It's all over...

My semester finally ended this week. It has been a hard one academically and my grades are somehow managing to work themselves out here at the end of everything, but I wouldn't want to go through all the headaches of this semester over again. I've learned a lot of lessons about myself this semester though, and I'm looking forward to applying that knowledge in the future.

In other news, I think that I'm starting to realize that I'm not quite cut out for pure academic work for the rest of my life. I don't really know what that means for my future, but I guess its always good to cross things off the list of possibilities...

Trip to USC and other such things..

Baylor had its annual fall break this past weekend. Instead of taking my usual trip up to Arlington to visit family I headed out to California to visit Los Angeles and check out USC's graduate engineering program. A friend and I both received travel grants to make the trek, so the trip was mostly free. Yay for hard work paying off.

Famous Trojan Statue on USC campus

Greg standing next to a really big thermal vacuum chamber.

The visit was pretty amazing and I am so glad that I got to see what the school was like first hand. It was a totally different experience from Baylor's engineering school. We have one building and a really limited amount of lab space for our small amount of faculty; they have eight or ten buildings with what seems like limitless lab space for their 200 or so faculty who are doing groundbreaking research.

I know that the schools aren't really comparable due to the fact that Baylor's engineering program is pretty young, small , and pretty much ignored by the university as a whole. USC on the other hand has an established program that is the academic gem (or so the dean called it..) of the school and the university president is an engineer.

Despite all of that I can't help but find myself thinking about all of the ways that our engineering program could be better here at Baylor. There have been multiple times when I have approached a faculty member with an idea for entering Baylor into a competition or a conference or something along that line and the response is almost always "Baylor isnt' ready for that / we don't have the funding". The same thing tends to happen when I discuss graduate school with most of my professors. Even though the department is always touting how well prepared we will be for industry or grad school once we finish here the faculty usually recommend the same old schools for graduate work and they don't seem too excited by the prospect of a student of theirs applying to somewhere like USC or Stanford or MIT. If we are really just as well prepared as our peers shouldn't a student who excels here at Baylor be ready for the big leagues?

In the end I think that Baylor has a pretty good department, but I can see us becoming a truly great department one day. I guess I'll just have to check back someday and see when it is ready for greatness.

Sticking With It

I sit at desks a lot.

When I'm in my dorm room you can often find me sitting here:

Hey, at least I have two monitors...

When I had to write a program for my computer science class project last semester I spent multiple tens of hours here:

I usually sat at the second one in from the left.

Whenever I have to study for a particularly intense test I usually find myself at one of the nooks on the third floor of Moody library at a desk that looks like this:

I once spent 40 hours in a desk much like this one during finals week.

All of the work that I have done in the wind tunnel lab so far has happened at this desk:

Oh Dell computers, where would the engineering department be without you?

This past summer I spent most of my work days sitting at this desk:

Cubicles really aren't so bad... (who am I kidding, they're awful)

Long story short: I sit a lot. During all of that sitting I sometimes find myself wondering if all of the study time is really worth it. Is sticking with engineering really worth all of the monotonous hours that I have to end up spending at desks? Wouldn't I be happier if I could just go outside and throw a frisbee for a little while? Maybe in the short term, but without all of the work I have put into engineering in my dorm room, at the library, in the computer lab, and at my cubicle I would miss out on things like...

Working with a wind tunnel.

Building part of a wind turbine for Engineers with a Mission.


Messing around with the space shuttle simulator.

Sitting in the Apollo 17 crew module.

I guess you could say that sitting at all of those desks has paid off a bit.

To top it all off I recently found out that USC is going to pay for me to come out and visit their graduate school of engineering in mid October. I'm thinking that's probably going to be a pretty fun trip.

I might not really enjoy the time I spend at all of those desks, but I sure do enjoy all of the benefits that those hours of study bring me.

So yeah, I guess it is worth it. Maybe I'll stick with this engineering thing after all...

Identity

I've been thinking about this issue for a while now, and I might as well blog about it so I can move on and blog something different down the line...

For the past several years I have heard a lot about how men in our society struggle with identity. Some of the opinions I have seen blame popular culture for instilling a sense of false identity in young boys (e.g. you are only important if you have monetary success, be tough at all costs, etc...), others attribute the lack of identity to the massive amount of fatherless homes that exist today. I'm no expert, but I tend to agree that growing up without a father would probably mess your sense of identity up quite a bit.

Don't get me wrong, I haven't had a perfect relationship with my own father, but he was always there to tell me that he was proud of me, to tell me that he thought I had what it takes to succeed in this life. Whatever problems our relationship might have, I know that his words on this issue will stick with me for the rest of my life, and for that I am so thankful.

In case you're wondering what brought on this train of thought, I was in a store a week or two ago and saw a short scene from the movie Michael Clayton. I don't particularly like the movie as a whole, but there is one scene that I think is amazing. (This is where I would post a youtube link of the scene, but sadly it has a few... non-choice words in it, so I've just included an edited version of the dialogue below. Michael is the dad, Henry is the son.)

Henry Clayton: What?
Michael Clayton: Your uncle Timmy, and I mean this, on his best day, is never as tough as you. I'm not talking about crying or drugs or anything like that. I'm talking about in his heart. In his heart. Do you understand me? And all this charming crap. This Big Tim, Uncle Boss crap... and I know you love him and I know why... but when you see him like that you don't have to worry... because that's not how it's going to be for you. You're not going to be one of these people who goes through life wondering why crap keeps falling out of the sky around them. I know that. I know it. OK?
[Henry nods]
Michael Clayton: I see it every time I look at you. I see it right now. I don't know where you got it from, but you got it. OK?
Michael Clayton: [phone rings] Hold on...

The dialogue doesn't really hit home as well as the scene itself, but oh well.

I'm just glad that my dad is one who was willing to tell me I have what it takes. Thanks dad.

Unfair

Sometimes I think that "Life's not fair" could almost be my mantra. I've had a number of "unfair" situations come up over the course of my (admittedly short) lifespan and it seems that as soon as one of them is nearing a resolution another one pops up. I'm not talking about some silly little "Poor me I didn't get the video game I wanted for my birthday" situations either, they are more like "I didn't get into the college I wanted to go to even though I had met every criteria for admissions ever published and had been recruited by them" kind of thing.

The good news is that things always end up being for the best. I (usually) come out of these situations more mature, more well rounded, and in a deeper spiritual place because of the adversity. If I had not come to Baylor I would have missed out on a lot of really great opportunities and my life would be completely different right now.

For some reason, that still does not make everything alright in the moment, right as the perceived "unfair" thing has happened. I know that what happened today isn't the end of the world, but I still let it ruin at least a couple of hours of my day. Maybe I've got some more growing to do...


"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28

Inspiration

My post about LEGOs inspired me to stop by the LEGO store that had recently opened at the mall near my apartment in Houston. They have a wall of bricks there that you can select different pieces from and then put into a cup. Once the cup is full you pay a set price for all of the bricks in the cup. Being the engineering student I am I couldn't help but think of the most efficient method of packing bricks into the cup, but I gave up about half way through and just started trying to fill the thing up with bricks I thought looked interesting. Long story short ....

Meet Frank the duck and his remote cotrolled propellor powered car.

I have no idea how often I'm going to have time to play with LEGOs this semester (judging from my first two days, not too much), but it is still fun to have them on my desk.

Excuse me while I go add wings to that car....

Learning me some knowledge

Classes began today at Baylor University. For the first time in three years I feel like I really have a good idea of what to expect out of most of my classes and professors. My schedule is far from what I would really like it to be, (too spread out) but I'm sure I'll make due and figure out a way to use my breaks productively.

Another first for me is the feeling that Baylor's Engineering school is growing too much. I came to this school precisely because of the fact that it was small and I had a good chance of getting to know all of my professors. This fall, our department has somewhere around 216 freshmen and I have to wonder if we can really support that number of students. We don't have to facilities for that many people, much less the professors to make small class sizes a reality. It seems that our department's strengths have suddenly become our weaknesses. I'm worried that there are going to be a lot of growing pains for the department in the next several years, but hopefully my class won't have to be the one that ends up getting the short end of the stick.