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Lauren’s Quotes #4

[9-18; 20-23] Two days after our anniversary, I got a really bad test score back, an 83.41, in fluid dynamics. And I thought I had done really well on that exam, so ah, because that sucks.

[188-199; 202-207] I think it’s an off semester for fluid dynamics, but it was still pretty big. We took over, not like one of the larger lecture halls in class, but it was a big lecture hall. I’ve talked with the teacher a couple of times. On my second test, I had two points marked off that I just had the equation re-arranged than how the teacher had it, like instead of plus X on the left hand side, I had minus X on the right hand side. When I went to go get points back, he was like, we can talk the rest of this over and see if there are any other mistakes. So, I ended up getting four points back instead of just the two I went in there expecting, which was pretty nice. He’s a really good teacher. And he really likes what he teaches, but his test have curve balls that come out of nowhere. But the class is really good. Well, he knows what he’s talking about. He’s not one of those teachers that’s like, uh. I don’t know, read the textbook. Because that’s always frustrating. Part of it is just he’s a really nice dude, and he gets really excited. I don’t know about you, but my favorite thing in the world is not how fast does water flow through the pipe in the sewer system, but he made it sound really interesting, and something that was worth learning

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Lauren’s Quotes #5

[237-242] Thermodynamics was the hardest class I have ever taken. The teacher is great. He’s like my favorite teacher this semester. However, he makes everything so hard and I swear, I spend more time doing homework and stuff for that class, than I do for all four of my other classes combined. I started studying for the exams three weeks before they happened, and I still did horrible on one. But I’m enjoying the class a bunch and I really like the teacher.

[244-246; 249-253; 259-262] Also, he announced today in the last day of classes, that he was switching from being an ME teacher to chemical engineering teacher. So, I’m sort of disappointed I’m not going to have more classes with him. I mean, his class is super hard, but I can say that everyone who hasn’t quit has learned a whole bunch. I definitely know a whole bunch more now that I’ve been through that class than I ever thought I would ever know about anything thermo dynamics. And he covers a whole bunch in such a little period of time which is probably why everything is so hard on the test and stuff. We do a bunch of example problems in the class. He does a lot of proofs for the equations and stuff that we use. And just in general, the homework may have something that we didn’t explicitly talk about in class, but it helps us understand how that thing is because we have to work through it.

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Lauren’s Quotes #6

[274-277; 282-290] This semester I also took a circuits class that’s required for my engineering major, and it was 100% project-based, so we would do some coding thing with what we already know and then turn in a short paper about it. Then move onto the next project. So, this semester is the first semester that they’ve structured the class as project-based. In the past, it’s been a class that’s learning how to solve circuit diagrams, which no one liked, so they’ve decided to revamp it. At the beginning of the semester, we had a couple of lectures, but for the most part, it was new projects. The first couple of projects we pulled from the instruction booklet. The booklet provides information on how you make a light blink and just really simple stuff like that. Then for a little bit, our TA was finding projects online for us to work on. Eventually, it was like, hey, look for your own projects online to work on.

[293-298; 301-311] A lot of the projects were super easy, and we finished them in less than a class period. For example, the blinking lights was pretty easy, and then as we went through the semester, the projects got harder. The last project we completed took a bunch more effort, but it was also our final project and we had to do a presentation on it. As far as the final project, we were told to pick our own project. My group and I decided to find something that’s not simple like plug in a light and turn it on with a button. Instead, we found an automatic watering device online that waters plants automatically, but the code was a bit buggy. And the class didn’t like to teach us to code with what we already know. It was more, here’s how you wire stuff, but we had a bunch of trouble with debugging the code. Debugging the code was hardest part about the project. The presentations are pretty easy, it was two to three minutes per group, because we have a bunch of groups. And you just went up there, and you’re like, hey, automatic watering system. Here’s a video of how it works.

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Lauren’s Quotes #7

[88-89; 128-134] In addition to coursework, I am an undergraduate researcher working with a professor who studies Nano-materials. The Professor is like my boss, I guess. He’s a dude who runs the whole lab, and he tells us like, hey, we’re going to work on this project, or we’re going to work on that project. But he was one of the people who went up to the national lab to do the measurements. In general, he’s the one that knows most of what he’s doing at the lab, because he’s actually a doctor. He’s actually got a doctorate. So yeah, he knows a bunch of stuff about magnetism and Nano-materials.

[96-103; 112-125] When I first started on the project, I read textbooks to try and understand what magnetism is and stuff, but since then, I’ve been working in the lab more, because the professor let me know that I understood the material good enough. Most of my role as a research assistant involves running simulations on my computer, just part of why getting a new computer was really great. Lately, I’ve been using a program called Riffle 1D that takes reflectometry data. We’re doing neutron scattering, so we’re bouncing a neutron off of a sample, and then seeing what it looks like on the other side. And that’ll get measurements from the depth of it and how far apart the things are on the sample. So, once we get the data from the reflectometry, we put it into Riffle 1D, and then we have a code that says which things will have a layer of silicon and then a layer of gadolinium and a layer of other elements. And eventually we’ll it with air at the very end. Riffle 1D does is it changes the parameters for the thing, so we’ll be like, hey, we think the silicon is an instrum tall. And then Riffle 1D will be like, hey, to make it match the reflectometry data, the silicon got to be like two instrums tall. But if what we put in originally doesn’t work with the data at all, I go through and I change it to try and see if I can get it to work at all. Yeah.

[431-433; 435-439] This research opportunity led to me receiving an internship offer to work at the national lab. The professor I work with in the lab mentioned how there was an internship at the national lab we collaborate with, the place he did the measurements, for experiments. He encouraged me to apply for the internship. I said, okay, I’ll do that. And so, I applied for it. And I got the job, the internship, the job, I’m going to be working on the same project that I’m doing here. So, I’m going to be doing it at the National lab, so I’ll be able to do some actual measurements, and not just do stuff on the computer.

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Lauren’s Quotes #8

[82-87; 112-118] This summer I spent a lot of time in a state in the mid-Atlantic during my internship. The internship was at a national research laboratory. It was a 12-week program where you go and you mentor underneath one of the researchers there. You work on one project over the summer. Because of my placement, I got to shoot neutron rays at these samples and see what happened to them. I got to analyze that, and it was really awesome and really cool. The people I worked were also amazing.

[163-169] Originally when I went in, I was scared of everyone including my mentor over the summer, even though I had previously talked with him. But I had never seen him face-to-face. I was like, “Oh, my god. These people are so smart and I’m going to say something dumb and they’re going to kick me out.” I mean they wouldn’t kick me out, but you get sort of terrified of that when you go into a situation like that in my opinion. But even if I asked the same question three times, they always explained it to me, which was really comforting.

[170-175] But just watching them be able to do their work, it was amazing. Even if I was helping out, it was crazy seeing how much more they could do. Originally I thought I wanted to go into industry, but just seeing how cool all of the research is, even not just this project I was on, but the projects my friends were working on, and the other projects my mentor was working on, it was amazing hearing everything about it. Just like they were all so smart and it was amazing.

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Lauren’s Quotes #9

[522-530] My internship was also mostly scary because one, I had never been to the state before. Two, I didn’t have my car, so I walked to work and eventually got a ride from one of my coworkers. I was scared that they would look down on me, too. Sometimes, I don’t often have a country accent, but sometimes I have a Southern accent. At one point someone pointed out that I say “iron” weird. I-R-O-N. I was also sort of scared that they would see me as dumb just because sometimes I have a Southern accent because I grew up in the South. I didn’t want to look stupid is basically the whole point. But I was scared. I just didn’t want to be stupid.

[183-192] I’m not a biology person, but half of my peers studied biology or stuff like that. And half of us were assigned to physics-based projects, which is what I was on. Even with talking with the biology-ish people about their projects, we were able to help them out like, “Hey, did you think to do this?” They would put forth good input when we were talking about problems with our projects. I still talk with them even though they’re all over the US now. We’re not together, but we still talk to each other. We have a group chat. Someone the other day posted a picture and was like, “Hey, we did this.” Because they had learned about something we had done in their class.

[197-207] At the laboratory, we all did experiments with neutrons. We all had either reflectometry or SANS, which is Small Angle Neutron Scattering data. There are certain ways that you can look at the data. I was looking at data for magnetism stuff mostly. I had learned some tips or tricks with maybe the small square to get it to show the magnetism data. One of my friends would be like, “Hi, I don’t understand what this is.” And I would be like, “Hey, that looks like the [inaudible 00:16:11] from my data. Let’s click here and see what happens.” Or sometimes it was just like, “Hey, did you think to rotate the sample?” If you hadn’t rotated it and you were wondering why you couldn’t see anything, sometimes it would just be there was a commonsense thing. Just you didn’t think of that approach.

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Lauren’s Quotes #10

[96-99] Then at the end of the internship, we had a really huge presentation. Getting ready for the presentation was absolutely terrifying, but I was still having a lot of fun working on it.

[211-217] For the presentation, we first had to write up I think a 300-word abstract. I remember everyone, at least in the room I was in, we all wrote up our abstracts and sent it to each other on Google Docs. We went through and we edited each other’s abstract. Someone would realize that you had a grammar error, and someone would be like, “This isn’t what the definition of this word is.” We all went through and we tried to make each other’s abstracts as good as they could be.

[218-224] Then the presentations, they were PowerPoint presentations. We, at least in the room I was in, we practiced our presentations with each other. While we were making the presentations, I could lean over to the person next to me and be like, “Hey, how does this look?” And they’d be like, “Hey, you need to move the picture. It’s too big.” Or something like that. We were just trying to make sure that everyone’s looked as good as it could, so we would all look good because we would all have amazing presentations.

[225-228] Then, when we were practicing our presentations, they would help with being like, “Hey, I don’t understand what this is. You need to explain this more.” Or, “Hey, you’re going way too fast. Breathe. Slow down. You have 15 minutes and you need to fill it.” We just supported each other.

[153-157] It was only that project that I did my presentation over. There were a bunch of scientists and people there watching and that’s what was so stressful because they were all really smart people with doctorates, or they were post-docs and stuff like that.

[514-521; 99] During my presentation, I was terrified that they would ask me a simple question and I would completely blank out. They may ask what’s a cell? And I’ll be like, “Oh, my god. What is a cell?” I was just sort of terrified of forgetting something simple and fundamental and looking like an idiot in front of all of these professional people. I wasn’t so scared that they would ask me a really complicated, in-depth question that I would forget. I felt like you would be more excused if you’re like, “Yeah, sorry. I’m an undergrad. I don’t know.” But I was just scared I would forget something simple. There was relief after the presentation. Ah, it’s done.

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Lauren’s Quotes #11

[590-594] Overall, my experience at the research laboratory and experiencing the research made me want to do research more in life before I went there. I definitely have been considering doing research for a job. Designing something… designing it, researching it, testing it, writing a paper on it. That’s more of what I want to do now. It was so enjoyable.

[584-587] It was less engineering at the research laboratory than more research. Yeah, sure people had engineering degrees, but they were doing science and research. I don’t feel like I earned an engineering star and a pat on the back. It’s more like a research star and a pat on the back.

[232-237] However, transitioning back to school was miserable because I had three days between when I finished my internship to move into my apartment. Then school started. It was just stressful trying to get all of my furniture moved in, and then unpacked and everything cleaned. And making sure I had paper and pencils and stuff for school. There just wasn’t enough time. If I had had a couple more days, it wouldn’t have been as miserable.

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Lauren’s Quotes #12

[242-249] This semester I am taking 15 hours. I have four classes Monday, Wednesday, Friday. One class on Tuesday. A lecture and a lab on Thursdays. Both of those two really bad weeks, the four classes I have Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they all have a big thing happening. My classes are Mechanisms, Numerical Analysis, System Dynamics, and Manufacturing CAD class.

[256-264] The first one, it was three tests and one project. My Mechanisms, System Dynamics, and Manufacturing and Auto Disc classes, they all had a test. Then also my Manufacturing and CAD class had also had a project due on that same week. The teacher had planned it so that the one class that had both the test and a project. The test was on Monday and the project was on Friday. There was plenty of time between the two, because it wasn’t a huge project. But it was still a lot in one week. But the other classes, one of the tests was on Wednesday and one of them was on Monday. I mean it wasn’t all due in one day, but it was still really sucky that you had four things due in one week.

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Lauren’s Quotes #13

[296-304] The mechanisms professor doesn’t really do examples. He’ll go through it and prove it and then he’ll stop and say, “All right, find the equation in the textbook. I’m not going to do anything else.” He’ll just stop and tell us to look in the textbook. It’s like we constantly have to be pulling out our phones to pull up the textbook so that we can get that equation that we need to be able to solve problems. Because he just decides that he doesn’t want to give it to us. Even though a lot of times we have time at the end of class for him to write it down or tell it to us. So, he’ll release us early, like five or 10 minutes early a lot of times. But he just doesn’t consider that it’s worth his time to tell us the equations we need apparently.

[307-310] He’ll get right up to the step before you write down the equation, maybe say you’re trying to prove that C equals the square root of A squared plus B squared for a triangle. He’ll write down C squared equals A squared plus B squared. But he won’t give you that last step that you need.

[314-319] I typically already have the textbook pages that we need pulled up on my phone. As he’s going through his proofs, I’m scrolling through the pages so that I can make sure I’m getting everything written down as he tells us that we need it. And then besides that, I make sure I go through example problems that have stepped worked out, all of the steps worked out, so that I can know how to apply it if he skips over that stuff.

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