[243-249] I had a good experience working with my group on this assignment. We all, funny enough, he did it randomly, but I mean, I know most the people in my class, because we’re all… Like I said, there’s only 30 or 40 of us in the biomedical engineering program. For the most part, I know everyone by at least name, and I’m friendly with most of them, or all of them a little bit at least, but the people I ended up getting grouped with I’m pretty close friends with. It ended up working out. We were fine together and we got everything done. I think the presentation went pretty well. He still hasn’t graded it though
Tag: peer interaction
[12] My last semester was really hard.
[102-120] Last fall involved a lot of studying, with a lot of people, I would say. I spent easily the most time in the library last semester than I have my entire college career. Just a matter of studying groups, just being in a quiet […] No, I mean, honestly, it was basically all with groups. Literally, people would just be in the library all the time. So, if you were just trying to study or whatever, people would just probably already be there. Or, we have group chat where you would just text and be like, “Yo, who wants to go to library and study?” And then, people would just show up and, I think that definitely was the biggest thing that got me through that semester. Because, I can study by myself; however, I don’t find it as helpful in my opinion because I like to bounce ideas off other people. I think two heads are better than one. You’re going to be able to figure out, maybe if I’m going to mess this up, okay, maybe you’re actually able to correct me on that. And I mess this up or then you mess this up and I help you on that or whatever. Stuff along those lines. Because I definitely saw that a lot in the group study sessions. And I mean, yeah. I think that’s the biggest thing. And then also, just staying on top of my stuff making sure my work didn’t get out of hand. Obviously, there’s levels of procrastination, I’m going to procrastinate a little bit. This is going to happen, but I just need to make sure that I don’t do it to ridiculous extremes where I’m stressing myself out so bad. I’m also typing up right up to the deadline, stuff along those lines.
[769-790] As far as my lab partner, she was really friendly honestly and that’s the biggest thing. Because, not that I’m not a friendly person, but I guess, I’m not that good at just, socializing right away basically. But she was and also, if I’m cool with that type of person, then I have no problem as well. So, I’ll say that, that definitely worked well. Then we got to know each other. We were able to just, basically go in the lab, we know what to do. We talk about it, we text. We’re literally, like I said, we’re working on the abstract for four hours yesterday, texting back and forth, trying to figure out what to write. So, I think that’s been good. And then my peers as a whole, last semester we were even more so all together because of the whole cohort thing. And then this semester we broke up basically, into more sectioned groups, obviously. Because, literally, like I said, you had to go down the path kind of thing. So then, now I’m with a more select group of people and to be honest, I probably like it more. Just because of the people that ended up having to be in the group. Not because I didn’t like the other people, just because, I think that me and these other people are able to like … Well, we actually were the people that would more specifically go to the library and study to be honest. Because not everyone would go and do it, but I was one of the people that would consistently do it. There was my friend that lives five tenants away. So, there’s a couple of other people and, a lot of these people are in the same classes that I am now, which again, still has helped me. Because then, I just get them to do the study groups within this stuff and I do the orgo quizzes and stuff along those lines. So, yeah. I think that my reaction has definitely been good, and it definitely has helped me overall.
[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.
[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.
[35-44] While I was abroad visiting family, a very I would say life altering incident occurred that really put me into a bad mental state. And I didn’t start dealing with it until I got back from my trip because when I was there, I wasn’t about to let it ruin the only time I saw my family in eight years. So, I deeply suppressed that, moved on. But then when I got back, I was really not feeling it. I wasn’t doing my homework or going to class. I started smoking cigarettes, and it was not good. Very, very not good. I basically stopped caring about school, and I let this one extracurricular project that I was doing, it’s a LiDAR project, I let that fall to the wayside, and we are no longer doing that project.
[225-232] Oh boy. Up until the point where we stopped, we had basically conceptualized the idea. And we knew what we wanted it to do and how we wanted it to do it. And we had bought parts, like a Raspberry Pi and wire strippers. And we found the resources that we would need to assemble our design. So, we checked out the machining lab on campus. But then, it all kind of fell apart from there. We got about half the things we needed and then we couldn’t really decide on a power source. And all of us were busy with classes and there was nobody really being like, “Come on guys, we can do it.” So, we didn’t do it.
[45-47] I think that is entirely my fault because I was the sort of rally for that group and the leader of it. And when I stopped making people do things, things stopped getting done.
[48-54] Also, I withdrew from a class because I couldn’t handle five classes at the same time. And I couldn’t handle waking up early and my sleep schedule was absolutely terrible. I was also in some trouble with two of my friends because we had a bit of an argument. So, I was unsure of the friendships, so I was really not good. The only highlights through that period of suffering were a couple of parties I went to where I saw my friends. And Valentine’s Day. I made Valentines for everybody. That was nice.
[175-182] I also took programing class, dynamic systems and stability, and Signals and Systems 2. I quite liked that class. The professor taught exclusively through writing things on the board, but he would always prove it. And you could tell in the way that he talked about the math that he really thought it was beautiful. And when a professor is enthusiastic about their subject, it just makes it so much easier to be enthusiastic about.
[183-193] And him not requiring you to turn in the homework was a definite bonus. And I was taking another class. What class was I taking? Let me check, because I do not remember. Okay. I was taking probability for engineers. That was one of the classes that suffered the most from me not wanting to do work because it had a constant weekly cycle of big homework sets due. And he graded it very rigorously and required attendance. All things that would help me learn the material if I didn’t have a backup of my friends who had taken the course last term and who helped me with the homework and things. So instead of paying attention in class, I just banked on Francis knowing how to solve probability density functions and things. I basically did the minimum amount of work in that class that I could, and my grade reflects that. It was tough
[210-218] So, I love math. Because if you have the basis to understand it, it turns into almost like a story. It builds off of itself and becomes really, really useful. And my teacher did a great job of leading us from one subject into the next, and proving it to us. The intermediate steps where he was like, “Well you know the Fourier transform that you’ve been doing this whole time, it’s actually much easier if you do a Laplace transform.” And here’s how we get from there to here. And the transitions from subjects and the way he really cared how they interacted, that was super helpful. Because other teachers will just jump from topic to topic and not explain how they’re related or show you the story.
[55-58] But things started getting a little bit better, started being able to handle it. And part of that was I made a new friend whose name is Oliver, and we got along really well and were able to talk about our problems. And that definitely helped.
[236-243] I met Oliver because we both spent an obscene amount of time at the library. So, I would always see him around and he would always see me around. And then one day we figured out that Francis who’s my friend, was also Oliver friend. Beautiful. So, we hung out in the library a couple times and then I was like, “Hey, I’m going to actually the Free Library. You want to come?” So, we went on a decently long walk over there. We checked it out. I got really excited about all the books. And we just had really good conversation and then we were friends.
[78-88] The incident kind of really messed with me. The things that did help were talking to my best friend who has gone through similar experiences, and reaching out to people who I know care about me. But the pivotal moment that turned me from just really super messed up to starting to be okay again was Oliver encouraged me to tell my parents what happened. And I feel like sharing that with them made me feel less like it was my burden and more like it was okay to talk about. And, I don’t know. I think the only reason I didn’t completely fail my classes is because I have friends in them and they would always be like, ” Anna, did you do the homework?” And I’d be like, “Oh, I guess I got to do the homework.” That sort of thing. Yeah. I don’t really know what else to say about that. Still working on it.
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Anna’s Quotes #15
[58-62; 63-77] So, I started getting back on track. Me and my peer Francis did an excellent job on a mutual inductance project for my favorite class that I was taking. And yeah, that was pretty cool. I got my belly button pierced and then I threw another party at the end of term. And then the coronavirus hit. And I moved back home, since the coronavirus hit. we were informed that all of our finals were going to be online. And I was like, “Oh, no.” It felt like I was ripped without warning from all the things that I liked and cared about. And it felt like I was in a nightmare where I was back in high school again. But, only the bad part was after school, couldn’t go out and see anybody. And it took me a hot minute to readjust to being at home and to remembering that I actually like my family.
[258-269] So for the first couple of weeks of COVID being a thing, I was like, “This isn’t a thing. Honestly, how bad could it really be? I didn’t know that much information about it.” And my parents were freaking out extra. So of course I took the opposite stance. And they convinced me to come home for finals week. And I didn’t want to, but I did for their peace of mind. And it kind of turned out to be the right thing I suppose. But I had to abruptly in one weekend move all of my stuff out of my apartment. I was planning on having about a week to do so, and drove all the way over to my internship. Living in this house, which is the same house that I lived in in high school. Having to come down when the bell rings for dinner and ask my parents to keep the wifi on it at night. And not being able to just call my friends and say, “Are you busy right now? Let’s go for a walk.” It was really a flip.
[270-274] Prior to COVID, I had planned on never living at home again. That’s part of the reason why I chose my institution because you’re busy throughout the whole year. And it was like wait, I’m backpedaling so far. I’ve come so far, and now I have to live at home again. And that was challenging to deal with, especially since each of my family members have their own brand of annoying.
[275-287] But once I sort of relaxed into it, my sleep schedule flipped back around to being more normal. And I got done with finals. I adjusted from having something to do at every hour of the day and having to do homework and seeing my friends, and sleeping very little, to having free time. So, I started filling it up with stuff that I actually really do like to do when I have time for it. I’ve been baking a lot of bread. I’ve been reading a lot of books. I made this. It’s a wire tree attached to a piece of driftwood. So, it’s been pretty good for my creative brain, I suppose. I taught my sister how to crochet. I started working out again, cooked with my father. And once I remembered that wait, there is stuff I can do, I’ve been okay with it since then. And it’s helped that my friends have actually been very good at keeping in touch. We’ll often play board games virtually or FaceTime, or just send each other bad Snapchats of each other’s faces. It’s good.
[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.