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Meet Anna

Anna is a white woman studying electrical engineering at a northeastern institution. She attended alternative primary and middle schools that did not expose her much to science, math, or engineering as a child, but for high school, she switched enrollment into a competitive science and technology high school. In addition to exposing her to a number of high-level science classes, Anna participated in novel design and research projects and was particularly interested in systems engineering. As a college student, Anna spent her freshman year focused mainly on her general courses, but did have time for an engineering design class where she helped build Rube Goldberg machines and robots. After looking at the curriculum for each major and reading descriptions of the classes, she was drawn to the electromagnetism, computer architecture, and digital logic design classes, and decided to major in electrical engineering.

I saw classes like electricity and magnetism in my college curriculum was like, I want to study engineering because that’s where science and design and math and technology all meet up. I feel like it’s such a varied field you can do whatever you want with it.

From Anna’s first interview.

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

Anna’s second-semester, second-year journey map.

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

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Anna’s Family & Childhood

[16-22; 23-26] From kindergarten until middle school I went an alternative school which had 40 kids in it total,  grouped by rough age groups and the school was project-based learning so instead of sitting down teaching us ABCs, numbers, counting, they gave us a project, assembled us into rough groups of kids of different ages and told us to go. It was very loose, not formal at all. I didn’t learn much academic knowledge from that time, but I did learn really well how to work with other people, how to be a part of a team, how to sort of self-direct and do what I wanted to do. I spent a lot of time reading. I spent a lot of time playing with LEGOs. I got really good making friendship bracelets. I had a lot of fun and then in 5th grade, my parents started getting worried about me academically being able to make it in the real world, so they sent me to a private middle school which was very academically focused.

[27-32] Before I transitioned to middle school, I learned six years of math in two weeks. This school required uniforms, homework, quizzes, tests up the wazoo. If I got a grade less than a 95 my parents would sit down with me and have a talk, “What are you doing? What’s wrong? How can we fix this?” So, I went from having no academic structure to an academic institution that was very structured. This exposure to a highly structured academic program, prepared me to go to a ‘public’ vocational high school but I had to apply to get in.

[49-56; 57-67; 78-80] I attended a high school that had a structured curriculum centered on science and technology. It is one of the top 15 high schools in the northeast. There weren’t a lot of options for electives or classes. All of the science classes that we took were marine science classes, including one technology class each year.  For example, my freshman year I took technical writing and my sophomore year I took AutoCAD. Also, during my senior year I took a research class in which I participated in a year-long research study that hasn’t actually been done before and will be published shortly about Microplastics on the ‘east’ coast and that was an amazing class. My teacher treated me like an adult, a scientist, I was responsible for my own deadlines and due dates, and her attitude towards the class and towards my responsibilities in that class really made me want to work hard for it. I really latched on to some of the better teachers which did lead me towards engineering because they staffed really good teachers for my systems engineering class, that was so much fun. In that class we did a bunch of hands-on engineering projects, we built a Balsa bridge. We made a Rube Goldberg machine which didn’t work but it was a lot of fun to do. We made that fishing lure, I still have the website which I documented my results on and a bunch of other smaller projects and concepts about system balances and, I don’t know, engineering design. The curriculum of my high school also tried to incorporate these kinds of projects into other classes. In my physics class, we made a physical model of a ‘northeast barrier’, it has sort of a trench in it and we used sound to map it.

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Anna on Choosing Engineering

[42-45; 239-248; 258-260; 263-269] Retrospectively, I think that it has been worth it because it’s made me a lot more adaptable and it made coming to college actually really easy because I already knew what it was like to start out with no friends, no one, to have to adapt to a completely different set of rules and standards and to just go from the start. For example, since my high school focused on science and technology, I really had that opportunity to sort of become a scientist but what I realized when working senior year on my research project is that scientist spend their whole lives delving into a problem, laying it out, describing it, but they don’t solve it at all and I don’t think I would be able to live such big issues on my shoulders that I could do nothing about. I feel like engineering is related to science in that you use science to solve problems. I absolutely live for the moment where you solve the problem. I couldn’t do that with such pressing matters like microplastics, oh my gosh, it’s absolutely crushing to have to think about that sort of stuff all the time. Although my mom still thinks that I should be a scientist, it’s just not for me although I really do value the experience of being able to try it out. She has made it very clear that she sort of sees me more as the scientist type then the engineer type. She also doesn’t love that I’m in a career that’s mostly men, but I don’t really care about that because anything they can do I can better. She really pushed me to be the best I could and be as creative as I could. I think she’s definitely the one who made me a bit of a perfectionist. As for other influential people in my life, definitely my senior research teacher. The best teacher I’ve ever had, really an amazing woman.

[101-108; 92-93] In high school, I also took a AP Physics course which was centered around electricity and magnetism and for the first half the year we learned about electricity and the second magnetism and then at the very last minute, like three weeks before the end of the year my physics teacher started teaching us about light and how it’s where electricity and magnetism come together and that’s the moment that it clicked for me and physics sort of fell into place and I had that brilliant aha moment. It made me really feel like an expert and I saw classes like electricity and magnetism in my college curriculum was like, I want to study engineering because that’s where science and design and math and technology all meet up. I feel like it’s such a varied field you can do whatever you want with it.

[93-94; 94-98; 195; 207-211] At the end of my freshman year, I decided to declare my major as electrical engineering. I looked at the curriculums for each major. I read the descriptions of the classes and I felt pulled toward the more electromagnetism classes, along with courses focused on computer architecture and digital logic design.  I still don’t really know what I want to do as an Electrical Engineer. I have a lot of time to figure it out and develop that career path, but I really did like working with the hardware in front of me as I was trying to type out the software. I’m really hoping that my first co-op will give me sort of more insight into what there is out there because I don’t really know.  My first co-op starts in April at a steel mill and my first project is going to be I guess assembling, installing, and coding/setting up a robot arm which stamps steel-plates with their identification number.

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Anna’s Quotes #1

[116, 164-167; 168-181; 184-191] My freshman year I didn’t really take any electrical specific classes, instead I took general classes that seemed applicable to every other major such as English, Math, and Science. The only really exciting engineering part during freshman year was Engineering Design Lab. During the first term, we made a Rube Goldberg machine. I made the Rube Goldberg machine with my ex-roommate and ex-friends then I moved on to a better group and we made a LEGO robot that performed a series of specific tasks. The idea was you set the robot down in an arena and it went around and it picked up different canisters based on what color it was, it put it to different corners of the arena. During my last freshman term, I chose to do a self-directed project instead of a typical class where they give you all that instruction. So me and my two group members, who were also my group members for the robot, we chose a mentor who’s an assistant teaching professor at ‘northeast institution’.  We decided that we would be making a set of solar powered window blinds that raise themselves and lower themselves, powered by solar panels that are on the windows. One of my group members was responsible for the mechanical design of the gear system and the blinds and that ratio. My other team member was responsible for the solar panels and their integration into the circuit. I was responsible for the circuit, the controller, and programming the controller. During that project, I taught myself C++, which was very difficult but also a good thing to know. We just very barely got it to work by the end of the project when we were supposed to present it.

 

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Anna’s Quotes #2

[453-460] Jumping back into school from doing nothing to having no free time is killer. Some of my teachers are really, really good. They’re really smart and passionate about their subject and want you to learn, but they’re also some professors that I have that are not amazing in terms of lecture ability and ability to bring passion for the subject and ability to make you not hate them. It’s tough to find the will to pay attention during lectures, in, for example, Circuits II and Signals and Systems, but it’s really easy to follow along during Electronic Devices and Advanced Programming.

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Anna’s Quotes #3

[472-478] My electronic devices professor often, at the beginning of lecture, he usually sums up the last lecture. Just to remind you and get you back on the same page. He also does a very good job of writing on the chalkboard, which I like because it goes slow and you can see his thought process and follow along. He’s also very grounded in reality and gives you great examples of how it’s used and why it’s important all the time. He is funny, and he knows my name, and those are definitely bonus points for him, so it makes having to deal with Schrodinger’s wave equation a lot more digestible.

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Anna’s Quotes #4

[480-495] My Advanced Programing class is taught by this guy who is probably one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. He started out as an electrical engineer, even though he’s teaching at a computer engineering class. He worked for Microsoft and was a software developer and knows all these sorts of things that I couldn’t even begin to dream about learning about. He really teaches with a, listen, if you want to learn, you got to do it, you got to practice, you got to go out of your comfort zone, and he does not spare us on the difficulty on the homework assignments, labs, and midterms. I walked out of the midterm thinking I had gotten absolutely no more than a 50. I ended up with an 80, so that’s good. This is the first time he’s teaching the class, so he really still has the passion for it, but he definitely wants to teach us more than he can. One of the things I really like about him is that he is working on research outside of class to map neural networks. I mentioned that earlier as being on the forefront of science and technology, which it is, so yeah. That’s really exciting. I think what makes him a step above my Circuits professor is that he cares about if you’re paying attention in class. If you’re not, he’ll call you out on it. His lecture is still interesting. He cares about the subject matter. He cracks jokes and tells stories and things.

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Anna’s Quotes #5

[500-504] This one guy from my Signals and Systems class, he’s just annoying. He zooms through pages and pages of proofs at the speed of light and he says, “If you can’t follow this, maybe you’re better suited in Culinary Arts,” and stuff like that. So rude. He doesn’t even tell us anything other than what’s in the book. Why would I pay attention to him when I could just read it later and not be berated?

[524-528] After he makes rude statements, he just rolls through the material. Nobody talks through that class or anything. It’s not very interactive. It’s very much him telling you things and you writing it down as quickly as you can, and he’s going to keep on going. He’ll laugh at his own jokes, though. I saw a meme that one of my classmates made. They took a picture of him pointing at the board and photoshopped Culinary Arts onto it. Terrible.

[584-590] I absolutely love my TA for signals and Systems. She does such a better job than teaching than he does. She’s really pleasant. I have TA’s from pats terms that I really loved that when I walk by them on the street they’ll stop and talk to me and be like, “Hey, what’s up?” That’s so nice. Overall, you just get your normal distribution of people. There are nice ones, there are mean ones, there are people who are interesting to you and people who are boring. I feel like the staff of college pretty accurately reflects normal humanity

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Anna’s Quotes #6

[505-509] As for Circuits II, Keith is a really nice guy, but he’s just too mild mannered to be a good professor. He lets silence hang in the air after he asks a question, and he has a very quiet monotonous voice. His PowerPoints are great and easy to follow, and he does a good job of breaking up the subject matter, but he’s just too awkward to be a good lecturer.

[512-515] Yeah. He’ll half ask a question, like he’ll ask a question but not in a way that you know you have to answer it. He’ll be like, “So, the gain for this amplifier is” … Just like that the entire class on repeat and it’s like you don’t know if that’s a question or if he’s just trying to build up to an answer or thinking about it. Just so annoying.

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Anna’s Quotes #7

[636-638; 643-650] The classes that I’m taking are interesting and relevant. Also, I have won two awards from doing well in my extracurricular activities. I’m going out of my way to try to incorporate engineering into the rest of my life, like for the project that I’m working on. I got the IT excellence award or whatever, because I’m on the IT team for my school’s newspaper. I did a lot of work for them this past term, and they appreciated that. I also won the multicultural award for really trying to participate in and go to every event by the Intercultural Community Bridge Program at my institution, which introduces international students to the culture of the local city, institution, and the United States. That was awesome. I really appreciate that. They’re not really like awards, but they’re something and I’m happy about it.

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