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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #14

[366-370] The first part of the CAD and Manufacturing, which we finished, was manufacturing. We talked about all sorts of different modes of manufacturing. The main two modes that we talked about were plastics and metals and injection molding and stuff like that for plastics. It was mostly casting and again, more molding for the metals. Now, we’re into the CAD portion of the class.

[371-375] On that first project that I mentioned was where we were designing a very simple thing like the wrench in CAD. The second project was more complicated. We designed a bike in CAD. Next, we’re going to be using CAD for analysis of a thing, not sure exactly what we’re doing with that because we just started talking about it yesterday. But we’re going to be analyzing things with CAD.

[378-382] All of the projects in that class, I believe, are solo. But you’re allowed to work with someone, like hey, if your friend is also designing a bike, y’all can work together to be like, “Hey, this is how we would make handlebars.” You can’t submit the same project. But you can help each other out. He’s perfectly fine with that.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #15

[455-461] As far as my research, none of my classes really line up with the research that I’m doing. I’d say that the closest one is my lab class because I have to write lab reports for that. Writing a paper for the lab is like the closest I am going to get to my classes this semester. But next semester I signed up for a magnetism class as an elective. I might have a step ahead in the magnetism portion. But as of right now, none of my classes really have anything to do with what I’m doing with my work.

[466-476] Since none of my courses align with the research, when I first started doing the simulations, I sat next to my boss and watched what he did for the simulations. Then took notes from what he was doing so that I would be able to run the simulation. But during my internship over the summer, I still had a really basic idea of what the OOMF software was. But one of the people at my internship is someone who programmed the OOMF software. I’d go down to his office and be like, “Please help me. I don’t understand what this his.” He would explain how to do the thing in OOMF. Occasionally I still email him and be like, “Hey, so this thing, how does it work?” He made the program, so he knows everything about it. It was a combination of watching other people and then having someone who knows a lot about the program being able to help me when I needed it.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #16

[413-420] The paper that I’m on, I didn’t actually do any of the writing for it. I just did some simulation work for it. But my name got put on the paper. The project I did over the summer was the skyrmions and modeling them. I’m going to be helping one of my coworkers write that paper. He’s a grad student in the lab I’m in. But because I did all of the modeling work and then I’ll be helping write that because I’m that one that knows what I did. While he doesn’t know as much what I did. So, my name’s going to be on that paper, too.

[423-435] We have three graduate students in my lab. One of them started just recently, this semester. I haven’t really interacted with him much because it’s his first semester as a grad student, he’s mostly doing classes and stuff, I think. But the other two I have been working with since I got to the lab. One of them isn’t working on the same projects that I am, but if I have a question about some simple magnetism things, he can typically tell me an answer. Then the other one is the one I’m going to be working on the paper with. We’re working on the same project. I interact with him the most, even though our class schedules don’t line up all that well. We typically leave notes for each other. I’ll be like, “Hey, I re-ran the simulation and here are the changes. Here’s the data so that you can look at it.” And then he’ll leave me a note and be like, “Hey, can you change the exchange energy, make it higher so that we can see if that helps make it better?”

[597-603] Overall, it was fun doing something new for research. My skyrmions and my gadolinium iron sample. That was mine. It was new. No one else had looked at it yet. I’m sure people had looked at gadolinium iron before, but not the same that I had. Once I get the paper out, more people are going to build off of that. It’s different than, “Hey, I made a cool new bike pedal.” And then someone else being like, “I added ridges to the bike pedal. Isn’t it cooler?” It seems more awesome when it’s something completely new.

[701-709] However, before the summer, before I really started in the lab that I’m in, I was totally just believing I would finish my undergrad and then get a job and then work until I retired. But over the summer and doing research and being involved in that has definitely made me lean more towards going into research, which would mean going into more school. Because it was definitely something I enjoyed and found interesting and would be happy doing in life. My classes so much this year, they’re just sort of classes I need to continue on to next semester where I’ll have some more fun ones. They’re just a steppingstone to continuing.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #19

[128-131] In addition to coursework, I’m still a research assistant. I’m actually going to be on a published research paper pretty soon for a project that I did some simulations for. That should be coming out in the next month or so. And then I’m also working on helping write another paper for some work I’ve been doing on high entropy alloys lately. So, it’s going pretty well. And I’m really excited about it.

[135-144] So for the paper that’s about to be published, all I did was run some simulations. So, the only person I personally worked with was my boss, who gave me the assignment. But there’s some other people on it that I don’t really know. I’m just sort of a footnote in it. For the high entropy alloy paper, I’ve mostly been working with my boss, one of my co-workers, and then there’s another lab on my campus that’s been trying to do some machine learning on our high entropy alloy sample that we have, to try and have a computer guess […] well I guess not guess, but like learn, where different properties of the material will happen in different parts of the film that we had built. So, I’ve been doing that, and I haven’t really had a part in the machine learning thing, because I don’t know much about machine learning myself. I’ve mostly been taking samples from our thin film, measuring magnetic properties, and plotting it out and pulling data from the graphs that we have.

[173-176] In addition to data collection, I will be helping to write the paper, and then I’m also making the majority of the figures that we have for the paper. So, I’m the one that made most of the graphs already. So, I’m the one that’s able to quickly […] and be like, “Oh, I know exactly where that is in all of the files,” and pull it out and put it into a picture. And I’ll be helping with writing a little bit.

[193-196] As far as my research, I would say it’s mostly learning from the professor I work with, but I have read a couple of papers here and there, to learn some stuff on my own. But most times when I’m told to do something, like if I don’t know what it is, the professor will go through and be like, “Hey, yep. Here’s what it is. There you go. You’re all good.”

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quotes tchuck

Tchuck’s Quotes #17

[678-685; 76-80] Overall, the study groups really helped me in terms of the couple of hot points that were my exam grades. So, that was good. I mean, yeah. I will say that, not even group, just friends in general definitely helps with the hot points I would say. Just, find people and talk to people. My roommate and me talk about stuff all the time because we’re literally there, 24/7, which also is just another big change in how kids […] Now I’m home and I’m around my whole family, which is great, although and sometimes it’s not. But, it’s just a completely different, again, environment situation. So, just got adapt a little bit. However, I think not being on campus is definitely going to hinder me because I do think that being on campus, especially with my roommate that was an engineer, as well as being around other engineers all the time, definitely helped me navigate engineering

[643-667] Now that I’m home, fortunately, one of my friends, he’s my friend from high school that’s also doing biomedical engineering, who I also have all my classes with this semester still, he lives like, five, 10 minutes away. So, maybe not necessarily now because all the shit is going on, but relatively in the future maybe we can get together and work on stuff. There’s also plenty of people that I can just FaceTime or text and stuff and basically get help with or help out or just talk to. Because, again, I think that’s the biggest difference because I think that, I will still be able to stay on top of my work. I’ll have literally nothing to do. I won’t even be able to leave the house. So, obviously, I’m going to be on top of all my work.   I think that just the biggest thing is probably the, not the social, but I guess the, study groups thing. I do think that genuinely helped a lot. And also one of the things that we’d figured out for orgo would be we all take the quiz together, because, the way that it works is, when someone’s missed it, then you get all the answers for the quiz. So then, you have to game the system a little bit. There’s just a lot of little things and, I’m just being completely honest with you because, if you’re going to give us that situation, we’re all smart kids, we’re all going to take turns, we’re all eat the one […] We don’t even do bad when one person does that, because we all worked together on the problem. We’re still all doing the quiz, we’re just doing it all together so that way it doesn’t affect our grade. When, okay, so we all got four questions wrong, but guess what? We all could have gotten them right if one person is submits it. And like, “Okay, I’d rather have the grade boost and I’ll eat the one week you eat the next week, whatever.” We’re still learning on the material. But, yeah. I think other people are also trying to set up that type of stuff again too. So, I do think a lot of it’s just going to be trying to still, consistently do what we were doing, just obviously, adapting to the new situation that we’re in now.

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anna quotes

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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john quotes

John’s Quotes #2

[260-270] We had to make ten designs that could work for a group project, and I worked on the wheels. I think me and two of the group members worked on the programming, because I think he had prior experience before. And, in the end, when our design wasn’t up to par from what we thought we would get, or what we would need, like we couldn’t even get the robot to turn when that was one of our main commands. We learned that the TA really liked Christmas, so we put a Christmas hat on it, and Christmas designs, and we ended up getting extra credit. Yeah. It was a fun, silly project where we learned rudimentary designs, and rudimentary programing, but I still think it was worth it for my group.

[274-280] We were all willing to work on the group project equally. We didn’t argue about it. We wanted to work as a group, and even though we differed in design ideas, we still came through, and we still talked about it, and we compromised about design. My girlfriend’s group, that one guy did not want to talk about his design, he didn’t want compromise. He was the only person that he let work.

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