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Joy’s Quotes #4

[643-660] I remember my cousins husband talking to me about his work when I was little. Sort of pretending that he’s not talking to himself by talking to a two year old so, growing up I was like, “I will literally never understand any of this.” Then coming back from college I’m like, “Oh, I do actually know what you mean when you’re talking about loops and other basic programming things, and just in general the thought process of going through a project from start to finish.”

Also, last summer, I was able to present the solar cell testing system that I created for the satellite. My part on the satellite was the solar cells and testing them for mass production, because the company that I was working for was trying to output 100 satellites that summer. Very small satellites and so I needed to test over 2000 solar cells because there were 20 solar panels per satellite, and my dad told some of his co-workers about what I was doing and they ended up setting up a meeting for me to come in because they wanted to see what I was working on. Which was crazy because, I don’t know, I guess I just always thought of all those people that work in cubicles as, I don’t know, just like they’re very cool and then I get there and they’re laughing, and they’re having fun and I’m like, “Oh, these are real people.”

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Joy’s Quotes #5

[6-9; 394-403; 428-444] In winter of 2018, we were finishing up the hardest semester so far. So, my third semester, and as final exams were coming, I ended up not sleeping for 52 hours in order to finish everything, and so that was probably the worst part of engineering in the past two years. I realized that I need to go to counseling, and I need to talk to the engineering professors and say, hey, this is a problem. You cannot put any other class through what we went through because that is insane. It’s different if one person was having issues and debating things that shouldn’t be debated about themselves, but if the entire class was having issues, I’m like, “It’s not an entire class of people who are struggling mentally.” It was the classes problem.

So I was able to talk to my professor about the problem because I attend a small school. I was able to go into my professor’s offices and say, “Each of you have assigned major things that are due this week.” I know some of those are hard deadlines because we have people coming from other companies to come to [our university] and judge us on our poster presentation. Since the external judges tell us what they think of how our engineering program is doing, we were unable to negotiate the due date. However, other assignments like take-home exams, and large homework assignments that did not need to be scheduled that week were rescheduled. So, I was able to negotiate with my professor and say, “Hey can you move this deadline to a couple days from now? Then hopefully I’ll be able to get it done by the original deadline. But it just gives us the opportunity to put it off for a little bit and spread things out more evenly.” So I guess being able to negotiate with my professors and work with them helps me navigate the low points of the semester. I knew that they would do that. So that was comforting, and then realizing that I made it through last semester so I can do this.

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Joy’s Quotes #6

[9-16] But after around Christmas break things got better because I was dealing with the stress and recovering from last semester. Then I moved into the [short] term which at my school is a time when you take one class that meets five hours a day for five days a week for the entire month just like you would any other class. The [short] term was intense, but easy. Then towards the end of the [short] term I was getting pretty worried that the spring semester would be similar to last fall.

[17-26] But as the semester started things got significantly better and I realized that last semester was a fluke, and it’s not supposed to be like that. It’s supposed to be hard but not that hard and about four weeks in I realized I had a lot of free time, and that was nice to be able to hang out with people outside of my major, and get eight hours of sleep a night like I wanted to, and eat on a regular basis, and feel confident about the homework that I was submitting. So, I life was going well. As the semester went on a bigger assignment was due and it sort of brought up feelings from last semester on when everything started piling on, and it just became overwhelming. So, I was just overall stressed out.

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Joy’s Quotes #7

[204-217] This semester I’m taking a course called principles of engineering, which involves learning about how both mechanical and electrical interact, and the analogies between them. This class was supposed to be harder than the one I took last semester. Initially I was thinking, “It’s just going to get worse.” And I’m like, “There was no way that I can do what I did last semester again: Just physically or emotionally, or I was still worn out. I was feeling better, but I was still worn out, and so I was just very scared that it was like I’d, “Like after all this time that I put in am I going to flunk out again? And am I going to be…”

So I was preparing myself for the absolute worse and then it ended up not being so bad, and I actually ended up dropping a class to decide to take it over the summer, because I was irrationally having so much anxiety over this semester that I was just like, “I can’t handle this. I need to take a break.” So, I’m down to 14 credits instead of 17, and it’s been really good. The class with the new professor is not fantastic but I’m not failing it, and I don’t feel terrible about myself in that class. I’m not getting A’s but I’m also not failing. So that makes me happy and I’m sleeping and eating.

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Joy’s Quotes #8

[264-267; 270-312] The professor for principles of engineering is actually the chair of the engineering department and he was actually my boss for the satellite project that just got launched into outer space actually last week. Since I had had him as a boss before I felt like I could talk to him one a more personal level than my other professors, and sort of say like, “Hey, are the sophomore classes not doing well? We are very concerned about this class that you’re teaching now.” Because the former professor that taught both circuits and this principle of engineering class, the group of them has left and so that’s why we had new professors for each. The chair of the engineering department was not the one that taught the class last semester. So, they split it up.

Anyway, so he said, “Well, don’t worry about that all.” And he’s like, “From what you’ve probably heard about me I’m an excellent professor.” He’s like, “I’m not trying to boost myself up and make myself look good, but I haven’t had bad reports come back from students. They all like the way that I teach.”

And I knew that I shouldn’t be worried because he was an excellent boss and very lenient. Very good at his skills towards explaining things and engaging his students I knew was really good. Yeah, so the semester started, and he addressed the class on the first day and he said, “We’re just going to talk about, the first lecture we’re going to start out easy. We’re going to go over what you think you know from last semester and we’ll make a list of the things that you think you know, and the things that you were supposed to know from last semester. And we’ll talk about…” He’s like, “I’ll give you a little bit of an intro on myself. Sort of my life story and you can ask whatever questions, and doubts that you have about the semester.” Either in his class or any other class. And that made us all trust him a lot more, and that just set up the semester for success.

Since then he’s done an excellent job of having engaging lectures where he asks questions on a regular basis. If anyone looks confused, he calls them out and he’s like, “Hey, you look confused. What can I do to explain this?” And if he can’t fix it in a couple minutes then he says, “Come to my office hours.” And labs go pretty well too. He’s excellent at answering questions and providing adequate instructions. As the semester goes on the goal of this class is to develop your mind into thinking like an engineer so he gives you, instead of giving you step by step instructions like he did for the first lab it’s more of you have a drone. So, this is our final project. We have a drone and we are supposed to make a thrust measurement system.

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Joy’s Quotes #9

[486-490] Also, I was offered a job with the company that I built the satellite with last summer, and they offered me a second internship. I said no because that would’ve been the third summer that I had worked in space and my goal is to go into mechanical with possibly the end goal being biomedical. Maybe get my master’s and become a prosthetist but definitely manufacturing engineering, I love that. I don’t want to build satellites.

[512-515; 522-526] I decided to work for a small company, again, but I think that it will be a good fit. I will be working with the CAD models and helping them do the grunt work on the CAD models and then also working with some of their engineers on prototypes because this is a new developing product. I had a connection from my robotics team when I was in high school. One of the mentors is one of the engineers of this company now. He was just hired and so he recommended me for this job which I knew robotics would pay off, and not just learning how to use a tape measure, but actually having connections that will get me jobs in the future.

[552-555] So I’m, I guess encouraged now that I’m at the end of the second year that I have a job that I’ve lined up, and that it’s something that I think I’m going to enjoy because the other part of it is last semester scared me into thinking, “Not only are you possibly not good enough but you don’t like this at all. This is miserable.”

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Joy’s Quotes #10

[557-568] Now I’m pretty positive about this. That this is where I’m supposed to be. I am good enough to do this and maybe I’m not good enough to do this, but the fact that I work hard and that my professors are willing to help me through this. No one can get through engineering if they’re just all by themselves. You’re human, you can’t, yeah. So professors are there to help instruct you and yeah, so they’re the reason that people are not homeschooled to get their bachelor’s in engineering. That’s not the way that works because you can’t do it. So I’m looking forward to having these mentors, these professors as mentors over the next couple years and increasing my knowledge of engineering as I get internships over the next couple summers. Crazy to think that next summer is my last summer before I graduate, but after the summer I only have one more internship because I’m thrown out into the ocean and expected to get a real job, and keep it for more than 12 weeks.

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Joy’s Quotes #11

[97-103] When I was in high school, I was on a robotics team. One of my mentors from there works at a company that designs vehicles. He remembered me and offered to let me work there as an intern for summer, cause he thought that I would be a good fit. My job involved some designing, as well as working with the assembly technicians to sort of implement the stuff that I was making. It was definitely small-scale designing for me. The company had about 14 employees. So, it was a small company.

[104-110] They make disaster relief vehicles. They weigh between 15 and 50 thousand pounds, depending on which attachments you put on them. The vehicle that I worked on over the summer that we actually shipped out had a 30-ton forklift on the front. Yeah. Sorry. It didn’t weigh 30 tons. It could lift that much weight. It was massive. I have never seen a forklift that big. I didn’t even know that the actual forks themselves were wider than my body. It was very weird and quite tall.

[111-116] Anyway. And it had six German automobile company battery packs. So, those are the size of a twin-sized bed. And so, those go inside. I think those go inside of vehicles that the German automobile company makes, but it’s definitely not the cars, cause a car battery is small. But, anyway, so, that was that. And then, a dump bed and a scissor lift on it. And so, that was sent to the west coast and it helps with their port.

[117-122] But there’s also ones that we’re looking into sending to an orchard that will harvest apples and other things and spread chemicals over whatever the trees they need fertilizers. So, it’s a very diverse purpose for each one of the vehicles. They’re kind of expensive, like a million dollars each. You can buy this vehicle, and then, add attachments.

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Joy’s Quotes #12

[159-164] The first thing that was kind of unique about this experience was that I was the only female in their company. So, at first, they didn’t really know what to do with me, so to speak. For example, I would walk into the room, and they would be talking, and the assembly technicians would be talking, and they would cuss or something, and then, they’re just like, “No, no, no. You can’t do that. Joy’s here.”

[166-170] But, as the summer went on, it was a lot of fun to get to know them. And, because they were between 35 and, I would say, 55, it was a lot of fun to work with them and hear about, I don’t know, their life experience in the different companies that they’d worked at over the years, and just kind of getting the insight into what’s it like to work in a company.

[171-178] Then, another part of that was they were kind of intimidated by the fact that I was in college. And I didn’t understand that, because I looked at them as, “Wow, they’re just full of wisdom, and I have so much to learn from them.” At the beginning of the internship, in addition to when I would walk in, they would just kind of stop talking and be on edge. If I was working in the same room around them and not with them, they would first just say things like, “I wish I was good at math,” or “Guys are supposed to be better at math than women.” And I was like, “What? Why are you trying to purposely talk loud so that I would hear them say these things?”

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Joy’s Quotes #13

[179-189] So, it was a little bit weird at first. But, yeah. I don’t know. I would say, after the first of two weeks, I started working with them as opposed to around them. And so, talking with them while mounting things and asking them for help on, I don’t know, operating machinery that I hadn’t seen before. It was a great teaching experience for them and learning experience for me. They liked the way that I was organized. So, any time something went missing in the shop, they never pointed a finger at me, because I had a reputation of, any time I would get a tool out, I would organize the entire drawer when I put it back. Cause, I mean, all the tools would be everywhere. They joked that they could figure out where I had been, almost like they were detectives, because anywhere there was clean paths, it was because I was there.

[190-195] So, the assembly technicians, it was, honestly, it was just really enjoyable, as opposed to them mentoring me in an engineering sort of way, because I don’t think any of them went to college. It was like they had a high school degree and they’d worked in factories their entire life. And so, that was the kind of experience they were teaching me and telling me about, or their family dynamic, and just that kind of stuff.

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