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Meet Amanda

Amanda is a white woman from a European country attending a school in the southeastern U.S. and majoring in mechanical engineering. She came to the U.S. primarily to play soccer, but has found herself increasingly drawn to engineering and is looking forward to her time in the field after her soccer career is finished. In engineering, she is drawn to the design aspects and has started a small design company with some fellow students. Her transition to the U.S. educational system required some adjustment:

From going from our high school where you have learned that you need to be self independent and professors don’t give you homework and then you come here and it feels like you’re in elementary school again, because they’re giving you homework for everything in class … I didn’t really like it in the beginning because it felt like, just let me start it the way I want to start it and when I want to do it and I will do well on the exam…. After being here three years I still don’t like the thousand homework courses. But I’ve learned to accept it and I don’t waste my energy on it, like it’s a good way to be prepared for next time instead of having to do everything on your own.

From Amanda’s first interview

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

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

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

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Amanda’s Family & Childhood

[2-6] So I am from [European country]. Then I wanted to come to the U.S. to start playing soccer at the same time, in high school in [European country]you can choose what track you want to do, if you want to more towards engineering or economics and stuff, so I chose to do engineering because I like math. And then when I got here, I got into to school mostly because of the soccer team and I just wanted to do something that was involving math because I kind of like to think.

[14-16] I looked what kind of courses every track offered, and that’s why I chose to do the engineering part, because it’s more like calculations and stuff, and that was the courses I liked in elementary school.

[22-25] Yeah, like my whole family, they are kinda interested and good at more like the math part than like, drawing and stuff. So then I think I was able to get a lot of help from home, and therefore, I kinda got good at math and I think you start to like stuff that you’re good at.

[71-77] I think it’s just probably moving this far and not having family close makes it more self independent. Of course, I have developed my English skills enough, but it’s like a deeper personal experience and development than if I had just stayed home and studied. You feel like you’re moving away from all the safety you had, like you don’t know anyone and figure out everything myself. From living at home and having your parents there to support you to not having them. It has developed me a lot as a person. I think it’s worth it. I want to try new things I think it just makes me grow.

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Amanda’s Quotes #1

[83-86] So then I picked engineering because I was good at math, like of course I could pick something easier when I got here, it doesn’t matter what I picked in high school. But I felt like I just wanted to keep going, because I felt like I kinda knew what I was doing.

[137-139] And since we do one more year in [European country] high school I had already taken some engineering classes which I hadn’t gotten credit for here, I had done a lot of what we did my first year.

[89-95] And at home if you want to do engineering it’s five years, here it’s four years. Even felt really comparable, I just heard of math engineering and physics, like here it sounds like math and physics. So I started and after one week I realized it was going to be a lot of space classes, space school like an aeronautical school and that’s not really what I wanted to do. Then when I was here I started to look into other majors and I pick the broadest one which is called mechanical engineering.

[98-102] It was more I knew what I didn’t want to do, like I didn’t want to do space, so therefore a lot of the engineering majors here at school was not an option. So there was more between mechanical and civil. I knew I didn’t want to do the standard engineering stuff like rolls and pitches and stuff, so then mechanical was the only one left.

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Amanda’s Quotes #2

[129-136] First, I was kinda struggling. I remember struggling with some tests like I didn’t understand the question, and it’s not because I didn’t know what to do, like I knew the calculations I just didn’t know the words. Like if it said “counter-clockwise” I didn’t know what it meant so I didn’t know what it was asking for. I usually went to my professor after the test and was like “I’m sorry, but I don’t really understand,” and they treated me really well and explained, like helped me to reduce some parts of it because they knew that I could do it, it was just the English that I was struggling with. But then, after the first semester I was here, I don’t think the language has been a problem anymore.

[155-160] The programming class, I’d never done programming before. Another class I was working with matlab, so that one’s like totally new for me. I didn’t know anything I was not interested going into the class, it was a lot of work required in that class, I think it’s fun when you get it but it took a lot of effort I guess, like understanding what you’re supposed to do.

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Amanda’s Quotes #3

[167-172] Yeah, one class that all engineers is [Intro engineering course], that we’re having a few projects throughout the semester, one was you were supposed to design an airplane or you were supposed to do the calculations, you were not really suppose to design it, like how much air and drag it had, and it would give you some practice, like it would need to be able to fly from here to Europe and then you need to do some assumptions and calculations, so that was more like a math project.

[172-177] And we had a second project, you were supposed to do a ball launcher for a dog which the dog can use without the owner being home. That was a lot of math calculations, maybe like what angle you wanted the ball to be thrown in and stuff, but that one we were actually supposed to build. We didn’t design it on the computer because we hadn’t learned how to do that so we just had to sketch on the paper and a few classes you can be in workshop and working on it.

[185-194] I’m just the kind of person that wants stuff to be done as quick as possible and not to do it the night before, so I think I usually take the role where I’m like trying to make a group of the students pass the ball and like making sure we get started. But then, I think we stayed equal amongst all of us. Some people come with some ideas what kind of ball launch we could do and all of us came up with like two different ideas that was like what we decided to do, and then one day we met up and just discussed which one we liked the most. There was a combination of two of them and then we started to build and there was one guy in our group that had been a worker once, so he kinda knew the most and he kinda told us what to do and how to build it.

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Amanda’s Quotes #4

[211-219] That’s the big difference to home, like at home in high school you barely have homework and then at the university you never have homework, you have maybe like two weeks during the whole year and that’s it. From going from our high school where you have learned that you need to be self independent and professors don’t give you homework and then you come here and it feels like you’re in elementary school again, because they’re giving you homework for everything in class, even just a big difference which I didn’t really like in the beginning because it felt like just let me start it the way I want to start it and when I want to do it and I will do well on the exam. But then like I need to do this, like all the homework.

[219-222] But now after being here three years I still don’t like the thousand homework courses. But I’ve learned to accept it and I don’t waste my energy on it, like it’s a good way to be prepared for next time instead of having to do everything by your own.

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Amanda’s Quotes #5

[11-13; 152-155; 158-162; 165-167] The spring semester started in January. Since I needed to apply for a lot of summer internships, I spent a lot of time writing cover letters and editing my resume, which required me to concentrate less on school. The school has a career service where they can review your resume and will help you with improving your resume. I went there a couple times, which also took time from my calendar, but I think it’s worth it. Then, right after the session in career services, I fixed what they told me to fix, and then I sent the revised resume to the company. Usually the company calls back and asked to schedule an interview or request additional information such as grades. Yeah. And then, I needed to find some time in my calendar where I could have the interview with the company. I prepared for the interview by viewing their website and reading information about the company such as their goals, what they’re doing, so I would be prepared and know something about the company before talking with them.

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Amanda’s Quotes #6

[29-31; 13-14; 34] In addition to applying for internships, I’m taking a course in machine design, materials, heat transfer, vibrations and bio fluids. I received some good scores on my exams in vibrations and materials.

[42-45; 48-52; 54-55; 116-118] In vibrations, we are learning about calculating different frequencies, when, for example, a bridge is vibrating. So, if it’s really windy outside the bridge can start to vibrate, so it can collapse. Of course, you don’t want that to happen. The professor uses PowerPoint presentations, and sometimes he may start to show a YouTube clip with a bridge that’s vibrating. And then, he’s breaking down this bridge into simpler components, use like a square or something like that. And then, he says this has a mass, and you have a spring component that is this value, and then you can get these vibrations, looking at these equations. We also completed about seven quizzes throughout the semester and a small project about water towers. For the project, we had to calculate what the maximum diameter or the minimum diameter you can have for the water tower not to break while vibrating.

[59-67] The professor for the materials class also uses maybe 50% PowerPoint and the remainder of the material is shown on the board. He’s refers to a lot to real life scenarios in class. For example, although a material is really good, in some cases the company won’t be able to make money. So, therefore you can use this alloy instead. The lab is first it starts off with one, and a half hour lecture, so he’s just talking different materials, and different composites. And then, we’re going down in the lab, and we’re in the lab for maybe one hour. So far, we have done foil, and yeah. I don’t know what others, but it was some plastic, and epoxy and stuff.

[104-109] With the heat transfer class we’re working mostly with specific temperature, heat flux, and convention. We just finished a Matlab project where they wanted to find the temperature distribution. If you want to use convection, or heat temperatures the Matlab program that we coded would enter the temperature distribution of it.

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Amanda’s Quotes #7

[74-79] In this [materials] class, we have a project where we are going to analyze failures. We were told to pick an object, determine why the object broke, and what can we do about it. So, my group decided to analyze a cleat, like a soccer shoe, so it cracked on the bottom, so right now we’re working on why it happened, why there’s so much stress there, and what can we do to reduce the stress concentration at that specific spot.
[81-86; 88-92; 95-102] We’re building a CAD model of it to determine the material. First, we contacted the company, but they didn’t want to tell us so then, we need to figure it out for ourselves. By burning the materials, it can say like oh it did not get a lot of smoke from it, those kinds of properties. So, then we can determine what kind of plastic it was.

In addition to the CAD model, we have come up with a description that informs the user how many steps you have to take during a practice and how much you can use the cleat. Also, we determined the material. So, basically where we’re left to do is to come up with a solution for the problem, what can we do for the cleat to not break. Working with my teammates has been good. We have been working a lot independently. So, we started off by deciding from the beginning what everyone was responsible for, and then we made the time plan, so for this day this person is going to finish this task. So then, everyone got a couple tasks, and you had days when it’s supposed to be due. So far, everyone has done what they’re supposed to do. It’s the one person doing a lot more than everyone else. I think he’s really interested in this class, and a really good student, so he’s taking more even though we know he’s not supposed to do it.

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Amanda’s Quotes #8

[167-170; 174-181] Towards the end of March and beginning of April, the companies start to contact me with offers. I received a couple internship offers, so then I had to decide what I wanted to do and during what time periods. So, I decided to take two different internships. I’m going to do one straight when I get back to Europe. They’re trying to develop balance by designing an app, so they need to collect a lot of data from people that experience balance. They’re putting a person on a force plate, connecting the person with a lot of sensors, and connecting the sensors to a computer, then you will get out different data, like the aspiration, displacement. From that, they’re going to try to build this app. The two main groups for data collection involve people who are retired and athletes.

[184-187] I’ll be responsible for collecting data. So, I’m going to put the sensors on the athletes, and then I’m going to record it, and then in Matlab I am going to retrieve the data, and by Matlab I will be able to see some aspiration, for example. So, it’s just data collection.

[189-195; 199-202] Then, the second internship is only a month long. So, after that I’m going to go back to my hometown, and then I’m going to work with a company which is trying to produce oil from trees. So, the main purpose of the company is to produce paper, but when they’re producing paper, they’re getting a lot of residual product, and so they will now try to come up with oil, so they can start selling oil as well. For this internship, I think I will have a really free role, they will just give me a task, like we need to make this production more cost effective then I’m just going to try to come up with a solution.

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