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Tchuck’s Quotes #13

[246-255] So, occasionally, because you also have the option to raise your hand like a normal classroom, except, no one wants to volunteer. Because, if you volunteer, you’re basically forcing yourself to have this in-depth debate with him of which, he’s probably going to end up inevitably asking you a question that you won’t understand. So, therefore, it discourages a little bit. If I know 100% that I know the answer, someone else is struggling, maybe I’ll help them. But I also know that if I do that, he’s going to hit me with another question right after, and I don’t know what that question is going to be. So, but, yeah. It really doesn’t encourage I guess, group discussion to be honest. I mean, he obviously does get a lot of us individually because we have talked to him because he calls on us. But, yeah.

[608-627] I mean biomaterials obviously, like I said, it was all open ended. I didn’t feel overly confident going into it because I knew it was going really hard even though I did study. But then afterwards, yet with all the open ended, I wasn’t feeling […] I mean, to be honest I felt I did okay. I actually ended up doing worse than I thought, which is also why it made me dip a little bit lower. But, yeah. In terms of dealing with that, I don’t know. I mean, for me personally at least, it definitely was a low, but it also was more so a low for that type of day, I guess. Because I also don’t to try and dwell on things because, obviously it’s not beneficial. Especially one that I […] Okay. So, I took the exam, I don’t know what I actually got. Could I get a 100, sure there’s still a shot. Did I? No. But […] So, my point is, I definitely did get upset about it and I wasn’t happy. But I’m, be able to get over that type of stuff relatively quickly. And just move on. And, like I said, especially when I got the grade back, but even prior to that, I was like, “Okay, well … Like I said, he bases his grading more so on effort so I got to make sure that I put up this effort. I got to make sure I email him a bunch of times and stuff. So, he actually sees that I’m putting forth the effort because I am putting forth ever. I’m watching lectures and taking all these notes, but he’s not watching me, watch his lectures or looking at my notes that I’m taking, he’s just basically going off, if you email him, which he keeps stressing, he wants people to email him. However, I really just haven’t had that many questions or reasons to email him.

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Tchuck’s Quotes #14

[259-277] So, the biostatistics professor, he’s pretty solid. He gets really into it. I can definitely tell that he cares. He likes to make really bad dad jokes all the time. And I know that sounds stupid but, he just does it so often that it basically is a big staple of his classroom. And I think that it helps. I mean, no one really laughs, but he’ll just stand there awkwardly and then just let it hit and not land. But, yeah. He has basically long Google docs that he works off of, which I pull up on my computer while I’m also taking notes, which I think is helpful. And then, he’ll basically just go through and then he’ll do […] There’s example problems and he’ll do example problems and he’ll also talk and explain how to do stuff. And, I think that he does a good job. I also have already learned most of the material that he’s taught us so far this semester. So, it really wasn’t that difficult. It was literally, I don’t know, distribution, probability, stuff along those lines. Which like, I don’t know, I literally already did it all senior year. And I don’t remember all of it, but I remember decent amount. And also, you can do something in the calculator too, which I know how to do. So, yeah. Overall, that class really isn’t that bad. I think he’s a good teacher. The way that he’s setting up the rest of his semester is, he’s switching it to now, the entire semester is based off of the […] He’s assigning us to four assignments. This is all because of the Coronavirus stuff.

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Tchuck’s Quotes #15

[291-302] I think that he does care. I do personally think that I like the way that he teaches. Because, I think that, basically he just throws an example. So, he’ll go in-depth explaining a little bit why do think that it’s needed? He uses examples that I think are applicable. For instance, for probability example, he uses Sixers players, 76ers players, which, I personally found interesting. I don’t know about everyone else in the class. And then he also specifically tries to, for most of the problems, because that Sixers don’t, he’ll mostly find a random one. For most part, he does it, like involving biomedical stuff. So, I don’t know.  Whether it’d be, devices, probably it’d be getting cancer, any little thing that involves it, he does try to throw it in there, which I also think is good. Because obviously that’s why it’s called biomedical statistics or whatever. But I think because, especially with statistics class, because there’s nothing super specific for biomedical.

[306-358] So, the biomedical devices and systems class is a mess. It’s his first […] So, the guy that’s teaching it, from what I’ve heard, he basically runs the ECE department, which is electrical engineering at my institution. And the ECE department is run really well. They have a hundred percent placement rating after graduating. Ridiculous. And he supposedly runs it. But now, he’s teaching this class for the first time, and I don’t know if he’s ever taught a class ever. And it just a whole ass mess because, for one, his homework policy is that, the homework’s not due until […] Well, he has a due date that, when you’re tentatively supposed to hand in, so you hand it in. So, it’s not due until he hands back people’s grades. He hasn’t handed back any homework the entire semester. I’ve only done the first two homework assignments. I think there’s been four or five because he hasn’t graded any of them yet. And I also heard that apparently one year, he literally just didn’t grade any whatsoever. Like at all. It was for a different class but […] And then, we tried to do a lab because we’re in an ECE lab setting where it has a bunch of, I don’t even know what the devices are called to be honest, but a bunch of, basically devices where … I know the one thing that we did was a wave simulator. So, we did Stein leaves and stuff. And, he basically tried to have this lab on one […] It was supposed to be a lab for one day, he just had to use it and then do this lab and his instructions were so bad. A lot of the devices were different, which he didn’t account for. He didn’t do a good job explaining the paper itself, the hand-out that he gave us wasn’t very clear. The only way that we were somehow able to get through it is because there were seniors in that class that were already ECEs. So, everything that we’re doing in the class was still pretty easy for them because they already had gone through it. Whereas also us as BMEs, we’re looking at this and like, “I really don’t know 100% what he’s talking about sometimes.” But, basically, they went around helping us with the lab. We still never even got real data from the lab. He mentioned I think once or twice about writing our lab report, there’s literally one line at the end of the document that said to write a lab report for it. Without that, no one has any data. Let’s see. He had an exam […] Oh, I forgot to include that exam because it was literally such a joke because it was a take home exam. And literally, everyone worked together on it basically. And it was a joke and also some even got a grade back on that. So, I was completely fried about that. That’s how much of a joke his class had been. Also, the school issued a mandated thing that, we’re supposed to hear from all our teachers by Wednesday, which was yesterday. Well, in terms of what they’re going to do for our class and stuff considering we are transitioning online. And I’ve also gotten emails from, I think all my other professors, besides him. Even before this, just at least saying something, he hasn’t emailed anything at all. So, I have no clue what this class is going to do. I have no clue what we’re doing now that this happened. And, this class, I really […] Yeah, I don’t know. I can’t really describe it much better than it’s an entire mess. And I think the whole idea like he tries to teach us during class. He’ll basically just go on rants about I think stuff that he finds interesting that is also probably semi relative to the curriculum. However, I still don’t even really know what the curriculum is supposed to be specifically for this. Because, he will go talk about, some systems and devices and he’ll also hand us out diagrams of complex ass circuitry stuff. And we’re like, “Yeah, well, we don’t know what the hell this is.” And he’s taught us some stuff, I know he’s talked about capacitors and types of filters and stuff along those lines, but for a majority of it, a lot of it goes over our head. And we try and ask them questions, but also, to be honest, I’m not even going to lie, the feeling that I get as a class is people are starting to give up on him, which obviously, it’s bad. And he’s also doesn’t seem like he’s putting that much effort in either. So, if no one is putting in effort and then nothing’s going to get done. And, in my opinion, that’s what I’ve seen happening. It’s pretty sad. I’m just being completely honest.

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Tchuck’s Quotes #16

[363-385] So, he actually has this policy, but this is the one thing that I’ll give him credit for. He handed out a note cards and his idea is he wants you to have […] I don’t even know how it works, 100%, because I don’t personally do it and I don’t really know if anyone else utilize it at all. But, you write on the index part, I’m not sure we’re supposed to put it. But then you just ask him a question on the next card and in case you guys don’t want to ask him in class, basically. And then he’s going to address the next class, which I think is good idea. I think people utilize it maybe once or twice because he would say, “Okay, in this card I got asked, here’s the answer.” Because he would tell everyone, “Because obviously, if one person is thinking it, maybe multiple people are thinking it and the person just didn’t want to ask in class. Fine. I agree with that.” My point being no one utilizes it now. And some people ask questions in class and the number has just consistently dwindled and dwindled as the semester goes by. Not to mention the fact that, when you ask a question, he’ll try to explain it, but he also doesn’t necessarily explain in the best way. And I also think that, he isn’t acknowledging the lack of understanding in stuff that we’ve learned as biomedical engineers. Because obviously, there’s the senior who literally already know everything. But then, besides literally those four or five seniors, the rest of us are all junior biomedical engineering students. And I know everyone else in my class because I had all classes the last semester. So, I’m on the same boat as them because, the only other experience we really had in terms of circuitry and stuff, was our efounds, was our electrical foundation class the last semester, which, also wasn’t that good and did not prepare us very well at all. So, between that and then this guy also just not managing it well, it’s just been a very bad foundation.

[388-405] The guy for electrical foundations, he, I don’t know. Again, I’m going to say he wasn’t a good teacher. I mean, he’s helped with the ascent which I’m not going to fault him for, but it did make things a little bit harder. And then, not to mention the fact that, he would also basically just come in and just, write literally pretty big circuits on the board and then just go through the problems. Which again, I’m not going to say that that’s not the worst way to go do circuits basically it’s you just actually, go do them. But that’s basically all that he did for the most part. And also, we would literally spend a lot of time writing down the circuits and not be able to listen to them or not be able to follow what he’s doing. So, we’d be trailing behind him the whole time. And we told him this because he actually had a mid-semester evaluation. So, some guy came in, he left the room, he asks us these questions, whatever. We all spoke honestly, everyone ripped into him a little bit and then, he really didn’t change at all after that still, for the most part. He mentioned, I think, not even the class after that, but two class after that. He brought it up a little bit at the beginning of class, and then, he didn’t really change much of the structure though, which is a little frustrating.  But, yeah. That’s why I feel I don’t necessarily have as good of a basis in, I guess, circuitry as I could have.

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Tchuck’s Quotes #17

[678-685; 76-80] Overall, the study groups really helped me in terms of the couple of hot points that were my exam grades. So, that was good. I mean, yeah. I will say that, not even group, just friends in general definitely helps with the hot points I would say. Just, find people and talk to people. My roommate and me talk about stuff all the time because we’re literally there, 24/7, which also is just another big change in how kids […] Now I’m home and I’m around my whole family, which is great, although and sometimes it’s not. But, it’s just a completely different, again, environment situation. So, just got adapt a little bit. However, I think not being on campus is definitely going to hinder me because I do think that being on campus, especially with my roommate that was an engineer, as well as being around other engineers all the time, definitely helped me navigate engineering

[643-667] Now that I’m home, fortunately, one of my friends, he’s my friend from high school that’s also doing biomedical engineering, who I also have all my classes with this semester still, he lives like, five, 10 minutes away. So, maybe not necessarily now because all the shit is going on, but relatively in the future maybe we can get together and work on stuff. There’s also plenty of people that I can just FaceTime or text and stuff and basically get help with or help out or just talk to. Because, again, I think that’s the biggest difference because I think that, I will still be able to stay on top of my work. I’ll have literally nothing to do. I won’t even be able to leave the house. So, obviously, I’m going to be on top of all my work.   I think that just the biggest thing is probably the, not the social, but I guess the, study groups thing. I do think that genuinely helped a lot. And also one of the things that we’d figured out for orgo would be we all take the quiz together, because, the way that it works is, when someone’s missed it, then you get all the answers for the quiz. So then, you have to game the system a little bit. There’s just a lot of little things and, I’m just being completely honest with you because, if you’re going to give us that situation, we’re all smart kids, we’re all going to take turns, we’re all eat the one […] We don’t even do bad when one person does that, because we all worked together on the problem. We’re still all doing the quiz, we’re just doing it all together so that way it doesn’t affect our grade. When, okay, so we all got four questions wrong, but guess what? We all could have gotten them right if one person is submits it. And like, “Okay, I’d rather have the grade boost and I’ll eat the one week you eat the next week, whatever.” We’re still learning on the material. But, yeah. I think other people are also trying to set up that type of stuff again too. So, I do think a lot of it’s just going to be trying to still, consistently do what we were doing, just obviously, adapting to the new situation that we’re in now.

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Tchuck’s Quotes #18

 [909-922] This summer I’m not doing anything, as of right now.  Ideally, I’d like to get an internship. I got on a phone interview with someone but, I don’t know. From what he told me, he said that, I seem too technical because, I think the specific position was for, basically, I don’t know. To put it really, really simply, like ordering types of drugs. But, it also had to do a little bit with getting with the manufacturer and looking at prices and stuff. A little bit more to the business side of things of which he said that, my background was a little bit too technical, he thought probably. So, then I didn’t end up getting that one. And then, I applied to a bunch, I think Kenmore’s I got a call back from them. But then, again, nothing happened there either. So, yeah. It’s been a little bit of a frustrating process, but I’m still working on it right now. Don’t know if anything’s going to end up happening. Don’t really want to go back to the warehouse this summer though, so maybe I can find something else, but we’ll see.

[519-541] Once I graduate, I’m considering graduate school. I’m literally talking to my professor tomorrow, because I have to pick my classes on Monday for next semester and, I have to figure out what I’m doing. Because basically there’s a 5-in-1 and one program offered at my institution. And so, there’s two different versions of it as well. There’s one with research which I would continue take or I have to take clinic my senior year no matter what. But then I would continue doing whatever we should have been doing in clinic, my year after that. And then have a thesis at the end of that. And then I’d get a masters in biomedical engineering or there’s a track that’s not research. I would still have to do the senior year of research, but then, the year after that I wouldn’t do any more research and I would just take graduate classes. And then it would count as a master’s in engineering with a specification in biomedical engineering. That’s just what the degree is called. The one that doesn’t require research, I don’t have to apply to and I probably could just do if I wanted to. And then the other one I do have to apply to, but I was already talking to my professor and she seems all for […] Recommended me for it. And I would probably be able to do it. It just a matter of whether or not I want to do it, that’s the only issue.  Because I’m not sure how big of a fan I am of research because it definitely is frustrating. And it tests your patience a little bit. But I would also, like I told her, because in theory, I’m still going to take […] The way it would work is I would take graduate level courses next fall, next spring and then I think, that summer, fall and spring. And then that summer I would have to take classes so I could do it in the extra year. I’d have to take classes that summer and then, finish up like in fall and spring, with whatever on the class that I needed.

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Meet Anna

Anna is a white woman studying electrical engineering at a northeastern institution. She attended alternative primary and middle schools that did not expose her much to science, math, or engineering as a child, but for high school, she switched enrollment into a competitive science and technology high school. In addition to exposing her to a number of high-level science classes, Anna participated in novel design and research projects and was particularly interested in systems engineering. As a college student, Anna spent her freshman year focused mainly on her general courses, but did have time for an engineering design class where she helped build Rube Goldberg machines and robots. After looking at the curriculum for each major and reading descriptions of the classes, she was drawn to the electromagnetism, computer architecture, and digital logic design classes, and decided to major in electrical engineering.

I saw classes like electricity and magnetism in my college curriculum was like, I want to study engineering because that’s where science and design and math and technology all meet up. I feel like it’s such a varied field you can do whatever you want with it.

From Anna’s first interview.

The image below is a journey map that Anna created summarizing some of the highs and lows from her second year as an engineering student.

Anna’s second-semester, second-year journey map.

Want to learn more about Anna’s journey? Check out her tag here (or by clicking the ‘Anna’ tag below) to see quotes from her interviews over the years.

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Anna’s Family & Childhood

[16-22; 23-26] From kindergarten until middle school I went an alternative school which had 40 kids in it total,  grouped by rough age groups and the school was project-based learning so instead of sitting down teaching us ABCs, numbers, counting, they gave us a project, assembled us into rough groups of kids of different ages and told us to go. It was very loose, not formal at all. I didn’t learn much academic knowledge from that time, but I did learn really well how to work with other people, how to be a part of a team, how to sort of self-direct and do what I wanted to do. I spent a lot of time reading. I spent a lot of time playing with LEGOs. I got really good making friendship bracelets. I had a lot of fun and then in 5th grade, my parents started getting worried about me academically being able to make it in the real world, so they sent me to a private middle school which was very academically focused.

[27-32] Before I transitioned to middle school, I learned six years of math in two weeks. This school required uniforms, homework, quizzes, tests up the wazoo. If I got a grade less than a 95 my parents would sit down with me and have a talk, “What are you doing? What’s wrong? How can we fix this?” So, I went from having no academic structure to an academic institution that was very structured. This exposure to a highly structured academic program, prepared me to go to a ‘public’ vocational high school but I had to apply to get in.

[49-56; 57-67; 78-80] I attended a high school that had a structured curriculum centered on science and technology. It is one of the top 15 high schools in the northeast. There weren’t a lot of options for electives or classes. All of the science classes that we took were marine science classes, including one technology class each year.  For example, my freshman year I took technical writing and my sophomore year I took AutoCAD. Also, during my senior year I took a research class in which I participated in a year-long research study that hasn’t actually been done before and will be published shortly about Microplastics on the ‘east’ coast and that was an amazing class. My teacher treated me like an adult, a scientist, I was responsible for my own deadlines and due dates, and her attitude towards the class and towards my responsibilities in that class really made me want to work hard for it. I really latched on to some of the better teachers which did lead me towards engineering because they staffed really good teachers for my systems engineering class, that was so much fun. In that class we did a bunch of hands-on engineering projects, we built a Balsa bridge. We made a Rube Goldberg machine which didn’t work but it was a lot of fun to do. We made that fishing lure, I still have the website which I documented my results on and a bunch of other smaller projects and concepts about system balances and, I don’t know, engineering design. The curriculum of my high school also tried to incorporate these kinds of projects into other classes. In my physics class, we made a physical model of a ‘northeast barrier’, it has sort of a trench in it and we used sound to map it.

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Anna on Choosing Engineering

[42-45; 239-248; 258-260; 263-269] Retrospectively, I think that it has been worth it because it’s made me a lot more adaptable and it made coming to college actually really easy because I already knew what it was like to start out with no friends, no one, to have to adapt to a completely different set of rules and standards and to just go from the start. For example, since my high school focused on science and technology, I really had that opportunity to sort of become a scientist but what I realized when working senior year on my research project is that scientist spend their whole lives delving into a problem, laying it out, describing it, but they don’t solve it at all and I don’t think I would be able to live such big issues on my shoulders that I could do nothing about. I feel like engineering is related to science in that you use science to solve problems. I absolutely live for the moment where you solve the problem. I couldn’t do that with such pressing matters like microplastics, oh my gosh, it’s absolutely crushing to have to think about that sort of stuff all the time. Although my mom still thinks that I should be a scientist, it’s just not for me although I really do value the experience of being able to try it out. She has made it very clear that she sort of sees me more as the scientist type then the engineer type. She also doesn’t love that I’m in a career that’s mostly men, but I don’t really care about that because anything they can do I can better. She really pushed me to be the best I could and be as creative as I could. I think she’s definitely the one who made me a bit of a perfectionist. As for other influential people in my life, definitely my senior research teacher. The best teacher I’ve ever had, really an amazing woman.

[101-108; 92-93] In high school, I also took a AP Physics course which was centered around electricity and magnetism and for the first half the year we learned about electricity and the second magnetism and then at the very last minute, like three weeks before the end of the year my physics teacher started teaching us about light and how it’s where electricity and magnetism come together and that’s the moment that it clicked for me and physics sort of fell into place and I had that brilliant aha moment. It made me really feel like an expert and I saw classes like electricity and magnetism in my college curriculum was like, I want to study engineering because that’s where science and design and math and technology all meet up. I feel like it’s such a varied field you can do whatever you want with it.

[93-94; 94-98; 195; 207-211] At the end of my freshman year, I decided to declare my major as electrical engineering. I looked at the curriculums for each major. I read the descriptions of the classes and I felt pulled toward the more electromagnetism classes, along with courses focused on computer architecture and digital logic design.  I still don’t really know what I want to do as an Electrical Engineer. I have a lot of time to figure it out and develop that career path, but I really did like working with the hardware in front of me as I was trying to type out the software. I’m really hoping that my first co-op will give me sort of more insight into what there is out there because I don’t really know.  My first co-op starts in April at a steel mill and my first project is going to be I guess assembling, installing, and coding/setting up a robot arm which stamps steel-plates with their identification number.

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Anna’s Quotes #1

[116, 164-167; 168-181; 184-191] My freshman year I didn’t really take any electrical specific classes, instead I took general classes that seemed applicable to every other major such as English, Math, and Science. The only really exciting engineering part during freshman year was Engineering Design Lab. During the first term, we made a Rube Goldberg machine. I made the Rube Goldberg machine with my ex-roommate and ex-friends then I moved on to a better group and we made a LEGO robot that performed a series of specific tasks. The idea was you set the robot down in an arena and it went around and it picked up different canisters based on what color it was, it put it to different corners of the arena. During my last freshman term, I chose to do a self-directed project instead of a typical class where they give you all that instruction. So me and my two group members, who were also my group members for the robot, we chose a mentor who’s an assistant teaching professor at ‘northeast institution’.  We decided that we would be making a set of solar powered window blinds that raise themselves and lower themselves, powered by solar panels that are on the windows. One of my group members was responsible for the mechanical design of the gear system and the blinds and that ratio. My other team member was responsible for the solar panels and their integration into the circuit. I was responsible for the circuit, the controller, and programming the controller. During that project, I taught myself C++, which was very difficult but also a good thing to know. We just very barely got it to work by the end of the project when we were supposed to present it.

 

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