Mentors

So, we went to SWE conference, and I have not gotten around to posting about that yet. I will do so...sometime. I really want to do justice to it, and with mid-semesterwork piling up (especially after being gone half a week :X), I don't think I can do it justice right now.

I have, however, a nasty habit of doing more thinking when I'm busy than when I'm not. Or maybe that's everyone.

SWE wants to start a mentorship program; mentoring is basically a way to form a relationship with someone who has been through your experiences (or something close) and come out alive; for example, a mentor who is a working engineer to an engineering student. Or a college student to a high school student. Or a college senior to a freshman (because we do have a lot we can, and should, pass down!) A mentor offers encouragement, advice, and is one more person you are accountable to, but who also knows the mistakes you can make and can tell you that they are okay. They're human and not perfect, but they are someone to look up to, someone you aspire to be, who will also help you get there.

I realized recently that I am a sort of (unofficial) mentor to some people, most recently and notably a friend I met in my IPRO group. We are friends, I have no doubts on that, but I can tell he also sees me as someone who has accomplished what he wants to do in college; lining up the double major, doing research. I know how to start the "can I work in your lab" conversation and interact with professors, where the machine shop is, what classes to take when and what not to take together. It's the little things, but they matter a lot. He amazes me every time I see him with enthusiasm and excitement for things that I just want to get done; and reminds me how fun life can actually be, if you let it. I like to think I helped him start the research conversation (though from there on out I'm sure he did fine enough himself), got him involved in AIAA, introduced him to things he could do to develop useful skills (some that I never got a chance to learn), while doing something good for the school. I look forward to finding out where he goes from here and keeping in touch. Perhaps I'll soon lose my "lead" that allows me to be a mentor now, that doesn't matter; it is nice to help someone along the path of their life in the direction they want to go with experience I may have earned the hard way. It also makes me realize how much I do, actually know.

On that note, it also makes me realize how many mentors I have had. I suppose the first ones are my parents, but that's not really the same; although they are amazing people that I still go to for advice, help, and support. My professors have been mentors as well, some more than others, of course, as has every club advisor SWE has ever had. But I have also had classmate mentors: AG freshman year, who claimed to be "training a new AG," and helped me get my foot in the door of student activities by helping me and my friend organize a big dinner event. She was also a fantastic peer tutor (as I found out the next year when we worked alongside). And oh yea, she always looked put-together, a feat I have yet to get down. RW, whom I idolized sophomore year, as he seemed to do everything and then some, while maintaining a fantastic GPA (he was active in several student orgs, worked as a learning assistant, and worked in research). Finally these past two years I have greatly looked up to ST, who commits to his work and projects like there is no tomorrow and also amazes me every day with the depth and breadth of his relationships with people, from family to professors in the department.

I suppose the purpose of this point is to bring to attention that a mentor does not need to be an official post, although it can be. We are also not limited to one mentor in a lifetime or one mentor at a time. Mentors are people we learn from and go to for advice. They are people who inspire us and support our endeavors. Those who volunteer information, as well, when it is wanted, without being asked, because they know what we are going through.

Look at your friends, family, and teachers. Is there someone who stands out particularly as a mentor to you? If you're brave, thank them the next time you see them.

Fun Night!

So I haven't been out for a while, trying to stay on top of, well, everything, really. Which made tonight nice on a number of levels...

About a month ago, one of my friends re-started a "getting together" thread. This friend was of Russian origin, and the gathering was a cultural one that happens pretty regularly (every few months, anyway). Initially, it was about five or six of us, a year or two ago, at someone's apartment on the North side. We have reconvened two or three times since (and tried a couple more, but those just didn't work out). We gather to have a potluck dinner; everyone brings a food item, and we try our best to cook, or at the very least go to a Polish/generally European or middle-eastern supermarket to get something extra-special (Russian social eating habits include elements of all of these).

This time was cool because everyone had talked to their friends about this tradition, and they all wanted to come; so we invited them, and tonight ended up being a night of meeting new people in an environment that I find a comforting change from my usual company at IIT.

To explain: I am not a cultural clique-ist. I will normally be neutral toward or even tend away from people of my cultural background. I will not analyze why because it's basically an observational fact. Still, after moving away from home (where I was surrounded in Russian culture most of the time), and maybe even after moving away from our home in California, in an area that had a huge Russian community, I found that I seriously missed that kind of interaction. I missed quoting classic (Russian) movies to people outside my family without lengthy explanations, I missed the slightly more formal approach to having friends over, and I even missed the language. These Russian gatherings provide me with a rare opportunity to have these things and ones that I can't quantify as easily....

It can sometimes be hard to keep up with your culture in college; even when you share bits of it with your college friends, it's difficult--it's a foreground activity instead of a background presence. I'm really glad I found people to share a part of myself with which I don't necessarily have with my usual (awesome!) group of friends.

And it turned out to be a great way of meeting new people in a relaxed environment; something I've been having trouble finding lately!

SWE!

(Yes, this is the promised post on SWE.)

I just got my plane ticket for the national conference. Unfortunately, it seems the prices have gone up by $80/roundtrip :( Definitely $80 I could have used. Still, it's worth it to go.

Regional conference, which I have attended for two years now, is always amazing--500-600 (mostly, but not entirely) women, from engineering backgrounds, from across the northern midwest (IL, WI, MI, IN, MN, IA, ND, SD) gathered in one place for workshops, career fair, interviews, meals, speakers, games, etc. SWE National Conference gathers women from across the United States! From women who have even been hinted to that engineering was "unfeminine," to women who had to put up with awfulness from classmates, professors, and coworkers every step of the way, they're all gathered there to share experiences.

I love my engineering classmates, most of whom are guys, a lot. I am, in fact, gender-blind until I think about it consciously--I don't look for another girl to work with on a project or a homework assignment, I just look for a friend; and that's a guy more often than not. But however natural hanging out with "my boys" may feel, they can never tell me how to make long curly hair look professional, what it's like to spill corn syrup down the front of your extra-dressy clothes that you wore because the upper management was coming to visit, how to manage an engineering education/job with a serious relationship and a family, how to act when you find out your employer is paying your male peer more than you although you do the same work (or you work better than him!). This is why SWE is important to me; sometimes, you just need a woman's advice, and nothing else will do. And sometimes you just need to share experiences with people as much like you as possible.

I have many fond SWE memories of events I've planned, workshops I have attended, but my favorite moments by far are moments of sharing with other SWE members--not just other officers, who are all my friends, but new members, people I didn't normally run into. Ever since freshman year, when I joined, SWE has helped me find fantastic friends, if only for those minutes or hours that we were talking. Mind you, these weren't the kind of friends I would make in the cafeteria, nor the kind I would make in class. We were bonded by something different, a similarity that drew us all to that group and to seek each other's company.

The fond memories of planning events are also embedded in some of my skills. Skills I didn't realize I had until things I thought I was terrible at, I could do well. It was what we call "experience" that I gathered. Experience in running meetings, in foresight and planning, in trust, delegation, communication, and many other things. I learned business concepts--management concepts--without realizing it!

I was talking to a potential employer yesterday at the career fair our career management center (CMC) put on. He asked me in detail about what I learned from SWE. My answer was not eloquent enough for my own satisfaction; I didn't realize he wanted an in depth analysis, or I could have given him one. Truth is, my engineering classes taught me concepts, equations, conventions, at times economics, analytical thinking, and technical writing. My internship taught me about products, and made me pay attention to the business side of engineering--verifying that you have a product of quality. But SWE? SWE taught me the human side of engineering--how to interact with the people we will no doubt be in constant contact with. Part of that was through leadership, part was through SWE workshops and events, but part was through the combination of both.

My mother came to my presentation at the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium last spring--my labmate and I were presenting a poster. She watched me give a presentation and pointed out how I had learned a certain poise, grace, manner for interacting formally but easily with a person of authority. That didn't come from classes. That didn't come from work or research. That definitely came from SWE.

AIAA day!

I got a request on my last entry to post more about SWE's activities, but since I spent most of today working on AIAA* concerns, I feel more inclined to post about that for today. But SWE is coming, have no fear!

AIAA stands for American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I was elected president last year on the basis of 2 years student org experience and senior status. This year, I am seeing that this really was a valid basis to get elected.

Today, most of the officers had a meeting with our two advisors. We ran Prof. Pervan and Prof. Vural (our 'co-advisor') through our (written-out) plan for the semester--apparently we are one of the best-prepared and most enthusiastic groups in recent years. Here's the plan:

1) Get a model airplane, construct it, and fly it.

2) Create a team to enter a competition to design, then build (from scratch) then fly an airplane according to specifications.

3) Have set hours every week when people can come in and use the flight simulator we have.

4) Do tours of labs on campus and corporate facilities (Northrop Grumman, United Airlines)

5) Do workshops by upperclassmen or visitors

6) Publish an email newsletter.

Then, I talked to our treasurer some about choosing the plane and related tools, because we need to submit a proposal for these things to the Finance Board by Sunday night. (Finance Board: student board that delegates funds to student organizations from a common fund that students pay a little into every semester.) Then we presented our plan for our proposal to our Finance Board advisor, who put us on the right path as far as demonstrating the necessity of our purchases. It went quite well. I am now letting our treasurer take care of the proposal.

I am personally stunned by the difference in my experience this year as head of AIAA, as compared to last year as head of SWE. Here's some differences:

1) I start things earlier-I've finally learned how bad procrastinating is; especially where other people are involved!

2) I communicate faster-I respond to emails within a day or two if they require a response and I don't think I ever drop the ball or put it off anymore like I used to.

3) TRUST. I trust my officers and delegate tasks to them; this sounds like the most obvious thing ever, but it was very hard to learn emotionally. Not only is it giving someone a task, but it is also resisting the urge to check in on their progress all the time.

4) I try to set times and dates as soon as possible. I also try to assign tasks to specific people ("[Name] should do this by Monday and send us all an email" vs "Someone should do this soon...") Again, it seems obvious, but seems to require experience (for some of us, anyway) to catch it in the act.

5) I don't feel guilty when things don't go right, even if it seems to be happening constantly. Things happen and life isn't perfect; I shrug it off and move on!

There's other things I've learned that help out a lot; I know most of the professors in the department, I know most of the Office of Student Life staff. I know a lot of great people in Admissions ;-) and in a few other offices. I know leaders of some student organizations on campus. The people I have gotten to know through student organizations far outnumber the people I have been introduced to through classes.

Overall--my leadership experiences at IIT have been invaluable, and my leadership of AIAA senior year seems like it will be a test of all the lessons learned...as well as a few lessons of its own.

A Day in the Life

I had nothing in particular to post about, so a (modified) excerpt from my conversation with my sister*:

Today I:
-Didn't procrastinate on my CAD work that's due Wed/Fri.
-Went to a Camras Advisory Board meeting and volunteered to present on my experiences with undergrad research
-Sorted out my problems with my last two paychecks
-Talked to my advisor, as promised, but got no solid information regarding research funding for this semester ( :( ) [not his fault, by the way, our administrative assistant wasn't in, so he couldn't get a report of his grants for the semester]...rescheduled to Wednesday
-Finished Stats HW
-Ran a fairly productive (in my opinion, anyway) AIAA meeting
-Confused my Stats professor (in my defense, he started it!)
-Washed most of my dishes
-Registered for SWE national conference (with a tour of SpaceX facilities!)

Tomorrow is another pretty full day! Two student activities workshops, a class and my awesome IPRO, which I still need to read some articles for. I'm out for now.

First Week

This first week is always so crazy, but I love it. All these new people to meet, new things to learn...new notebooks! There's few things more exciting than a brand-spanking-new notebook. All those blank pages.

I've decided that I pretty much love my classes.
Thermal Design has an awesome professor with an absolutely unreal memory (he knows like half the class although he's only ever seen them at info sessions or heard about them in department news and stuff...he remembered me from an open house I attended 3 years ago!)
CAD/CAM is kind of boring, but only because I've used the program we are using already, so until we get to something other than the basics of using it, there's not much for me to learn. I like CAD programs, though, because you get to create actual Things in 3D and you can look at them and everything. Think that thing Tony Stark from Ironman has in his garage, except without the holograms (although I'm fairly sure every mechanical engineer wants one of those with the holograms).
Stats is a class that people hate when they need to take it, but since I know why I want to take it, and I am rather pleased with it so far. We'll see how the workload and stuff goes. We have homework already, but since it's a 3hr class once a week, that's not too surprising.
Manufacturing seems much more interesting to me than materials class was. I have it for the second time in about 2 hours, we'll see how it is when it's not just an introduction.
IPRO. You'll hear a lot about IPRO's because they are fairly central to "the IIT experience." For those who haven't heard of them, IPRO stands for Inter-Professional Project, and it's a real-world project (often requested and/or sponsored by a company or a professor, sometimes by a student), that students of different majors get together to work on. My current IPRO is one on refuelable electric cars. My professor thinks we will change the world and take pictures with President Obama. And, really, if we get it to work, we could! The basic idea is using a different kind of battery that uses up its electrolyte as it runs. It's not rechargeable, but it is refuelable with more electrolyte! And this electrolyte is safe; at the very least much safer than the gasoline we use now. Overall, if this strategy works, it is possible to end dependence on foreign oil, save the environment...the whole shebang. And that is why our project can change the world. I'm super-excited.

SWE (Society of Women Engineers) is doing some great things, too. Some of our events are less attended than last year, but we have more of them. An event every day this week; it's pretty hard on the exec board, but we're pulling through. And last night's event turned into sitting around the table talking about internship and IIT experiences. I feel like that is the sort of thing our organization needs more of; sitting around a table and sharing what it's like to be a woman in steel-toed boots.

Anyway, first week is pretty hectic, but not too bad, all in all. And now I go to copy over my manufacturing notes before class.

I've Moved In.

My friend and I made dinner today; not as a planned event, like we sometimes have, but just in a "Have you eaten yet? Let's make food," kind of way. It was great.

I've a few more things to unpack, but really, it's getting there.

Verification:

Late is better than never. It has been proven.

I sent my best friend a birthday present last Tuesday (8/18). Her birthday is in February (2/18). I do wish I had made it in time, but honestly, I would rather give a good present late than a bad present on-time. Furthermore, it was a little unexpected joy...so I'm hoping that kind of evens that playing field...I'm not hiding that I do still feel bad, though.

Same law (better late than never) goes for my stuff arriving tomorrow. Apartment is lonely and empty. :(

Bedtime! One last night of sleep unclouded by homework :O

Move In Day!!

This is where "The Last IITeration" really begins....

Apartment shopping!

I have the key to my apartment! For clarity, this is an on-campus apartment; the big life step involved is cooking my own food and cleaning my own bathroom. Both of which I have done before, but not exclusively (at my parents' house). So it'll be fun--balancing chores with schoolwork with fun with job/grad school -hunting this year...

Still, I went apartment shopping a few days ago, got dishes, a dishrack, lots of cleaning supplies, kitchen towels. Boring stuff, but exciting to get for yourself. We'll need more stuff before we're all set; some shelves there's practically none in the bathroom and we don't want to use the ones provided because they're wood, and wood in a tiny, enclosed bathroom is a pretty terrible idea. (It warps.)

Anyway...move in weekend is looming/beginning and it's pretty exciting!

Results!?!??

I don't want to jinx it, so I'll just say that my project is working better than ever before. Putting in 11 hours straight can be well worth it! It may also help that I work best around 4-7PM, a time when I'm usually getting ready to/going home from the lab. But things will change when classes start in a week and a bit; I just don't know how yet.

I'm now at the point where I'm testing and hoping I don't discover any more problems...We'll see how that goes. Anyway, it put me in a strange mood of wanting to look back on this project and this summer in terms of research...

I didn't want to do this project, at first. I distinctly remember turning it down last year, because I did not want to be on my own project; but I agreed this summer because...well, because results seemed more likely than on my previous project, because now I did want to do something on my own and have a result to show for it, and maybe because the work that my predecessor did seemed more promising than starting from scratch. And now that the summer is almost over, most of these reasons have justified themselves. I have produced something! It may not work perfectly, but it is far more than what existed before!

I learned three new software tools: a circuit simulator called SIMetrix (if you need one, and you will as an EE, ME, AE, or Physics major, or want to play with one, I recommend it), PBASIC for the Parallax Basic Stamp Microcontroller and Visual Basic for Excel (great tool!). I've learned a whole lot about circuit design and statistics; and probably some stuff about other things, too.

Best of all, I learned about myself: I prefer simulating to measuring, programming to running test after test; I still like greasing bearings, taking things apart, and making a real, physical product, though. I like to learn new things from lots of different areas (electronics, programming, math, and of course fluid mechanics) and put them together; furthermore, I am very capable of doing this!

What does this mean for my future? I'm not 100% sure. (I still have to test my hypothesis, kind of like on my project, haha.) Still, I'm a lot less worried about my graduate school choices than I would have been had I not done this project; now I know I have many, many choices and one of them is bound to suit me!

On Programming...

I programmed in Visual Basic yesterday. Now, I didn't really know Visual Basic.

But while I was sorting through the MSDN documentation (by the way, terrible, but that's a story for another day), it occurred to me that after using Java, C++, MATLAB, Python, assembly (for the LC3 emulator), and PBASIC (for the Parallax Basic Stamp 2), I had enough programming experience to figure out any programming language in the same way I would remember a language if I hadn't used it in a while.

It's strange to find out you can't honestly say you "don't know" something anymore, because you know bits and pieces of it from different previous experiences...

Running into a wall on Monday morning

I kind of hate it when I discover an error that sets me back a week, but I guess that's research.

Right now I'm still trying to figure out what's causing it...but at least I figured out what is going on, so I guess that's something.

Happy Friday!

Ah, another week done. Tiring, but satisfying.

I got my research project working yesterday, tested it some more under different conditions today. Need some advice from my advisor before continuing; I know nothing about statistics! Which I am sure to remedy in the next semester, one way or another.

Got some of my textbooks in the mail. MMAE 485 textbook was HUGE. By now I'm not even expecting to learn it all, but I hope I won't need it in class every day. It's like two inches thick, and 9 by 11 at least.

Up for this weekend: CAMPING! About 10 of us are going to a park about 100 miles out of Chicago for the weekend. Some left today; the rest of us are following tomorrow morning at a luxurious 9 AM. Sleeping in! Haha. I can't wait to be back at school where the earliest thing I need to be up for is 10 AM classes.

One of the most important things I have done in college

...has been getting to know people. I realized this today at the FDRC (work; fluid dynamics research center) barbeque lunch. As a freshman, I was really shy and barely knew my professors. It took me a huge effort for me to put myself out there and get to know people. After being in that situation, it feels really good to have lunch with professors from your department and have a nice conversation with them.

One of the students I work with, I've noticed, knows a whole lot more people than I do (or probably ever will). Then again, he has a knack for casual conversation and putting people at ease; or maybe he has just had more practice than I have!

Either way, I find myself really glad that I know the people I know and looking forward to meeting new ones. I learn something from every person I meet; and furthermore, they are the ones who will be writing my reccomendations later this year!

Summertime...

I've heard (and noticed) that people who blog end up blogging more when nothing much is happening to them.

I guess I must be working pretty hard, because I don't seem to feel like writing much. Or I overthink everything and then don't want to spend time writing it down.

Still, I hope to manage to jot down quick-and-dirty descriptions of things I actually do, however mundane they seem to me; after all, not everyone is me. :)

At this point I'm working 8 hour days at my research lab and not finding enough time (or energy) to research graduate schools...tomorrow, tomorrow.