Month: November 2011

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FINALS

Yes, I shouted in the title. Finals are upon me, I have a lab final this Friday, another final next Monday and then one the week after that. Again, this is not the fun part of going back to school. I’m pretty stressed about grades and exams and such, but I’m trying to keep on going.

Some people say that the Thanksgiving holiday is reinvigorating and helps them “charge up” for the coming exams. For me, the Thanksgiving holiday just made me realize how much I’m ready to be done. I’ve done all the learning and now I’m just at that horrible testing phase.

There has been something else weighing on my mind for a little while now. I’m never going to learn everything in electrical engineering/electronics. Now this is probably very obvious to anyone who has knowledge about the field, but for me it was a little hard to swallow. There is just so much to know. I’ve talked with some older engineers and they are so full of experience that will take me years and years and years to learn.

I’m also thinking about trying to dip my toe into research and I’m stymied at the process. Where do I begin? Should I just go through the professors at my school who are doing research in areas that seem interesting to me and then ask them if they need any help? There doesn’t seem to be any sort of centralized listing of openings so it looks like I just need to approach professors individually. I’m thinking I’ll do some research over the Christmas break and then from there I’ll send out some cover letters/resumes. Hope I can find something!

Oh! Head over to The Amp Hour for a great show this week. LEDs!!

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Doldrums

I’ve officially entered the part of the semester that is no longer fun. I’m stressed out, disappointed in some grades and in dire need of a break. Thanksgiving is coming up, but I just don’t know how much relaxing time I’m going to have when I really need to be studying.

I know this is a part of the process but I hate this particular part. I have a big math test tomorrow and if I can keep my A average then I don’t have to take the final. Therefore, I’m really giving one last big push to learn this stuff backward and foreword so I can be done with it.

The group project has straightened itself out a little bit. I was the only member of the group of 6 with a car and any sort of tools. Therefore, I pretty much had to build our supporting structure by default. This was a source of much frustration but my husband borrowed a really nice miter saw and nail gun from a coworker at the fire station and so we were able to put together a pretty impressive frame for our “egg transporter” machine in only a few hours. So yesterday I finally delivered the frame and a ton of tools and supplies to one of the members who lives in an on-campus apartment so the other members of the team could start contributing.

Hopefully things will start looking up.

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Code

I’m totally obsessed with Code by Charles Petzold. The book starts out with very simple concepts, two kids trying to send a signal after bedtime to each other across the street. The author examines the various methods they could try and then goes into the methodology and history of Morse code. From there he branches out to an explanation of our base ten system of numbers and what would have happened if we didn’t have 1o fingers but instead had two flippers like a dolphin. It’s truly the most basic and yet the most clear explanation of binary or base two systems that I’ve ever come across. He then goes into basic electric circuits using a flashlight as an example.

I love how he takes seemingly abstract concepts and turns them into everyday examples that your mind can “latch onto” and remember. The next section deals with logic gates and, get this, kittens. Who doesn’t love a kitten? I think that 3/4 of the Internet is made up of kittens so it only makes sense. I haven’t finished the book, but flipping through the back, it seems to get much more technical as it progresses but I’m sure it will be amazing.

The book was published in 2000, so it shows its age a little when discussing chip speed and the sort of memory that is commercially available. However, he makes some predictions about the future that seem pretty darn accurate. Anyway, for anyone looking to truly understand exactly how a chip adds numbers, I totally recommend this book. I’ll be back with a longer review once I finish.

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Shout out!

Squee! I got a little shout out on my new favorite podcast, The Amp Hour. I have to admit, it was a little weird listening to two strangers discuss my decision to go into electrical engineering but I’m always open to opinions. I have a brief discussion of my story in my inaugural post, but I wanted to address some of the questions posed in the podcast.

Why?

Many reasons. I went into undergrad convinced that I wanted to be a medical doctor and so I majored in biochemistry. I loved DNA and genetics and I thought that this would be the best fit. Little did I know that biochemistry was mostly horribly confusing cycles like this. I worked in a lab researching chemokines for about a year and a half and realized that my options were some sort of professional school, a PhD in Biochem or going into something like pharma sales. I spent a summer working at a large law firm and really enjoyed it so to law school I went.

Then, I learned what lawyering was really about. It was not the shiny 9-5 internship that I did over the summer. It was a job of long days, long nights and minimal weekends. In big firms, most of the clients are large companies and cases drag on for years, sometimes decades. I spent a summer in law school working at a local non-profit and loved the work but couldn’t see myself lasting very long before getting really burned out.

My husband likes to tell the story of one day during my first semester of law school, I was so frustrated with the socratic method and the “grey logic” that I pulled out an old differential equations book and started working problems. I craved the simplicity and beauty of pure math. I craved the notion of a “right answer.” I was too stubborn to recognize that maybe that was an indicator that law school was not the best fit for me so I finished law school.

Did I work as a lawyer?

I did a variety of internships during law school and clerked for a judge but never worked as a lawyer. Due to hefty scholarships and family support, I managed to get through undergrad and law school without loans, which gave me the freedom to head back to school. I was a little nervous about the experience but it’s just as magical as I thought it would be. I’m actually really good at it so far.

Did I tinker much as a kid?

Not really. I was more of a bookworm/math geek. I read . . . a lot. Anything and everything I could get my hands on. I had older brothers so I loved legos and such and I made various contraptions but I didn’t have anything as dramatic as Feynman’s propensity for fixing radios as a teeny lad. I LOVED “brain teasers” and those kind of problems that really made you think. I remember reading the “Sideways Stories From Wayside School” in second grade which introduced verbal arithmetic and I was hooked on that for a while.

Anyway, I really need to go study for my programming exam, so I’m going to end this fairly abruptly. I went to a lecture on robotics last night and I plan to address that later today, get ready!

 

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Rough week

I had one of those weeks where life got in the way of education. I’m not ready to talk about it here, so I’ll share some of the engineer related things that did happen. I ordered two books that I’m really excited about reading. I ordered “To Engineer is Human” by Henry Petroski and “Code” by Charles Petzold. Look forward to book reviews on these two in the coming weeks.

In my programming class, we’re finally starting to get beyond the programs that print “Hello World!” on the screen. Some of the programs we’re making now are actually useful! Our last assignment was an assignment to teach loops that had to accept an unknown number of inputs and calculate the mean, standard deviation, maximum, minimum and SEOM. Of course all of these things could be done in something like Excel, but this program had a real purpose.

The only foundation course that I’m wishing I had done before this semester is logic. I didn’t realize how integral logic is to programming and apparently later on in systems. So, does anyone have any suggestions for a great beginner book on logic? Obviously, the stuff we’re currently working on is pretty self-explanatory but I can just sense that it will begin to obfuscate itself.

My math professor handed out a short survey with our last homework assignment and I was pretty surprised with the sentiment of many of my classmates. A majority of them were griping about the pace of the class being too fast, the professor not explaining her examples and also that the class was “worthless.” My only complaint was that the book was pretty terrible but the professor herself has said this many times and often provides lengthy online notes to supplement the book. I’ve found the class to be very useful, taking principles from calculus III and taking them to the next level. She expects quite a bit from us but is also really good at explaining things in a way that my brain just “gets it.”

Still looming, the group project. Ugh. Thankfully, it’s a small portion of our grade so even if it turns out a little iffy, I’ll still be okay grade-wise. I just want it to be over. I like to work in teams and I consider myself a good team-player but this particular project is difficult because of the varied commitment levels of all the members. Again, we’ll see how this plays out.