[58-115; 302-309] At the end of spring, I failed chemistry class since I wasn’t really interested. I’ve been having a hard time getting through the Gen Eds just because I don’t have the passion for it. I did well on the rest of my classes. That was pretty low for me, but overall I went up. The summer was very nice. I adopted a pigeon. I don’t feel like it’s necessary to censor that. I went back home. I went on vacation, getting ready for my new summer job. I was a camp counselor and a camp instructor. It was fun to interact with a lot of other STEM majors and with a lot of interested young adults. It makes me feel better self-confidence and eye-opening. I went to several tours of places related to engineering. I really want to internship with one of them, so I’m going to contact them privately. I taught soldering, 3-D modeling, SolidWorks, and Rhinoceros 6. Summer was the highest point because that job was very fulfilling. I started to lower down as the summer job ended. I was ready for starting a new semester. Being at home is kind of suffocating just because there’s not much for me to do that is engaging and enriching for my brain. I got a new e-board position. I became the president of a club. That has been a good hobby to get me off of worrying about classes. Lately for the past few weeks, I’ve been on the decline just because I’m retaking Physics 2 for the third time. It is a problem that I still don’t have a plan or the energy to get through them now, so I’m struggling. Another huge problem was that I didn’t have a creative outlet anymore. All of my class are math-based and have nothing to engage me on a creative side, so I started looking to music. I try to do that when I can because it also takes me away from the math monotony. I feel more hopeful that I have been in the past few weeks, and the antidepressants started working. I felt happy to finally feel that way. Overall, it’s expected to be generally lower during the degree because I know for a fact the degree is hard. But going through this experience will be worth it in the long run. I don’t mind a little low point as long as at the end of tunnel I get a fulfilling job and a fulfilling paycheck.
[144-163] For counseling, because each week we had a different camp, we actually had several camps that people could go to. It was called Engineering Careers and was focused on various skills that an engineer should have. We took a tour of Engineering Building in my school. We saw multiple rooms that I haven’t even seen before. We saw various testing labs and huge workshop facilities. The next week, I counseled for games and puzzles. We were off campus to a forest preserve retreat by our school. The camp was all focused-on games and puzzles. A lot of creative thinking instead of strictly like math and engineering such as how to create and them. They had to create their own escape room, the one with the middle schoolers. By interacting with them, it was very nice to see just the development of their ideas. It reminded me of my youngest sister who just started high school.
[164-189] The next week I was an instructor. I instructed for the 3-D design camp. We gave them various challenges, and we tasked them with assembling each Lego into SolidWorks. They had digital helpers to measure everything. Eventually, we could 3-D print the model, so we could do a compare and contrast. The next project was like a key chain project we used Rhinoceros 6. You can do a lot in SolidWorks for assembly and for making precise components, but for Rhinoceros 6 it’s a lot easier to do artistic things. The last project, it was kind of rough. It was making a USB casing with old USB drives that are just lying around. They give out just for free. The project was to design it so you could put the USB drive and its internal components into a 3-D printed case. So we combined some aspects from Rhinoceros 6 with SolidWorks in order for us to actually make something both artistic and practical. The next week, I taught Product Design, which was basically teaching something basic things like woodworking, soldering, and 3-D modeling. I spent a day on each of those aspects and then for the rest of the week they had to design their own product. They had to think of their own unique product that they could eventually sell, theoretically. They were really creative and inspirational kids at some points, really annoying at some points too, but I didn’t mind.