[170-172; 219-224; 226-230; 235-240; 242-244] Now everything is decided, and I know what I’m going to do during the summer, I don’t need to spend more time on finding an internship. This semester I’ve started to have more connection with my professors. It started with me have to ask one of my professors for internship assignments, so I got a really good consult with him. And then, he introduced me to another professor that is in charge of a lot of different research projects at school. So then, I started to talk with him, so now I’m involved in some of his research projects. The main project involves hip replacement. When some kids are born, they have problems with their hips, so when they’re getting older they need a hip transplant. But, to avoid this, we can fix it in this early stage when they’re born. The project is with some professors from our school, some PhD students from our school, and also some professors and doctors. So, they’re really, really smart compared to me. I’m not a huge part of that project. I’m more there just to listen, and learn, and try to understand, and maybe in the future start to work on it, like next year if I want to stay at school. But, right now I don’t contribute anything. I’m just there to learn.
Tag: amanda
[138-145] After I completed the first internship, I started another internship that was related to chemistry more. The reason why I did that one, because it was near my hometown. So, I could stay get some experience or some money while I could be at home. We were going to find a new oil, but we take it from the trees, the rest of the product when you are producing paper. And with that can paint it on, on a regular sheet of paper, and that makes the paper water-resistant. So, let’s say that you’re having a moving box, or something like that, and you have the paint on it, it got produced that way. Then it can have it outside and then even though it’s raining and everything, the stuff inside it won’t get wet.
[153-155] The goal of the project was to determine what was the most efficient way to get this oil. So yeah, the oil is not finished or producible to use. We were working out parameters and supposed to consider the manufacturers.
[157-161] This internship was also a professional environment. The team I was working with have a higher education, a lot of experience in the chemistry field. The location the lab had everything we needed. Maybe it was very messy in the lab. It feels like the lab can become messy, because it’s a lot of stuff going on. That was maybe the only downside of it. That was not professional.
[165-166] I define a professional environment according to the people around you have a high understanding and knowledge of what’s going on, and also everything you need is available.
[87; 104-109] I didn’t have school in the summer. Instead, I had an internship in Northern Europe, which was about the data acquisition. My role involved testing athletes who came to our lab where we have some force plates under the different movements, like squats for example. By looking at the results from the force plates, we can determine how it’s using the right leg more than the left one. So maybe he’s going to have to do more weights on the left leg to be more stable to decrease that risk of injury.
[114-119] We used force plates, like this movements with a force plate, but also with an app that is supposed to do the same thing as a force plate, but obviously it doesn’t, because the force plate is much better. Here the results you got, but you were supposed to get this result, and fix yourself. I was not a part of making it better. I was just a part of collecting the data collection team.
[122-127] The team I was a part of were the test people, so that was a very, very professional environment. We were located in a gym, so it wasn’t very professional in that sense, but it was perfect enough for what we were going to do. And the main boss, he is skilled, very educated and very smart in that sense. But he wasn’t always there because I learned very quickly what I was supposed to do so then he could use his time to do something else.
[170-172] Now, I’ve returned to school where I’m taking a chemistry class, chemistry lab, and a class that is called Biomechanics. Also, I’m taking Preliminary Design, which also has a lab for that one. I’m also taking classes called Instrumentation and Data Acquisition, and the lab for that class.
[177-179] In biomechanics, the professor had a lot of PowerPoint slides. We learned a lot about anatomy, and how to come combine the knowledge we already have from physics and calculate the forces and everything that can be implemented into the body system.
[130-135] Actually, I didn’t think we were going to use anything I learned from my internship, but now we have a project in Biomechanics where we are using force plates for collecting data. And that was a bit helpful, since I had used force plates during my internship. I don’t really know what we’re going to do with the data. Hopefully find out at some point.
[185-189] We used the school’s lab, which have force plates and a lot of markers that you put on yourself surrounded by a lot of cameras. The cameras will see all the markers. We can determine the movements and the forces, which is calculating the force plates, calculating the forces. So those two are combined in some way I assume.
[192-197] Another course called Preliminary Design involves a yearlong project. I am working in a group of three, and we are designing an ankle brace that is supposed to prevent ankle sprains in soccer. In the beginning of the semester, we had lectures, which covered how you should think when you are picking out material, or how you should think when have different concepts, and the concept selection. But now later on in the semester, all those class times have just been time for us to be able to work on a project.
[200-207] I’m working in very good group. Everyone is doing what they’re supposed to do. And our goal is to have a prototype by the end of the semester, and we are using a flexible plastic called CPAs. That is supposed to allow natural range of motion and also provide forces at a higher velocity. We are 3-D printing the brace to be able to do thin, because current braces on the market are very bulky. And we have now downloaded prototype, and obviously it’s going to have to be redone because it was used the outer shell of it. So, there’s no support yet or anything.
[210-212] So when we’re getting our prototype by the end of this semester, we go ahead and do testing on it next semester. Probably redesign it to make it better than the current one on the market.
[374-377] We wanted to go to conference to receive some more knowledge about how we could develop our ankle brace. To attend the conference, I had to be a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society.
[390-394; 37-407] The conference consisted of interactions with the faculty. Also, we saw a lot of schools promoting their graduate program. So, it was a lot of talking about their graduating programs. But then we also had the chance to attend sessions to learn more about biomechanics. One session was about injuries in biomechanics, and it was supposed to be a one hour, and then you went to that class, but it was 15 minutes presentation. But then one could talk about ankle injuries and some can talk about concussions, or something like that. So, it’s 15 minutes per presentation during this hour.
[235-243] During the instrumentation class, he’s just going over some PowerPoint slides. And he jumps all over the place, so it’s very hard to follow, and I feel like I haven’t learned anything in the class. It’s also no homework assignments and no tests, so then it’s kind of easy to accept that I’m not going to learn anything. Yeah. So that’s not very good. But then we have that class, but as a lab. And I felt like I’ve been learning more in that class. We are working with an Arduino, coding that to accomplish different kinds of tasks. But the tasks are very difficult to understand since we don’t learn anything in the lectures. So, it’s almost too hard of a lab, which makes me not learn anything in that lab either because it’s just too difficult.
[268-272] Oh yeah, forgot to mention one class called Advanced Machine Design. So, the first class or the first quiz, what is the module supposed to know from Intro to Machine Design. It was mostly a conceptional, so I didn’t remember it. Yeah. And they didn’t tell us it was going to be on it.
[281-283] Yeah, even though you have the software, is good to have an assumption, what do you think is going on? Knowledge, what you think is going to happen? Just because usually it’s always something wrong in the first set up of the computer.
[285-286] Then I just going back to check all the parameters that I have put in and make sure they are correct, and usually find a mistake in there.
[292-294] When I experienced difficulties in the machine design class, I started to study, whatever it was the quiz that they tested us on. And so, I learned that material, and then just tried to keep up with the current material, with the new material that he was teaching during class.
[299-302] Managing engineering and soccer requires a lot of time management. I don’t have as much free time as other student I’d say. But it makes me very productive when I have some time to do homework and making sure that I’m really focusing on doing it as quickly as you can.
[333-337] The faculty are very helpful. For example, right now, when we worked on the ankle brace, then in those long projects I was talking about. Even though one professor that signs for that specific class, all the professor around us are very helpful. So maybe the material professor, even though we didn’t don’t have him this year, he’s still very willing to help us to figure out what kind of material we should order.
[12-13; 27-29; 33] This semester started off pretty good because the school year starts off kind of easy like homeworks and it’s no tests. I’m taking two human factors classes. One is an introduction to human factors, and one is ergonomics. I’m also taking engineering economics, senior design, one graduate level class, and controls.
[37-42] The classroom experience for Intro to human factors is very, like it’s a PowerPoint. It’s very few words on the PowerPoint, sometimes it’s just a picture and then he talks about it for maybe 20 minutes for each picture. It’s very difficult to take notes since he’s talking. I usually always take notes but in this class I don’t because it’s very difficult to keep notes for someone that’s only talking, and you don’t really know what is important and what is not important of what he’s saying.
[246-253] Now, I think human factors is so much easier. It doesn’t require us much time to study because nothing is hard to get. I think it’s a lot of common sense, so you just memorize words they want to use. Now the design process is memorizing the steps or something, what are all the steps that make some kind of sense. In the classroom experience, I think there are a lot of stupid students compared to what I’m used to. I’m used to being surrounded by smart people that know some kind of general knowledge that can think outside the box. A lot of students in my human factors class can’t do that. They can ask stupid questions which sometimes can annoy me because it takes so much time for him to answer something that’s so obvious.
[255-262] But the hard part with it was that when you were studying for a test it was a bit difficult to know what was going to be on it because as I said before a PowerPoint can just consist of a picture. So, when we’re trying to study for it you didn’t really know what it said on that picture that was important that you should remember. And then I think some questions that in my opinion is very irrelevant to the topic that he can put on there. I don’t know the reason for it. Maybe it’s to see if you paid attention. But it has to have some kind of relevance or like knowledge. I’m used to only having questions that would show that we have learned something while they can have questions that doesn’t have to show anything that we learned.