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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 #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 #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 #12

[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.

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Amanda’s Quotes #15

[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.

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Amanda’s Quotes #16

[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.

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Amanda’s Quotes #18

[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.

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Amanda’s Quotes #19

[44-48] Then, for the ergonomics type of class, that classroom experience is similar to the intro to human factors course with PowerPoints but it’s more words on it and bullet points that she talks about every bullet point. So, ergonomics is much more possible to take notes and also when you’re going to study for the exams you have help from the PowerPoints which you don’t have in the introduction to human factors class because sometimes it can just be a picture.

[53-55] In the intro to human factors course, we’re sitting in a lecture with no interaction with my peers. It’s more interaction in the ergonomics class because sometimes you really can-do exercises like measuring each other with different tools so then there’s interactions.

[60-67] The peer interactions in the ergonomics course involve using different tools to measure different body parts. It can also be like chair evaluation. So, you can walk around the whole campus to find different chairs and then you write about it. You have a checklist and everything like comfortable or whether you can adjust it, or you cannot adjust it and everything. Then you come back to class and then we’re presenting all the results. So, with the measurements we are saying yes, as you can see, I’m taller which means I also have larger feet. With the chair you could say the ones in the library where you sit for a long time those are more comfortable leather ones in comparison to chairs outside the classroom where you’re maybe not sitting for so long a time.

[72-74] Then we have a paper where we’re writing everything on just like the results of the person or a chair. At the end of the class, we just hand the paper in to her and as long as you complete it you always get 100% on that assignment.

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Amanda’s Quotes #20

[84-91] Engineering economics was a class which I looked forward to for a very long time since like sophomore year. Then, I got into class and now unfortunately I don’t like it at all because it’s a lot of work in Excel. I do like Excel. It’s not that issue. It’s more that it can be a problem and he can show the problem very quickly and you barely have time to read it. Then he has already solved the problem in Excel so it’s just going over the numbers very quickly in Excel. The issue with that is to understand Excel you need to see what’s inside every box because every box has a formula. So, he’s not teaching us what formulas are used when. It’s here you get a number and here you get a different number. So, most of us don’t understand anything. So, the classroom experience for engineering economics is not great.

[96-100] The time spent in the economics classroom is mostly a waste of time. I mostly go there just because it’s required attendance, but I don’t learn anything even though I try to pay attention. Then we have some homeworks that’s due. I have people that have taken the class before, so they have been very helpful. Some of their homework can be similar so then I learn by looking at the example and can implement it to my question. That’s how I’m managing the class.

[228-236] I have always been very interested in economics. I’m thinking about doing an MBA on that. I always thought it was important to, especially if you’re going to start a company not only knowing the engineering part of it but also knowing the business part of it so you can actually sell it. I actually didn’t really know what to expect from the course. I just thought the name was fun because I like engineering and I like economics so I thought hey, this can be something useful if I start a company one day. I will maybe learn what to think of and where to plan. Maybe it’s like how much of revenue are you spending on marketing. How can you come up with an investor offer and everything? But when I got there it was nothing like that. It was very focused on aerospace because we’re an aerospace school. I’m not that interested in aerospace.

[238-240] Overall, the main issue is because I don’t understand what’s going on in the class because you’re just going over some numbers without even showing how to get there. So, that’s the most disappointing part of the class.

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