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amanda quotes

Amanda’s Quotes #19

[44-48] Then, for the ergonomics type of class, that classroom experience is similar to the intro to human factors course with PowerPoints but it’s more words on it and bullet points that she talks about every bullet point. So, ergonomics is much more possible to take notes and also when you’re going to study for the exams you have help from the PowerPoints which you don’t have in the introduction to human factors class because sometimes it can just be a picture.

[53-55] In the intro to human factors course, we’re sitting in a lecture with no interaction with my peers. It’s more interaction in the ergonomics class because sometimes you really can-do exercises like measuring each other with different tools so then there’s interactions.

[60-67] The peer interactions in the ergonomics course involve using different tools to measure different body parts. It can also be like chair evaluation. So, you can walk around the whole campus to find different chairs and then you write about it. You have a checklist and everything like comfortable or whether you can adjust it, or you cannot adjust it and everything. Then you come back to class and then we’re presenting all the results. So, with the measurements we are saying yes, as you can see, I’m taller which means I also have larger feet. With the chair you could say the ones in the library where you sit for a long time those are more comfortable leather ones in comparison to chairs outside the classroom where you’re maybe not sitting for so long a time.

[72-74] Then we have a paper where we’re writing everything on just like the results of the person or a chair. At the end of the class, we just hand the paper in to her and as long as you complete it you always get 100% on that assignment.

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Amanda’s Quotes #20

[84-91] Engineering economics was a class which I looked forward to for a very long time since like sophomore year. Then, I got into class and now unfortunately I don’t like it at all because it’s a lot of work in Excel. I do like Excel. It’s not that issue. It’s more that it can be a problem and he can show the problem very quickly and you barely have time to read it. Then he has already solved the problem in Excel so it’s just going over the numbers very quickly in Excel. The issue with that is to understand Excel you need to see what’s inside every box because every box has a formula. So, he’s not teaching us what formulas are used when. It’s here you get a number and here you get a different number. So, most of us don’t understand anything. So, the classroom experience for engineering economics is not great.

[96-100] The time spent in the economics classroom is mostly a waste of time. I mostly go there just because it’s required attendance, but I don’t learn anything even though I try to pay attention. Then we have some homeworks that’s due. I have people that have taken the class before, so they have been very helpful. Some of their homework can be similar so then I learn by looking at the example and can implement it to my question. That’s how I’m managing the class.

[228-236] I have always been very interested in economics. I’m thinking about doing an MBA on that. I always thought it was important to, especially if you’re going to start a company not only knowing the engineering part of it but also knowing the business part of it so you can actually sell it. I actually didn’t really know what to expect from the course. I just thought the name was fun because I like engineering and I like economics so I thought hey, this can be something useful if I start a company one day. I will maybe learn what to think of and where to plan. Maybe it’s like how much of revenue are you spending on marketing. How can you come up with an investor offer and everything? But when I got there it was nothing like that. It was very focused on aerospace because we’re an aerospace school. I’m not that interested in aerospace.

[238-240] Overall, the main issue is because I don’t understand what’s going on in the class because you’re just going over some numbers without even showing how to get there. So, that’s the most disappointing part of the class.

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Amanda’s Quotes #21

[106-111] As far as senior design, last semester we were trying to develop a prototype for an ankle brace that’s supposed to prevent ankle sprains. And then this semester it’s more trying to perform testing to validate the product. So, I try to look first and improve our design on the brace because we got a prototype, but we still wanted to improve our prototype. Currently, we are conducting the testing which is basically building ankle which can do inversion and eversion. Then we will see if the brace is preventing it to rotate.

[115-122] We have three different tests in mind. The other test was a tensile test so you basically take the brace, put it in a tensile machine and the machine like drags it out and then it can get the formation curve. Also, we’re thinking about doing a fatigue test to see how many times the brace can rotate or perform before it’s going to break. That information is good to know how long would it last before the customer has to buy a new brace. But we knew we weren’t going to have time to do all three of the tests, so we decided to do the tensile testing and the first test I was talking about. That’s been a plan the whole time. We got maybe halfway or something with both of the tests.

[124-127] Maybe a bit more like 65%. But then this virus happened so now we’re not allowed to be at school or be at the lab so we’re not going to be able to perform the tensile test because that’s with a machine that was at our university. So now we’re only doing the test to test the brace itself. The one I was explaining first about where the ankle is rotating.

[132-135] Yeah, so I’m proving the design we’re doing all the time like we’re doing currently similar testing. We hope to have a prototype that we think will work in May when we’re graduating. The testing has to be complete this semester even though we’re testing when our product is not working because that’s a part of the curriculum that we had to perform some testing.

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Amanda’s Quotes #22

[315-320] We are working with a company to develop a prototype for the ankle brace. They’re very helpful, a very good company. We even had a phone conference with them so we told them what we had to get done and they can customize their product to us so it would help. Then it has been taking too long of a time producing the part compare to what they say and then to ship the part and they didn’t tell us about it. When I expect the product and it’s not there, I contact them, and they say it still hasn’t been shipped or stuff like that. So, it’s taking a very long time but every time I talk with them, they’re very helpful.

[307-311] Overall, our interactions with the company has been good. Sometimes it can feel like sometimes when we’re trying to order something, or we feel like they may not take us as serious because we are students compared to if a professional industry would order something. They are late with the parts and not really giving us an update what’s going on or why it’s late. I had to reach out to them all the time because I don’t feel as respected as it should be. And that may could be because we’re students.

[326-328] We can still develop our prototype without having their parts. It’s always like something you can do even though you don’t have what you need. But it has for sure slowed down our process because they have not met the deadlines.

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Amanda’s Quotes #23

[142-149] Overall, it’s still great to work with my peers. It’s for sure the best group I ever had during my school year. Everyone is taking responsibility in doing what they are supposed to do. So, that’s very good. I’m not really sure how it’s going to be with the virus now and working with them. Like working remotely, a lot with this project, but I think it could be a good test for us because we have actually started a company. Since I’m leaving here, I’m graduating, and the two of them are staying for a master’s, the situation we’re in now where we have to work from a distance is probably going to be how it will be in the future for us anyway so this is a good way of us to test and see if it’s going to work around the company where all of us aren’t at the same place.

[152-159] We planned to start a company with this after we got very successful testing. But we were not sure both like a name to use, what we can’t use, what is trademark and everything. We got some help from school and also just a lot of reading. We decided we wanted to do our company a lot because it’s a lot of competitions out there and it’s not all engineering competitions. It’s also business competitions for various startups. So, then it’s a good way to show that we are serious and everything that this is going to work by creating a company. In April we filed a company. Then it got approved just a week later.

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Amanda’s Quotes #24

[192-197] For the controls class itself, it’s mostly PowerPoint and he’s also posted them on the university page which makes it easier to study for the tests. It’s a lot of math in it so sometimes we do a problem and then he works through it in MATLAB and all of us have computers in the classroom. Then we are just trying to follow. He’s very good at MATLAB so he has a tendency to do it way too quickly than we can write in all the commands. So, we’re trying to write down what he’s doing in MATLAB but he’s going too fast to be able to do it. But the concept is good.

[199-204] Then for the lab that’s only once a week, three hours long. We usually start with a quiz and the quiz represents what we’ve been doing in the classroom, but they don’t coordinate it, so the quiz is about a topic we haven’t even done in the class. So, we have never been able to do the quiz. We always get the quiz and then we realize we cannot do it so then we just start working on the lab. So, we have to take home the quiz and turn it in another day. For the lab, we can get lab manuals where it can tell us from the beginning it’s very simple because they give us step by step.

[206-212] Like click here, click here, click here. The more we’re getting into it is just all this is what he wants. Just find it. And then it’s become difficult because we’re not used to using any software so much. It’s a software called Simulink and we also use MATLAB so that has been very challenging to do something without instructions. We always need help from the professor and it’s only one lab professor for the whole class. Sometimes the instructions don’t show us what to do about the issue that students are facing. Then it takes a long time for him to help every student so then he can see you’re not doing anything for a long time just because you’re stuck and can’t get help.

[218-222] Yeah. So, in lab since we’re using so much equipment in the lab you have to finish it while you’re there if you don’t want to come back on Friday afternoon. You can go to his office hours and get help so you’re basically just waiting for your turn for him to come. If he realizes that you’re running out of time compared to when class is going to end, and you’re not done he tries to help a lot and he’s helping get us through is goals quickly. Of course, he can finish in a much faster time so he can help us through that.

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Amanda’s Quotes #25

[169-173] Also, I’m currently on the women’s soccer team here at the university so I do a lot of soccer and I wish to continue to play afterwards. That’s my current goal to find a professional soccer team where I can go and play. Eventually I will do my masters and do a job as well but there’s no time limit where I have to do that where soccer has a time limit. Currently I’m going to focus on my professional career within my sport.

[341-345] My soccer career will maybe last 10 years or so. Hopefully we’ll be able to run this project on the side as well. The company we started. After those 10 years, I would have either completed a master’s during that time or I am not. I would probably go into the working industry, some kind of engineering. Like sports engineering or something I feel interested in. That would probably become like in my mid-thirties.

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josh participants

Meet Josh

Josh is a white man attending a Canadian university and majoring in mechanical engineering. He was originally interested in programming and game design, but during high school switched his interest to mechanical engineering due to its focus on problem-solving and design. During Josh’s first year, his classes combined aspects of mechanical and electrical engineering. He was able to spend time buildings things like robots and catapults, and enjoyed the opportunity to combine theoretical problem solving with hands-on building. During the fall, he found that he was faltering a bit as he begin to struggle in his classes:

I started to question whether or not I should be here if I’m not able to succeed in this class…. One professor actually told me, “I wouldn’t care if you got a 2.5 in this class and just passed it barely because as long as you get the concept and applied them later, it’s not about whether you can pass it with flying colors.” So, I realized a high grade isn’t the only grade you can get. I also realized it’s a culmination of concepts, but as long as I get the ones that I’m there to master, that’s what the program was focused on teaching me at that time.

From Josh’s first interview

The image below is a journey map that Josh created summarizing some of the highs and lows from his first year as an engineering student.

Josh’s second-semester, first-year journey map

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

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Josh’s Family & Childhood

[11-15] I come from a middle class family, and I’m an only child. My father went to vocational school for construction, sprinkler fitting, and that was the maximum amount of education he had. My mother went to college. She’s a nurse, and she recently got her master’s. I have a big family; I have some people who have gone to college and some people who haven’t.

[101-112] My parents never really told me what to do. They were always kind of in the mindset of, “Do what you want, do what makes you happy, we’ll support you.” Whatever I decide is fine, so I never really had a reason to go anywhere because of them. I think from the beginning, my mind was pretty set on a science field so it didn’t take a lot of encouragement to pursue that.

[19-24] When I was in middle school, I changed my desires to reflect more programming and computer based design, I was looking at game design and stuff like that. It wasn’t until I got in high school and I started taking the programming courses that I decided to go to computer science. And then when it came down to time to choose my major, I had gotten sick of the programming but I still liked the problem solving and working hands on.

[101-112] One big influence that I did have was my cousin. The way high school in my district worked was when you pick your classes for your freshman year of high school, you decide whether or not you want to go to the vocational school half day and then, after that first year, you can decide to go full day or still half day. My cousin, who is three or four years older than me, went to the same district I did. He went to the vocational school for computer design. He originally wanted to be a roller coaster engineer and I remember growing up and seeing all the things he was doing and I was like, “That’s really cool.”

[115-121] So, he was definitely one of the people who got me interested in the computer aided part of engineering, and he’s definitely the one who I think got me really interested in the design aspect and kept me centralized around that area. But otherwise, it wasn’t really people telling me to go here or go there. I had this idea from the get go and people would kind of just positively reinforce. If they asked what I wanted to do, I’d say engineering or computer science and they’d be like, “That’s a good profession.” Or, “I think you’d succeed there.” Or something like that.

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Josh’s Quotes #1

[25-31] So, I came back to engineering and I chose mechanical because of my like to be hands on and to have an end product to hold in my hand. My family was definitely very supportive of everything I did, and they’re the reason that I’m able to come to school today. But I definitely think it was my own interest and desires that led me to engineering. I think it was a lot of deliberation on what each profession means and what’s involved in it, and I found that engineering was the one that fit the bill for most of the things I enjoyed doing.

[146-151] I was like, “I want to design things because I know how things work, I enjoy doing math, I feel like I could succeed.” So, this is why I decided I wanted to be an engineer, and then I looked at schools. I found my university because I found schools based on location. I wanted to be independent from my family but I wanted to be close enough that if I needed to be there, or I needed to be with them, the opportunity was available.

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