campus. I took primarily classes from the Mechanical engineering department and joined the EcoCAR team. Although I don't have a particular interest in the automotive industry, I am interested in sustainability so this was a good opportunity to learn about how this is applied in the design process. And just in case I didn't have enough to do with full class loads and several EcoCAR meetings week, I also took on leadership in Phi Sigma Pi and led an Honors 100 cohort (see experiential learning for more details!). Even though I was pretty busy, I enjoyed what I was doing (at least 95% of the time). However, I didn't find the career path inspiration I was looking for as far as choosing a field of interest or particular class material I loved, though I was starting to lean towards energy or manufacturing. I accepted a summer internship at Roseburg Forest Products, a fairly large manufacturing company locating in southern Oregon, and headed down there as soon as finals finished. My time there was spent working with another intern on a project to design an outfeed system for a new plywood lathe so it was a lot of machine design and CAD. Ultimately, I liked the company's atmosphere but decided I prefer urban settings and don't have a desire to pursue forest products. The experience pushed me more towards energy, rather than manufacturing, but also gave me an interest in pursuing a something like project management so that I can apply the skills I have developed though my various leadership experiences.
Winter 2015
I had a love-hate relationship with this class. I was actually excited for the material, but there was a lot to cover so lectures were hard to follow and never interesting unless there was a video to watch. For the labs, the class was split into groups of 20 or so, which were them further divided into 2 or 3 person teams and we used the equipment in the machine shop to build a small Sterling Engine. It was nice to get hands-on, marketable experience although I don't intend to pursue a job where I will use these skills. Overall, this class left me confused about my career path. I had originally though that manufacturing could be an area of interest for me and had hoped this class would give me insight into how this would apply to an engineering job. After the class, not much had changed which was a bit disappointing.
I had a love-hate relationship with this class. I was actually excited for the material, but there was a lot to cover so lectures were hard to follow and never interesting unless there was a video to watch. For the labs, the class was split into groups of 20 or so, which were them further divided into 2 or 3 person teams and we used the equipment in the machine shop to build a small Sterling Engine. It was nice to get hands-on, marketable experience although I don't intend to pursue a job where I will use these skills. Overall, this class left me confused about my career path. I had originally though that manufacturing could be an area of interest for me and had hoped this class would give me insight into how this would apply to an engineering job. After the class, not much had changed which was a bit disappointing.
HCDE 231 - Technical Communication |
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Spring 2015
"Engineers need to be able to express their ideas." That's the core belief behind the technical writing requirement in the CoE. I completely agree. I've worked in groups where my peers struggle to write with proper sentences or any logical organization and it's extremely frustrating. I've also receive emails that are so poorly worded I can't figure out what I am supposed to do with the information. HCDE covers topics like these; unfortunately, there are also dozens of nit-picky details for students to pay attention to and ultimately the class is an exercise of jumping through hoops. That being said, I did enjoy a few of the assignments, such as the ethics presentation (my slides on the Mars One program are attached) and I gained some additional insight into my strengths and weakness in public speaking.
"Engineers need to be able to express their ideas." That's the core belief behind the technical writing requirement in the CoE. I completely agree. I've worked in groups where my peers struggle to write with proper sentences or any logical organization and it's extremely frustrating. I've also receive emails that are so poorly worded I can't figure out what I am supposed to do with the information. HCDE covers topics like these; unfortunately, there are also dozens of nit-picky details for students to pay attention to and ultimately the class is an exercise of jumping through hoops. That being said, I did enjoy a few of the assignments, such as the ethics presentation (my slides on the Mars One program are attached) and I gained some additional insight into my strengths and weakness in public speaking.