Transport was the class that I was most excited to take this semester because the subject matter, fluid mechanics and heat transfer, aligns pretty closely with my greatest interests in mechanical engineering. At the same time, I wasn't sure what to expect. The class is normally taught by a professor who is on leave this year, and I found out in August that my professor would be a visitor from University of Texas at El Paso. As a result, the class was definitely an experiment, and not just in the normal Olin ways! My thoughts on Transport are below the fold.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Thoughts on Dynamics
Friday was Expo, the last day of the semester. I’m more than
a third of the way through college, which feels a little weird.
For some reason this semester didn’t feel like it was ending
until the very end. Midway through the semester, I still caught myself thinking
that it was just the beginning. I’m not sure why this was; I was definitely
learning, so in general it wasn’t that I didn’t think we had covered enough
material for it to be that far into the semester.
The class in which I learned the most this semester was
Dynamics, which is a mechanical engineering requirement. It was also the class
into which I put by far the most time. Below the fold are my thoughts on
Dynamics.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Time
This has been one of those semesters when it never stops feeling like the beginning. I keep having to remind myself that it's Thanksgiving break now and that after break there are only two weeks of class and then a week of finals.
When I stop and think about it, though, it feels like it's been a really long semester. This past week, I looked back at my Dynamics notes from the first couple of classes and wondered what it would be like to do the first Dynamics assignment again now. I can tell that I've learned so much in that class. A lot of times it doesn't feel like it because nothing seems to get easier, but that's because there's always new material. When I wasn't looking, what would have been entire problems at the beginning of the semester became single steps.
When school started, I expected to take three language tests this semester: a Portuguese reading and listening test, the DALF French exam, and the DELE Spanish exam. I took the Portuguese test in late September, and it went really well, but I'm not going to take either of the other two. The DELE was supposed to be this past weekend, but at some point in the past year the Cervantes Institute in Boston closed, so I would have had to go to New York to take the test. With other commitments, that would have been feasible but not much fun. I'm not taking the DALF simply because I haven't put in enough prep time to feel comfortable.
On paper, this semester doesn't look that different from last semester. The only noticeable difference is that I added a second NINJA job. In fact, I'm spending fewer hours in class this semester. My Wellesley class meets for 140 minutes a week, not 200 like an Olin class, and last semester I had Bio lab, which ate two and a half hours on Wednesday afternoons. Despite that, I feel like I have far less free time.
What's contributing to that? First of all, Dynamics. Dynamics is the first class I've had at Olin other than Design Nature into which I regularly put 12 hours of work a week. 12 hours a week is what a four credit class is supposed to be, but for most classes, I don't actually do that many hours of work. For Dynamics, though, over the past three weeks I have spent more than 50 hours working. That's more than normal, but I'm never surprised to spend a lot of time doing Dynamics. I knew going into the class that it would take more time than any of my others -- that's just the reputation it has -- but I think I'd forgotten what that felt like.
Second, I put about as much time into my two NINJA jobs together as I do into Dynamics, so that adds up to more than a normal class for me, whereas last semester my weekly hours were more like a light workload class (5 hours a week). NINJAing has been one of my favorite parts of the semester. I love talking about math with people, and I've even enjoyed the grading. Discrete grading is reading people's proofs, which is always interesting. Linearity grading is much more rote, but it can be relaxing.
It feels like those shouldn't be the only two factors, but they're the only major ones I've managed to identify. My other classes and activities seem like they come out about even when I compare the two semesters. It will be interesting to see what happens next semester. I'm taking Thermodynamics, The Entrepreneurial Initiative (FBE), a Wellesley French class, and User-Oriented and Collaborative Design (UOCD), and I'll NINJA a couple of math classes and do research again. UOCD is a lot of class time, and the amount of out-of-class work varies by team, but the other classes aren't known as huge time commitments.
When I stop and think about it, though, it feels like it's been a really long semester. This past week, I looked back at my Dynamics notes from the first couple of classes and wondered what it would be like to do the first Dynamics assignment again now. I can tell that I've learned so much in that class. A lot of times it doesn't feel like it because nothing seems to get easier, but that's because there's always new material. When I wasn't looking, what would have been entire problems at the beginning of the semester became single steps.
When school started, I expected to take three language tests this semester: a Portuguese reading and listening test, the DALF French exam, and the DELE Spanish exam. I took the Portuguese test in late September, and it went really well, but I'm not going to take either of the other two. The DELE was supposed to be this past weekend, but at some point in the past year the Cervantes Institute in Boston closed, so I would have had to go to New York to take the test. With other commitments, that would have been feasible but not much fun. I'm not taking the DALF simply because I haven't put in enough prep time to feel comfortable.
On paper, this semester doesn't look that different from last semester. The only noticeable difference is that I added a second NINJA job. In fact, I'm spending fewer hours in class this semester. My Wellesley class meets for 140 minutes a week, not 200 like an Olin class, and last semester I had Bio lab, which ate two and a half hours on Wednesday afternoons. Despite that, I feel like I have far less free time.
What's contributing to that? First of all, Dynamics. Dynamics is the first class I've had at Olin other than Design Nature into which I regularly put 12 hours of work a week. 12 hours a week is what a four credit class is supposed to be, but for most classes, I don't actually do that many hours of work. For Dynamics, though, over the past three weeks I have spent more than 50 hours working. That's more than normal, but I'm never surprised to spend a lot of time doing Dynamics. I knew going into the class that it would take more time than any of my others -- that's just the reputation it has -- but I think I'd forgotten what that felt like.
Second, I put about as much time into my two NINJA jobs together as I do into Dynamics, so that adds up to more than a normal class for me, whereas last semester my weekly hours were more like a light workload class (5 hours a week). NINJAing has been one of my favorite parts of the semester. I love talking about math with people, and I've even enjoyed the grading. Discrete grading is reading people's proofs, which is always interesting. Linearity grading is much more rote, but it can be relaxing.
It feels like those shouldn't be the only two factors, but they're the only major ones I've managed to identify. My other classes and activities seem like they come out about even when I compare the two semesters. It will be interesting to see what happens next semester. I'm taking Thermodynamics, The Entrepreneurial Initiative (FBE), a Wellesley French class, and User-Oriented and Collaborative Design (UOCD), and I'll NINJA a couple of math classes and do research again. UOCD is a lot of class time, and the amount of out-of-class work varies by team, but the other classes aren't known as huge time commitments.
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Majors, Gender, and First-Year Courses
I'm treasurer for the Olin chapter of Society of Women Engineers this year, and the national conference was a few weeks ago! Olin sent eight students. We met lots of people, went to the career fair, and listened to some interesting sessions, so I'd definitely say it was a successful trip. Something I found very interesting was how different the general SWE population was from Olin's female population in terms of fields of engineering.
Before the conference, we had decided to sell t-shirts, and the SWE members at Olin had voted on a design made up of circuit components that spelled out SWE. There's a picture below! The 'S' is a power source, the 'W' is a resistor, and the 'E' is a loop of wire. A lot of us thought this was a clever design. Olin is about 1/3 Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) majors, and though there's some variation in major by gender, ECE is about half and half, like the school as a whole. We're also all required to take circuits classes (Modeling and Control and Real World Measurements) during our first two semesters at Olin. Even if they aren't our favorite classes, we all come away with circuit literacy and generally aren't afraid of circuit-related work.
Before the conference, we had decided to sell t-shirts, and the SWE members at Olin had voted on a design made up of circuit components that spelled out SWE. There's a picture below! The 'S' is a power source, the 'W' is a resistor, and the 'E' is a loop of wire. A lot of us thought this was a clever design. Olin is about 1/3 Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) majors, and though there's some variation in major by gender, ECE is about half and half, like the school as a whole. We're also all required to take circuits classes (Modeling and Control and Real World Measurements) during our first two semesters at Olin. Even if they aren't our favorite classes, we all come away with circuit literacy and generally aren't afraid of circuit-related work.
 |
| SWE t-shirt! |
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
A Week in the Life of a NINJA
This semester I'm a NINJA for two classes, Linearity II and Discrete Math. Each week is different, but in honor of National Tutoring Week, here's a "week" that has proven to be representative so far:
Monday
Lunchtime Linearity grading party. All four NINJAs gather around a table on the Dining Hall Mezzanine, eating lunch and grading the same problem ~80 times. At the end of lunch, Studio (problem set) k is graded and just needs to be entered. Studio k+1 is usually in my backpack and needs to be graded still.
I go to Linearity right after lunch. For the lecture part of class, I sit in the back entering grades and writing solutions for Studio k+2, which is due today. When I'm done with solutions, I send them out to the profs and the other NINJAs for comments/corrections, and when I'm done entering grades, I pass back Studio k. When there's time to work on problem sets after lectures, I help people with Studios k+3 and k+4.
As I leave the classroom, the professors hand me the stack of Studio k+2s.
The Discrete assignment is due the next day. The other NINJA has office hours tonight, but they're always really busy, so around 9:00 I get an email from a team asking if I'm free at all that night. Sometime between then and midnight I spend between thirty minutes and an hour talking people through proofs.
Tuesday
This is a relatively light day. If I have already talked with the other Linearity NINJAs about splitting up the grading for Studio k+1, I might work on that. (In that case, each person has about 20 papers, grades a problem, and then passes the stack on to someone else and gets another stack.) On Tuesday afternoon the Discrete prof will leave a packet of Discrete assignments for us in her mailbox. One of the NINJAs picks those up to start grading them.
Wednesday
I maybe grade Linearity, maybe grade Discrete. In the evening I look over the new Discrete assignment and then hold office hours for an hour and a half on Wednesday night! Since the assignment is new, most of the questions are about approach as opposed to how to write the proofs. There's a pretty consistent group of people that comes to these office hours.
Thursday
Another lunchtime Linearity grading party, or maybe just an entering party. If the grading for Studio k+1 was split up for each NINJA to do in his/her free time , this is for finishing that up, totaling all the scores, and then entering the grades. Then maybe we can start grading Studio k+2! If we didn't split up the grading, then this is Studio k+1 time.
After lunch, I go to Linearity. During the hour-ish of lecture I do more grading and enter grades. For the last thirty or so minutes of class I answer questions as people work, update the professors as to how things are going, hand back graded studios, and get a new stack of them.
At this point, if I picked up Discrete assignments on Tuesday, I'll have started working on the grading.
Friday
It's my turn to be the in-class Discrete NINJA! I print 20 copies of the in-class exercise the professor emailed to me and go to the 9AM Discrete class. There, I hand out the assignment and then walk around the room answering questions. The last thirty minutes of class will be more lecture/discussion-ish, so during that time I grade.
That afternoon, I have a meeting with the other NINJA and the professor. We go over what to look for in grading the assignment that will be due the next Friday, we discuss what we've noticed in office hours, class, and grading, and the other NINJA (Marguerite) and I give an update on your grading progress. If things have gone well, I'll either pass off a stack of Discrete grading from Marguerite or receive such a stack, but usually that happens on Saturday.
Saturday
Grading, grading,... in September, if Babson Baseball had a scrimmage, I'd go grade there! (Unfortunately, the season is now over....) Grade some Linearity if we've split up a Studio, and depending on which NINJA picked up the Discrete assignment, I could have a stack of Discrete. As I wander through the dorms throughout the day, I usually end up answering Linearity questions.
Sunday
I glance over the two Linearity studios that students are currently working on (both the graded and ungraded parts because people ask questions about both!), and then I have an hour of office hours in the evening! There will possibly be more grading (there's almost always more grading).
Monday
Lunchtime Linearity grading party. All four NINJAs gather around a table on the Dining Hall Mezzanine, eating lunch and grading the same problem ~80 times. At the end of lunch, Studio (problem set) k is graded and just needs to be entered. Studio k+1 is usually in my backpack and needs to be graded still.
I go to Linearity right after lunch. For the lecture part of class, I sit in the back entering grades and writing solutions for Studio k+2, which is due today. When I'm done with solutions, I send them out to the profs and the other NINJAs for comments/corrections, and when I'm done entering grades, I pass back Studio k. When there's time to work on problem sets after lectures, I help people with Studios k+3 and k+4.
As I leave the classroom, the professors hand me the stack of Studio k+2s.
The Discrete assignment is due the next day. The other NINJA has office hours tonight, but they're always really busy, so around 9:00 I get an email from a team asking if I'm free at all that night. Sometime between then and midnight I spend between thirty minutes and an hour talking people through proofs.
Tuesday
This is a relatively light day. If I have already talked with the other Linearity NINJAs about splitting up the grading for Studio k+1, I might work on that. (In that case, each person has about 20 papers, grades a problem, and then passes the stack on to someone else and gets another stack.) On Tuesday afternoon the Discrete prof will leave a packet of Discrete assignments for us in her mailbox. One of the NINJAs picks those up to start grading them.
Wednesday
I maybe grade Linearity, maybe grade Discrete. In the evening I look over the new Discrete assignment and then hold office hours for an hour and a half on Wednesday night! Since the assignment is new, most of the questions are about approach as opposed to how to write the proofs. There's a pretty consistent group of people that comes to these office hours.
Thursday
Another lunchtime Linearity grading party, or maybe just an entering party. If the grading for Studio k+1 was split up for each NINJA to do in his/her free time , this is for finishing that up, totaling all the scores, and then entering the grades. Then maybe we can start grading Studio k+2! If we didn't split up the grading, then this is Studio k+1 time.
After lunch, I go to Linearity. During the hour-ish of lecture I do more grading and enter grades. For the last thirty or so minutes of class I answer questions as people work, update the professors as to how things are going, hand back graded studios, and get a new stack of them.
At this point, if I picked up Discrete assignments on Tuesday, I'll have started working on the grading.
Friday
It's my turn to be the in-class Discrete NINJA! I print 20 copies of the in-class exercise the professor emailed to me and go to the 9AM Discrete class. There, I hand out the assignment and then walk around the room answering questions. The last thirty minutes of class will be more lecture/discussion-ish, so during that time I grade.
That afternoon, I have a meeting with the other NINJA and the professor. We go over what to look for in grading the assignment that will be due the next Friday, we discuss what we've noticed in office hours, class, and grading, and the other NINJA (Marguerite) and I give an update on your grading progress. If things have gone well, I'll either pass off a stack of Discrete grading from Marguerite or receive such a stack, but usually that happens on Saturday.
Saturday
Grading, grading,... in September, if Babson Baseball had a scrimmage, I'd go grade there! (Unfortunately, the season is now over....) Grade some Linearity if we've split up a Studio, and depending on which NINJA picked up the Discrete assignment, I could have a stack of Discrete. As I wander through the dorms throughout the day, I usually end up answering Linearity questions.
Sunday
I glance over the two Linearity studios that students are currently working on (both the graded and ungraded parts because people ask questions about both!), and then I have an hour of office hours in the evening! There will possibly be more grading (there's almost always more grading).
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Transport Mystery
We started our first Transport Phenomena lab on the very first day of class. (Welcome to Olin.) To get a sense for fluid properties and some of the fluid instruments in the lab, we were given mystery fluids to identify based on our measurements of their surface tension, density, viscosity, thermal conductivity, and pH.
We split up into pairs, and each pair chose a fluid. My partner was Lise, who is also in Por Supuesto and on the Society of Women Engineers board with me. Before working with the mystery fluid, though, we practiced making measurements on water and compared our results to known values. After that, we moved on to the mystery fluid.
We split up into pairs, and each pair chose a fluid. My partner was Lise, who is also in Por Supuesto and on the Society of Women Engineers board with me. Before working with the mystery fluid, though, we practiced making measurements on water and compared our results to known values. After that, we moved on to the mystery fluid.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Year Two!
I'm officially a sophomore!
I came back to Olin on Tuesday, and classes started on Thursday. Below the fold is a basic overview of what I'm doing this semester, including classes, work, and activities.
I came back to Olin on Tuesday, and classes started on Thursday. Below the fold is a basic overview of what I'm doing this semester, including classes, work, and activities.
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