Life at SIUE: What I've learned in 1 semester

This probably could have been broken up into a few different blogs, but I'll try to keep it to the point. The format of this is particularly special, because I'm not talking about equations and such, I'm meaning more about the real life things most of us are concerned about anyway. So here we go in no particular order other than how they pop into my head.

I have learned...

-The greatest way to figure out what you want to do is by narrowing it down to what you don't want to do. When you do it this way, you can take out huge chunks of choices. Chances are, you're never going to be able to pick exactly what you do within a company (as an engineer), so it's better to only look for jobs that you know will not make you do the things you hate. For example, I will not look for a job that makes me use Auto CAD all day long... not my cup of tea.

-Lab reports are stupid. That's right, I hate them. Every professor wants them differently, and if they really wanted to know how to do the lab, why did they hand you the procedure? Say what you will... if I never have to write another report I will die a happy man. And yes, I know that's impossible...

-Group projects require more individual work than individual projects. Seems odd to me too... but it's true. One of the biggest difference between SIUE and IC i have found are the group/final projects. Yes, at IC, we turned every homework assignment into a group project, but that was for comfort sake. At SIUE, 4 out of 5 classes I had assigned final group projects (sounds like a Trident commercial, right?). They are often weighted very heavily and require many more hours than they first appear. As usual, I promised myself I would get a head start on my part, and as usual I waited until the very last days to complete them. Oh well, grades came out fine so all is well that ends well...

- I miss IC

- I want to be in quality control when i graduate/go to grad school. As a potential mechanical engineer, I was more wanting to work with quality control, efficiency, lowering costs, all of these type of things, and if you talk to anyone who knows me, they will verify this, i'm sure. Well coming to SIUE, I had the chance to look at the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering program and to my surprise, that fits in perfectly there. You see, even though they are one program, there are two different degrees. Industrial is more related to people. How they work, kinds of output they are giving, where they are located, etc. Mechanical engineering (they kind i wanted to do) was more related to the machines. How the machines worked, better design, better outputs, things of this sort. Well Manufacturing Engineering is the combination of the two. It deals with the over all setup of people and machines and over all outputs and such. It turns out I love this kind of stuff...

-The egg obviously came first. Well I guess I didn't learn that here, but still. What are the odds that a bird just appeared? Exactly. Now what are the odds that two different animals met, fell in love, and had a lovely little egg? See my point?

- Always, ALWAYS make sure when you are walking around up there in J-ville, you stop to realize how lucky and fortunate you are to have the kind of experience you are having or about to have. It's the greatest experience of my life and I'm sure the most valuable one too...

Until next time my friends,

Joe