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amanda quotes

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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josh quotes

Josh’s Family & Childhood

[11-15] I come from a middle class family, and I’m an only child. My father went to vocational school for construction, sprinkler fitting, and that was the maximum amount of education he had. My mother went to college. She’s a nurse, and she recently got her master’s. I have a big family; I have some people who have gone to college and some people who haven’t.

[101-112] My parents never really told me what to do. They were always kind of in the mindset of, “Do what you want, do what makes you happy, we’ll support you.” Whatever I decide is fine, so I never really had a reason to go anywhere because of them. I think from the beginning, my mind was pretty set on a science field so it didn’t take a lot of encouragement to pursue that.

[19-24] When I was in middle school, I changed my desires to reflect more programming and computer based design, I was looking at game design and stuff like that. It wasn’t until I got in high school and I started taking the programming courses that I decided to go to computer science. And then when it came down to time to choose my major, I had gotten sick of the programming but I still liked the problem solving and working hands on.

[101-112] One big influence that I did have was my cousin. The way high school in my district worked was when you pick your classes for your freshman year of high school, you decide whether or not you want to go to the vocational school half day and then, after that first year, you can decide to go full day or still half day. My cousin, who is three or four years older than me, went to the same district I did. He went to the vocational school for computer design. He originally wanted to be a roller coaster engineer and I remember growing up and seeing all the things he was doing and I was like, “That’s really cool.”

[115-121] So, he was definitely one of the people who got me interested in the computer aided part of engineering, and he’s definitely the one who I think got me really interested in the design aspect and kept me centralized around that area. But otherwise, it wasn’t really people telling me to go here or go there. I had this idea from the get go and people would kind of just positively reinforce. If they asked what I wanted to do, I’d say engineering or computer science and they’d be like, “That’s a good profession.” Or, “I think you’d succeed there.” Or something like that.

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josh quotes

Josh’s Quotes #1

[25-31] So, I came back to engineering and I chose mechanical because of my like to be hands on and to have an end product to hold in my hand. My family was definitely very supportive of everything I did, and they’re the reason that I’m able to come to school today. But I definitely think it was my own interest and desires that led me to engineering. I think it was a lot of deliberation on what each profession means and what’s involved in it, and I found that engineering was the one that fit the bill for most of the things I enjoyed doing.

[146-151] I was like, “I want to design things because I know how things work, I enjoy doing math, I feel like I could succeed.” So, this is why I decided I wanted to be an engineer, and then I looked at schools. I found my university because I found schools based on location. I wanted to be independent from my family but I wanted to be close enough that if I needed to be there, or I needed to be with them, the opportunity was available.

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josh quotes

Josh’s Quotes #9

(230; 501-502; 506) So I still don’t have a co-op. I actually have an interview today at 1:30, a phone interview at 1:30. I didn’t include it on the journey map, I forgot to. But part of that last up curve I’d say was procuring the phone interview I have today. Slightly nervous, very confident.

(259-262; 264-267) So with this one, this company that I am interviewing with today, they design and manufacture pipe fittings. And my dad was a sprinkler fitter for 35 years. And when I told him that I applied at this company, that they want to interview me, he said that he worked with their products. So that’s one thing that I will plan to be using as an “in” into the company, to say hey, I know your products are good, I have primary source knowledge of this, and I want to be a part of that process.

(106-111) I definitely am not ready to go into the workforce as an engineer. I would say I’m getting closer. This summer I’ll be going through my first co-op internship. So I think once that happens I’ll feel a lot closer because I’ll start to get work experience in. I feel very confident in my problem solving skills and my ability to work on a team. So in that sense of an engineer, I feel very confident.

(476-480) I was not very involved before I came to college. I never considered myself a leader. I considered myself a follower. But since I’ve come to school I think I’ve developed the leadership and communication skills necessary, not only to succeed in my field, but also to move forward in life and be able to interact with the people I meet in my daily life and in my professional life in a way that we can collaborate efficiently and cohesively.

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Josh’s Quotes #15

[317-335] During winter break, I went home for Christmas, and was able to see my family. I felt happy with that. Then I was starting in a new job. The interesting thing about this job, last summer when I got my internship, I had applied to probably 20 or so places. That was the one place that gave me an offer. It wasn’t like my last choice. It ended up being really the perfect choice for me, it just fell into place. But this time around I knew I wanted to stay on campus. That limited my search to somewhere within 20 miles so that I didn’t want to commute very long every day from campus. I waited probably almost halfway through the semester just looking at places, thinking, “Would this be a good match? What do I want to do?” Then an opportunity opened up at a company that I knew about, but I forget what I thought they did. But it didn’t sound interesting. Then I was like, “Well, now I’m interested.”

I kind of put all my eggs in one basket. If at any point there’s a disclaimer you can put in, I would say, I don’t recommend that people do that. It’s very risky and I probably wouldn’t do it again. But I reached out to the company, I had contacts who were alumni. I went the extra mile and I wrote a cover letter, I got letters of recommendation if I needed them. I applied for only that job because it was the only job I wanted and it’s the job I got. I got really lucky there. Well, I guess not lucky, I guess, I earned what I got in my opinion. But that’s I think important as well.

[339-361] A professor that just retired from our school was actually an employee at the company at one point. I reached out to her and she gave me some tips and tricks, and she was happy for me. I had the people in the alumni department that hooked me up with someone in the company that would put in a good word for me. Those connections were good too. I think those resources were crucial in getting me in, getting my interview, and securing the position that I really wanted.

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josh quotes

Josh’s Quotes #17

[16-24] Early on in the internship, I ended up getting sick and I had to go home. I ended up being out for a week with flu like symptoms. Then, I came back to work and I started to pick up and it was easier to do what I needed to do. Then, my grandmother passed away, which was a minor setback in the work place. I had to leave for a day to come home and take care of that. Then once I got back to work, I didn’t really have anything else going on. That learning curve was also starting to, like I said, level out. Work started to get easier and I started to enjoy it a lot more of the time. Not to say I didn’t enjoy it before, but it definitely, like I said, at points was frustrating. Then as the job got easier, I enjoyed it more.

[191-207] The learning curve began to level out because I kind of figuring out little tips and tricks. Just doing it, taught me how to do it. I don’t want to say I was very quick to go ask for help. Because I would look at a problem and I would try to fix it myself before I would ask and bother someone else and waste their time. But my mentors and co-workers were always there to help me when I needed it. If not right away, within 15, 20 minutes. I leaned on them, they came and helped me. Every time something went wrong, I’d fix it and then maybe a few days later I’d get the same problem and I’d be like, “I remember how to fix this now.” Everything started coming together.

It came together for me in two ways. The first way is that, obviously you have a powerhouse. I’m sure you can imagine there’re hundreds, thousands if not millions of components in that structure. There are a lot of parts to learn. As I’m learning more parts of the powerhouse, and I’m understanding the parts, it makes it easier for me to design it because I know what I’m looking for at the end. That came together, but also learning how to use the systems where we store drawings. Learning how to make a bill of materials. As I started to see how the systems integrated into each other, I was like, “Okay, because I’m putting this in this system, then it can show up here so that this department can know that they have to do X, Y, and Z.” It was all of those things kind of together and not one really outweighed the other. They all kind of just kind of worked at the same pace to get me to the point where I was.

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josh quotes

Josh’s Quotes #23

[25-41] Prior to COVID, I went to a conference, I think it about a month ago now, for a weekend. This was my first time. Then after that, that week was when my school decided to close campus. We have the option to request to stay. I didn’t request it because I had some stuff at home to take care of and they were closing everything on campus. Which means I wouldn’t have anywhere to go for food and there’s no library if I want to go, anything like that. I decided that I was going to […] I guess I should have mentioned, they closed for two weeks. That was the original plan. That they were going to close campus for two weeks. I said, I’ll take two weeks and then I’ll come back. I made the request so that I would be able to come back on March 31st, the current at the time date. I came home and then the next week the governor decided to shut down everything. That meant I couldn’t go back to school. In the past week and a half, two weeks, however long it’s been since then, the school, they first extended the shutdown through the 14th of April. Then they have now extended it indefinitely through the end of the spring semester.

[300-310] Given the nature of the issues, I lean on my family a lot. Like I said, when I got sick, I came home, I laid on my couch all day for a week because that’s all I could do. My family was nice enough to take care of me and give me what I needed to feel better. Then of course, grandmother passed away, so I went home. Now that I can’t be at school working, I’m at home. My family has really been, I guess, the contact point there. Of course, I mean, I do talk to my friends a lot at school or the friends that I still have from home. I keep daily conversations with them. That was also helpful. Another thing is, since I don’t have schoolwork to do in the evenings and on the weekends, it gives me time to focus on when I want to go to the gym. It also gives me time to go on hikes, something that I enjoy doing. That was also helpful to clear my head in those times when maybe my family was busy and I needed to do something for myself.

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joy quotes

Joy’s Childhood and Family

[3-4; 5-8; 18-24; 49-50; 58-59; 67-68] So my mom is a teacher and I was originally going to be public schooled, but at the age of four I asked my mom to teach me how to read. So, she ended up teaching me how to read and then one thing led to another and then I was homeschooled from kindergarten through high school. When I first became interested in engineering when I was younger, I would help my dad with projects around the house and enjoyed hands on learning. I was in sports from age 10 through 14 and then at 14 I joined robotics and was in that all the time. And then in high school I joined a robotics team, a FIRST Robotics Team. I learned about FIRST Robotics through one of my homeschool friend’s mom. She was heavily involved in it as a volunteer. I joined because my best friend was also on the team.

[74-80] I started out of on the woodworking team because I knew that I wanted to do hands on things but working with wood is more forgivable and safer than working with metal. And it is not as expensive either. They had me working with things like drills, hand tools, calipers, and tape measurers. After my first year, I switched over to the mechanical sub-team where I was working on CNC machinery and metal, steel, acrylics, and Polycarp net.

[97-121] When it was time to apply for colleges, I visited a ‘midwestern university’. Originally, I said, “No, this is too expensive, and their engineering program is not what I want. I want something more like another ‘midwestern university’.” Then, I visited a few other smaller schools, but I chose my current ‘midwestern university’ based on a price comparison between the two schools. I believe that the other ‘midwestern university’ would have made the best mechanical engineer or environmental engineer, but I wanted to a general engineering degree and to be close to my family. Also, the professor to student ratio is 1:20. The professors are willing to help outside of class and get to know you on a personal level. I also found that their graduates actually get jobs.

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joy quotes

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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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Childhood & Family

[6-7; 23-24; 31-37; 69-75] I’ve grown up in ‘southern region’ for the grand majority of my life. I lived six weeks in ‘rocky mountain region’, but then my family moved to ‘southern region.’ My high school is right next to the local ‘southern region college’. Yeah, I had to test to get into my high school. They took our state testing results. You had to have a certain grade to get into the school, but the school was a public school. You just had to maintain a couple of other things, like you had to get a hundred service hours throughout high school, take multiple AP classes. When we did classwork and stuff, it was kind of silly, but we had to write “always my best” on the top. Everyone kind of laughed at that. They did push you to try and do really good.

[46-48; 56-58] Throughout my four years of high school, I took human geography, psychology, environmental sciences , US history, German, bio, government and macroeconomics. I also took four years of my high school’s engineering classes such as 3D modeling and mechanics. My first engineering class involved drawing a lot of diagrams, which I didn’t enjoy, but the second year we did a lot of CAD work, Computer Aided Design, and I really loved working with that. During the third year of high school, we talked about springs and motiwon and linear motion and stuff like that and we built some things. My friend and I tried to build a grabber arm for an arcade machine out of cardboard and duct tape and pneumatics. It didn’t work the best, but we were the cheapest budget.

[75; 91-92; 95-99] Then, during senior year, it was all about my senior thesis. We chose to design a cleaning device for wheelchairs because one of my best friends in ‘southern region’ is wheelchair-bound. So, I’d been out at dinner with him and he went to go wash his hands before food. When he came out of the restroom, his hands were dirty again. There had been something on the floor that got onto him, so I mentioned it to my ‘team partner’ when we were brainstorming ideas for our project and we were like, “Wow, let’s see if we can do something to help that.”. As a result, we designed the device to clean the hand rims as you rolled the wheelchair around.

[77-84; 64-67] My ‘Team partner’ and I spent a lot of time on the design project. We had three hours in class every week to work on the project and outside of class, me and her would meet up for around seven hours on the weekend to work on it and sometimes we met after class too. We used the ‘southern region college’ to 3D print parts for us. We would sand the parts down and make them cleaner and then assemble them together. We had to write a paper to go with the project and we wrote more than anyone else in the class had written, which we didn’t need to do, but we felt everything was important. We stood in the gym for a while and professional engineers and other professionals came through and listened to our spiel about the product. We had a prototype and we had a really cool bulletin board. I’m still really proud of that project. I really enjoyed the senior, engineering project, so I decided I would try and go into that for my life.

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