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joy quotes

Joy’s Quotes #16

[237-242] The engineers were very kind, and I learned a lot from them. And I’m more confident in my ability to go through the engineering process of, “We have a need. How do we solve that need,” and how to get from Step A to B to C and finally putting it on the machine. Because it was a small company, I was able to actually see the very start all the way to actually shipping it out on the unit that the customer was going to use.

[137-152] Then, at the end of the internship, I worked on modifying one of their vehicles that they had to accommodate a fifth wheel. So, I researched what kind of fifth wheel we would want. And a fifth wheel is something that’s on the back of a trailer, or, sorry, on the back of a semi that the trailer hooks into. So, it has the kingpin from the trailer that goes in, and it latches into the fifth wheel. And that’s what allows a trailer to rotate on the back of a semi. I worked on that, changing one of their pre-made units that they keep in-house, and they don’t sell, to be able to have a fifth wheel that they can then haul their semi-trailer with. Because, they need to use that trailer in order to haul some of the units that they are shipping to the companies. Cause, right now, we ask our trucking company to come and take our vehicles. Cause, you can’t ship these things on a plane. They are way too heavy. So, we hire a company to pick up the unit and drive it to the west coast. But we would like to use our own trailer from now on. Then, when we’re moving stuff around our plant, it’s nice to have our own way to move our unit from one end to the other without having to drive it from down the property

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joy quotes

Joy’s Quotes #33

[520-536] In addition to managing coursework, I’ve been applying to internships. Now that I’ve been home for awhile, it’s given me time to apply. My dad is a computer science major and has helped me with resumes, and has lots of connections. So, we applied to a place […] We applied to a place last night and he had connections there. So, hopefully that one will work out, and I just need to find an apartment in a nice neighborhood and hope that this whole coronavirus thing will allow me to have a job in two months. Because if I don’t get my practicum this summer, technically you’re not allowed to graduate, because my engineering program requires that you have one internship. Your academic advisor has to meet with your employer and ask them questions about how capable a student is and their verbal communication skills, communication skills, work ethic, ability to problem solve, that kind of stuff. So, I need that before I graduate. I graduate next year, which means this is my last summer. But on the other hand, I understand that there are so many people in the same situation that the university may just have to adjust something. And it may be that my job that I get, after I graduate, they will count that as a practicum for the first two months.

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joy quotes

Joy’s Quotes #34

[637-641] Overall, I think the last few months have been a positive. It’s been a boost into the right direction that I’m starting to feel more like an engineer, specifically with the problem-solving skills. I feel confident that I can solve problems with enough time. So, I think this year has been a great learning experience and that it’s going to help me get a job this summer and a job after I graduate as well.

[643-652] After I graduate, I hope to work in manufacturing. Another option that I’ve been holding onto in the back of my mind is getting my master’s in prosthetics and orthotics. But, at the current moment, I have not pursued anything to do with biomedical careers, or master’s programs. So, I am currently looking to work in industry, and I’ve always enjoyed manufacturing. So, the summer I applied to a car transmission vehicle transmission, manufacturing company. So, I want to be a quality engineer. Of all the places that I’ve job shadowed, I liked that role the best out of the places that I’ve looked at. And the internship I applied for as a quality systems engineer, an intern.

[655-672] I’m interested in working as a quality engineer because I personally do better when I’m improving things as opposed to inventing things from square one. And I enjoy patterns and numbers and I enjoy things that are symmetric and make sense like that, and fixing things that don’t quite look right. So quality is a huge part of who I am as a person. I job shadowed a biomedical company a couple years ago, and they gave me a different person to shadow, it was really nice, every hour of the day, and I was there for eight hours. So I got a wide view of their company and I was interested. So the quality engineer, I sat in on one of her meetings, and I liked how they went through the document and were able to view the data, and see how it was calculating the percentage of error and then going on to the actual plant floor and looking at the machines that are not doing so well, or looking at test pieces that came out that are like defective and measuring them with calipers or micrometer. Afterwards I realized that I enjoyed that part of my day.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #8

[82-87; 112-118] This summer I spent a lot of time in a state in the mid-Atlantic during my internship. The internship was at a national research laboratory. It was a 12-week program where you go and you mentor underneath one of the researchers there. You work on one project over the summer. Because of my placement, I got to shoot neutron rays at these samples and see what happened to them. I got to analyze that, and it was really awesome and really cool. The people I worked were also amazing.

[163-169] Originally when I went in, I was scared of everyone including my mentor over the summer, even though I had previously talked with him. But I had never seen him face-to-face. I was like, “Oh, my god. These people are so smart and I’m going to say something dumb and they’re going to kick me out.” I mean they wouldn’t kick me out, but you get sort of terrified of that when you go into a situation like that in my opinion. But even if I asked the same question three times, they always explained it to me, which was really comforting.

[170-175] But just watching them be able to do their work, it was amazing. Even if I was helping out, it was crazy seeing how much more they could do. Originally I thought I wanted to go into industry, but just seeing how cool all of the research is, even not just this project I was on, but the projects my friends were working on, and the other projects my mentor was working on, it was amazing hearing everything about it. Just like they were all so smart and it was amazing.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #9

[522-530] My internship was also mostly scary because one, I had never been to the state before. Two, I didn’t have my car, so I walked to work and eventually got a ride from one of my coworkers. I was scared that they would look down on me, too. Sometimes, I don’t often have a country accent, but sometimes I have a Southern accent. At one point someone pointed out that I say “iron” weird. I-R-O-N. I was also sort of scared that they would see me as dumb just because sometimes I have a Southern accent because I grew up in the South. I didn’t want to look stupid is basically the whole point. But I was scared. I just didn’t want to be stupid.

[183-192] I’m not a biology person, but half of my peers studied biology or stuff like that. And half of us were assigned to physics-based projects, which is what I was on. Even with talking with the biology-ish people about their projects, we were able to help them out like, “Hey, did you think to do this?” They would put forth good input when we were talking about problems with our projects. I still talk with them even though they’re all over the US now. We’re not together, but we still talk to each other. We have a group chat. Someone the other day posted a picture and was like, “Hey, we did this.” Because they had learned about something we had done in their class.

[197-207] At the laboratory, we all did experiments with neutrons. We all had either reflectometry or SANS, which is Small Angle Neutron Scattering data. There are certain ways that you can look at the data. I was looking at data for magnetism stuff mostly. I had learned some tips or tricks with maybe the small square to get it to show the magnetism data. One of my friends would be like, “Hi, I don’t understand what this is.” And I would be like, “Hey, that looks like the [inaudible 00:16:11] from my data. Let’s click here and see what happens.” Or sometimes it was just like, “Hey, did you think to rotate the sample?” If you hadn’t rotated it and you were wondering why you couldn’t see anything, sometimes it would just be there was a commonsense thing. Just you didn’t think of that approach.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #10

[96-99] Then at the end of the internship, we had a really huge presentation. Getting ready for the presentation was absolutely terrifying, but I was still having a lot of fun working on it.

[211-217] For the presentation, we first had to write up I think a 300-word abstract. I remember everyone, at least in the room I was in, we all wrote up our abstracts and sent it to each other on Google Docs. We went through and we edited each other’s abstract. Someone would realize that you had a grammar error, and someone would be like, “This isn’t what the definition of this word is.” We all went through and we tried to make each other’s abstracts as good as they could be.

[218-224] Then the presentations, they were PowerPoint presentations. We, at least in the room I was in, we practiced our presentations with each other. While we were making the presentations, I could lean over to the person next to me and be like, “Hey, how does this look?” And they’d be like, “Hey, you need to move the picture. It’s too big.” Or something like that. We were just trying to make sure that everyone’s looked as good as it could, so we would all look good because we would all have amazing presentations.

[225-228] Then, when we were practicing our presentations, they would help with being like, “Hey, I don’t understand what this is. You need to explain this more.” Or, “Hey, you’re going way too fast. Breathe. Slow down. You have 15 minutes and you need to fill it.” We just supported each other.

[153-157] It was only that project that I did my presentation over. There were a bunch of scientists and people there watching and that’s what was so stressful because they were all really smart people with doctorates, or they were post-docs and stuff like that.

[514-521; 99] During my presentation, I was terrified that they would ask me a simple question and I would completely blank out. They may ask what’s a cell? And I’ll be like, “Oh, my god. What is a cell?” I was just sort of terrified of forgetting something simple and fundamental and looking like an idiot in front of all of these professional people. I wasn’t so scared that they would ask me a really complicated, in-depth question that I would forget. I felt like you would be more excused if you’re like, “Yeah, sorry. I’m an undergrad. I don’t know.” But I was just scared I would forget something simple. There was relief after the presentation. Ah, it’s done.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #11

[590-594] Overall, my experience at the research laboratory and experiencing the research made me want to do research more in life before I went there. I definitely have been considering doing research for a job. Designing something… designing it, researching it, testing it, writing a paper on it. That’s more of what I want to do now. It was so enjoyable.

[584-587] It was less engineering at the research laboratory than more research. Yeah, sure people had engineering degrees, but they were doing science and research. I don’t feel like I earned an engineering star and a pat on the back. It’s more like a research star and a pat on the back.

[232-237] However, transitioning back to school was miserable because I had three days between when I finished my internship to move into my apartment. Then school started. It was just stressful trying to get all of my furniture moved in, and then unpacked and everything cleaned. And making sure I had paper and pencils and stuff for school. There just wasn’t enough time. If I had had a couple more days, it wouldn’t have been as miserable.

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lauren quotes

Lauren’s Quotes #23

[444-447] Once classes end, I plan to continue doing research. Hopefully I can go to the lab this summer, you know, depending it’s not canceled. If it is canceled, I’ve already worked it out with my boss. I can still work in the lab over the summer. So, I can continue doing research, just, it won’t be at a really cool lab.

[452-458] The more I do research, the more I want to do it for a living, because it is really fun figuring something out, and like, in the works I’m trusting. And typically, there’s more than one project going on, so if I get annoyed and not making any progress with the thing I’m working on, I can go and help someone else with their thing. Or sit there and be the rubber duck as they explain how it works to me. So, if they can figure something out themselves. You know, there’s just always something going on, so it’s less likely to be bored. And I enjoy it, and I think I would want to do it for the future.

[462-464] It’s not set in stone yet, but I do think I would like to go to grad school so that I could do research for a living. Maybe not in magnetism forever. Maybe I’ll find something else that I really like to do, but I am enjoying the research, and I think I want to continue doing that during my career.

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quotes tchuck

Tchuck’s Quotes #2

[94-99] This summer I ended up going back to my warehouse job that I’ve been working since senior high school. I’ve already started applying for internships now, and I plan to continue until I eventually land one, and even then, probably still after just to get more options.

[105-121; 124-129; 191-192] This semester I’m taking all biomedical engineering classes: Foundations in Mechanics, Physiological Foundations, and Electro Foundations. Funny enough, all three of the classes are literally in the same classroom, and it’s a three minute walk from my dorm, which is nice. Most of the teachers use the time as a double lecture period, instead of using the period for lab. Like Literally, on most days I end up sitting in that classroom for hours, and literally sometimes I don’t even move. On Friday’s, we have class from 9:30 am to 2:00 pm, and it’s two different classes, but they’re all in the same classroom so we sit there the whole time, which I don’t know, it’s not too bad. But for mech founds, I think I do like this professor the best.

[130-136; 192-193] He’s very, very smart. He basically does most of his examples off the top of his brain. He makes a problem and solves it himself, which he does mess up every now and then, but for the most part he’s pretty good about it and if he does mess up. Literally after class, he’ll go back to his office and solve it and then email us the solution for it, but yeah he’s pretty good. He goes through the problems a little fast. It is complicated topics, but it’s not too bad. I can still follow for the most part, and then if you have any questions, he is always able to answer them. Also, we haven’t done any labs. I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think we’re doing any labs for mech founds.

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quotes tchuck

Tchuck’s Quotes #18

 [909-922] This summer I’m not doing anything, as of right now.  Ideally, I’d like to get an internship. I got on a phone interview with someone but, I don’t know. From what he told me, he said that, I seem too technical because, I think the specific position was for, basically, I don’t know. To put it really, really simply, like ordering types of drugs. But, it also had to do a little bit with getting with the manufacturer and looking at prices and stuff. A little bit more to the business side of things of which he said that, my background was a little bit too technical, he thought probably. So, then I didn’t end up getting that one. And then, I applied to a bunch, I think Kenmore’s I got a call back from them. But then, again, nothing happened there either. So, yeah. It’s been a little bit of a frustrating process, but I’m still working on it right now. Don’t know if anything’s going to end up happening. Don’t really want to go back to the warehouse this summer though, so maybe I can find something else, but we’ll see.

[519-541] Once I graduate, I’m considering graduate school. I’m literally talking to my professor tomorrow, because I have to pick my classes on Monday for next semester and, I have to figure out what I’m doing. Because basically there’s a 5-in-1 and one program offered at my institution. And so, there’s two different versions of it as well. There’s one with research which I would continue take or I have to take clinic my senior year no matter what. But then I would continue doing whatever we should have been doing in clinic, my year after that. And then have a thesis at the end of that. And then I’d get a masters in biomedical engineering or there’s a track that’s not research. I would still have to do the senior year of research, but then, the year after that I wouldn’t do any more research and I would just take graduate classes. And then it would count as a master’s in engineering with a specification in biomedical engineering. That’s just what the degree is called. The one that doesn’t require research, I don’t have to apply to and I probably could just do if I wanted to. And then the other one I do have to apply to, but I was already talking to my professor and she seems all for […] Recommended me for it. And I would probably be able to do it. It just a matter of whether or not I want to do it, that’s the only issue.  Because I’m not sure how big of a fan I am of research because it definitely is frustrating. And it tests your patience a little bit. But I would also, like I told her, because in theory, I’m still going to take […] The way it would work is I would take graduate level courses next fall, next spring and then I think, that summer, fall and spring. And then that summer I would have to take classes so I could do it in the extra year. I’d have to take classes that summer and then, finish up like in fall and spring, with whatever on the class that I needed.

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