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Lauren’s Quotes #18

[53-57] Aside from the machine design course, I only have two other engineering classes, and musicology. Musicology is an Arts and Humanities class. It’s been just pretty easy. One of the engineering classes is Heat Transfer. I had Thermodynamics a year ago, and that class was pretty difficult, but it was the teacher I had picked. It was very difficult with his grading, but you learned a lot. And now in Heat Transfer, I’ve got an easier teacher who grades easier, but he’s still doing really well with teaching everything.

[78-83] The professor is good at teaching because he works a lot of examples out in class typically, and I find that useful. His PowerPoints are well laid out, so he doesn’t have to go backwards and forwards all the time. And for the homework problems that we have, he gives us hints for them. So, the homework problems are typically really challenging and more difficult than the exam problems are, but he’ll give us tips and tricks on how to work them in class, so that we can figure it out. And because it’s more difficult than the exam problems, if you know how to work the homework problems, then you’re going to do well on the exam.

[111-114] The class is comprised of mostly lectures, but we had one lab where we took apart a rice cooker to determine how it worked. And then we’re going to have a paper in the next couple weeks, but I don’t really have much information on that yet. So, it’s got a couple of cool hands-on… like, it had a really cool hands-on thing. But it’s mostly just lectures.

[118-123] The rice cooker project involved using two class periods, longer class periods that are an hour and a half each, and we took apart a rice cooker. I don’t know how much you know about the inside of a rice cooker, but they have magnets in them, because we were doing this during the magnetism chapter. So, I took the magnets out, and we used reflectometry and microscopy to try and determine what type of materials were in the magnet. And that’s what we’re going to be writing a report on is, what the magnet was like in there, and how that affects how the rice cooker is able to function.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #19

[128-131] In addition to coursework, I’m still a research assistant. I’m actually going to be on a published research paper pretty soon for a project that I did some simulations for. That should be coming out in the next month or so. And then I’m also working on helping write another paper for some work I’ve been doing on high entropy alloys lately. So, it’s going pretty well. And I’m really excited about it.

[135-144] So for the paper that’s about to be published, all I did was run some simulations. So, the only person I personally worked with was my boss, who gave me the assignment. But there’s some other people on it that I don’t really know. I’m just sort of a footnote in it. For the high entropy alloy paper, I’ve mostly been working with my boss, one of my co-workers, and then there’s another lab on my campus that’s been trying to do some machine learning on our high entropy alloy sample that we have, to try and have a computer guess […] well I guess not guess, but like learn, where different properties of the material will happen in different parts of the film that we had built. So, I’ve been doing that, and I haven’t really had a part in the machine learning thing, because I don’t know much about machine learning myself. I’ve mostly been taking samples from our thin film, measuring magnetic properties, and plotting it out and pulling data from the graphs that we have.

[173-176] In addition to data collection, I will be helping to write the paper, and then I’m also making the majority of the figures that we have for the paper. So, I’m the one that made most of the graphs already. So, I’m the one that’s able to quickly […] and be like, “Oh, I know exactly where that is in all of the files,” and pull it out and put it into a picture. And I’ll be helping with writing a little bit.

[193-196] As far as my research, I would say it’s mostly learning from the professor I work with, but I have read a couple of papers here and there, to learn some stuff on my own. But most times when I’m told to do something, like if I don’t know what it is, the professor will go through and be like, “Hey, yep. Here’s what it is. There you go. You’re all good.”

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #20

[228-237] Yeah, so my principal investigator was the one who offered me the research position. I didn’t go and ask for it. He offered it to me after I had been in one of his classes. I asked a bunch of questions in class and stuff that, and so he thought I would do well in research, and so he offered the research position to me. Not December 2019, but December 2018, so I started there January 2019. And since then, he’s been the one to like […] he’s a new professor at my school. I had him for his first semester there. So, he’s been working on getting the lab set up. So, I’ve heard from other people that new professors work more closely with their students than older professors who have been around for longer. So that might be part of why he helps out so much. But yeah, he’s the one that offered me the job, and then got me set up. And then he’s the one that’s helped out a bunch on figuring out everything, because I don’t have a background in magnetism, and I barely knew anything about it before I started.

[251-260] Here’s one that really introduced me to magnetism, because I didn’t, again, I didn’t really have a background to it. So he started off with giving me a textbook on introductory magnetism to read, to get a background on a bunch of different things. And then once I had read that and had asked all of my questions about everything, I started helping out with the lab. And as we came across topics, I would ask a question, and he would be okay with […] like, he would answer it almost immediately. So, say I didn’t know […] I’m going back to Curie temperature again, because it’s the thing on top of my mind. So say I didn’t know what that was, and he was talking about it, and being like, “Hey, you’re going to pull the Curie temperature off these graphs,” I could go and I could ask like, “What’s the Curie temperature?” And he would give a really good explanation right away, to be able to answer the questions that I had. It’s just been that way with everything.

[262-265] Then before going to the lab last summer, he was the one that was like, “Hey, here’s the project you’re going to be working on, and here’s the background info you need to know.” So, I didn’t really […] I wasn’t the one who started that conversation. He was the one that started it, so that I wouldn’t be confused when I got there.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #21

[14-19] Then after spring break, that’s when everything went down. My classes, they all got canceled and moved online because of the pandemic. My apartment got hit by a tree recently, so now I’m staying with my boyfriend’s family right now. And then my family has been exposed to the virus, and that’s kind of sucky, because my father’s immunocompromised.

[300-301] I mean, it’s also kind of sucky not being able to go and see my friends on campus anymore, because of everything happening.

[362-364] So, this semester, I’ve only really interacted with my teachers. I had a meeting with my advisor. You have to do one once a year. Teachers and my advisor are all I’ve really interacted with this semester.

[370-377; 383-385; 395-397] As far as my peers, I definitely had been interacting with other students a lot more. Three of us were in a little group together. So, I had the most knowledge about magnetism out of the three of us, but when the teacher started talking about chemistry terms or something, all three of us were sitting there like, “What’s chemistry?” However, since we transitioned online, I haven’t really worked with my peers online all that much. Or at all.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #22

[292-298] Since we transitioned to online course, I absolutely hate it. I concentrate so much better when they’re actually there in front of me. So, I’ve had to really work hard at not being distracted by a video game, or a good book on my desk that’s sitting there. And I’m ready to go back to normal classes when it hopefully, you know, that I’ll be back for the fall. On my phone, I had to set up a productivity app that would stop me from my going onto social media during class, because it so much easier when the teacher wasn’t there in front of me. So, I kept on going, being like, “Oh, it won’t matter if I just scroll a little bit,” and then it’ll be like, “Oh no, I missed like half the class.”

[306-312] In addition to coursework, I have to conduct research remotely as well. During spring break, I had to help him set the lab up to be totally remote work. I had already tested all of my samples. I was just working on pulling data from everything and helping write the paper. So, all of my work was already on a computer. It was just making it so that I could access it from anywhere and help the other people in the lab access it from anywhere. So, I mean, for me, it’s going on as it does normally, just like I’m not in the lab working on the computer. Which again, productivity issues, it’s so much easier to get distracted when you’re in the comfort of your own home.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #23

[444-447] Once classes end, I plan to continue doing research. Hopefully I can go to the lab this summer, you know, depending it’s not canceled. If it is canceled, I’ve already worked it out with my boss. I can still work in the lab over the summer. So, I can continue doing research, just, it won’t be at a really cool lab.

[452-458] The more I do research, the more I want to do it for a living, because it is really fun figuring something out, and like, in the works I’m trusting. And typically, there’s more than one project going on, so if I get annoyed and not making any progress with the thing I’m working on, I can go and help someone else with their thing. Or sit there and be the rubber duck as they explain how it works to me. So, if they can figure something out themselves. You know, there’s just always something going on, so it’s less likely to be bored. And I enjoy it, and I think I would want to do it for the future.

[462-464] It’s not set in stone yet, but I do think I would like to go to grad school so that I could do research for a living. Maybe not in magnetism forever. Maybe I’ll find something else that I really like to do, but I am enjoying the research, and I think I want to continue doing that during my career.

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quotes tchuck

Tchuck’s Family & Childhood

[91-94; 96-98] My dad is an engineer, so I was from that young age I had that influence over me, I still do. So that was a big part. So I’m the oldest of four, so I have three other siblings. So I felt like there’s always that pressure to succeed, do well in school and all that stuff. […] I like knowing how things work and all that generic stuff. So yeah I’d say it’s a mix between. I do want to do it and I do like it, but I think also a big part of it was also my dad.

[9-11; 28-30; 38-44] …in terms of my academics at least, I always try very hard. I’ve always taken the hardest classes. I was in STEM Academy for my high school… it was everyone that was looking for majors involving science, technology, engineering and math and all that types of stuff, basically you get put in a cohort, to an extent. There was specific trips we were able to go on since we were in the STEM academy. The biggest thing, […] was an agreement they had with […] a local community college, and I got to transfer out, 16 college credits. I just picked whatever class I had, and if I got an A or B in them for the transfer credit I was able to do that, so I got to bring in those into [East coast university].

[58-62; 66-68; 70-72] they just introduced it in my senior year, an engineering class. So obviously I took it, because I was like, “You know, why not? Maybe it will be relevant, maybe it will be interesting.” So I took it, it was all right. It was mostly based on mechanical engineering which like, I’m biomedical engineering, so it’s still useful, I suppose, but I am not as interested in it. It was a good class. We watched […an] open-heart surgery, we got to watch that. So that was kind of interesting to watch. […]. I remember watching it and I found it pretty interesting, cause like I don’t know, I think that stuff is interesting, I don’t care about the blood or anything like that.

[76-78] So, the only thing I didn’t like about [the STEM Academy was], I don’t get to into it, but today nowadays they stress the women in engineering thing, I don’t have a problem with that, except then they have the trips only for women in engineering so I couldn’t even go.

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Tchuck on Choosing Engineering

[15-21] [East coast university] was kind of my back up. But I ended up getting the best worth for my money basically I got a bunch of money from [East coast university] and also [East coast university] has a really good engineering school, like all the schools I applied to had a decent engineering school but [East coast university]’s obviously very good for engineering. So I ended up coming here. I’m in honors college here. I also pledged, I’m also in a fraternity here.

[113-119] When I came to [East coast university] I looked at them and I thought biomedical sounded pretty cool. I went through and they showed me this tour and it was like, I think the people at [East coast university] that do research were looking at something like eyedrops that fix blindness to an extent, there was something about a robotic arm that would be able to perform surgery. So I was like that’s pretty cool. And I did well in bio and I like science and obviously I like math. So that’s what I ended up going with.

[125-127; 130-132] I actually came in under the major engineering entrepreneurship, which initially I applied to that because I was like, alright I’m not 100% sure what I want to do, like I like biomedical, but I wanted to come in as generic […]And what it ended up being was a completely different thing, like it’s what you would think trying to start your own company and make stuff, whatever along those lines. So pretty quickly I transferred into biomed.

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quotes tchuck

Tchuck’s Quotes #1

[195-201] So basically the idea is to get experience with engineering and all this stuff. What ended up happening was freshman engineering clinic was, it was alright, basically. They talked about a lot of stuff that I already knew. They went over like units and sig figs, conversions, stuff along those lines that wasn’t too difficult. They also went over, we went over engineering ethics which obviously is important so I do appreciate that although that’s been talked about in like every single one of the engineering classes so it gets a little repetitive. Obviously it’s important.

[232-236] And for the second half we had to, we had to use code to optimize a wind turbine and then build it. So we had to figure out what parameters we wanted, what we wanted it to look like, the shape of the blades and all that stuff. And then we built it and tested it at the end. So that I feel like is relevant.

[213-217] I would say the clinic as a whole I’m pretty sure is good. I’m looking forward to junior and senior clinic because that’s when we get like actually research projects. We’re literally going to be doing and making stuff. And I think we work our entire junior year on one thing, and our entire senior year on another thing. So it’ll actually be relevant and something that we get some say in it.

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Tchuck’s Quotes #2

[94-99] This summer I ended up going back to my warehouse job that I’ve been working since senior high school. I’ve already started applying for internships now, and I plan to continue until I eventually land one, and even then, probably still after just to get more options.

[105-121; 124-129; 191-192] This semester I’m taking all biomedical engineering classes: Foundations in Mechanics, Physiological Foundations, and Electro Foundations. Funny enough, all three of the classes are literally in the same classroom, and it’s a three minute walk from my dorm, which is nice. Most of the teachers use the time as a double lecture period, instead of using the period for lab. Like Literally, on most days I end up sitting in that classroom for hours, and literally sometimes I don’t even move. On Friday’s, we have class from 9:30 am to 2:00 pm, and it’s two different classes, but they’re all in the same classroom so we sit there the whole time, which I don’t know, it’s not too bad. But for mech founds, I think I do like this professor the best.

[130-136; 192-193] He’s very, very smart. He basically does most of his examples off the top of his brain. He makes a problem and solves it himself, which he does mess up every now and then, but for the most part he’s pretty good about it and if he does mess up. Literally after class, he’ll go back to his office and solve it and then email us the solution for it, but yeah he’s pretty good. He goes through the problems a little fast. It is complicated topics, but it’s not too bad. I can still follow for the most part, and then if you have any questions, he is always able to answer them. Also, we haven’t done any labs. I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think we’re doing any labs for mech founds.

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