Job Shadowing Experience

During my day at a workplace, I went to a private engineering firm by the name of Hampton, Lenzini, and Renwick, Inc. This was an interesting place to go because of my interest in engineering. I personally learned a lot during this experience because I got to talk to real engineers about real job sites. I did not just follow one person all day though. What I did was I met with my contact at 8 AM in his office. Then what we did was we met each other and talked about random stuff to get to know each other. After the initial meeting of him, what my person did, Steve Megginson, was showed me around their office. It was a somewhat small office, considering it only fit about 15 people to work in it. After I was shown around the place, we sat down in his office and he went through the basics of the trade. He showed me some different types of jobs that he has done as well as he enlightened me about the joys of his job. This person got to travel around a lot to job sites and he got to inspect bridges. I forgot to say that this person was a bridge specialist. We talked for about two hours about what he did and he also showed me other things like how they had to promote themselves because they are a private firm. He talked about how it is important to be very good at the technical side of the buisness, but if you do not learn to communicate your ideas to other people then you will not be a very sucessful engineer. After we talked for a long time. He took me over to another engineer to talk to. He was a different specialist, he was a forensic engineer. I had never heard of forensic engineers before and I think that his job sounds really cool. He is like a detective trying to figure out what went wrong in an engineering blunder. The ironic part about this person is that he turned out to be the dad of a person that I compete against for track. So we had a little more to talk about than just engineering. This man talked about a few different scenarios that he had to figure out, and it was fun because he tried to involve us in the discussion rather than just telling us how he did it. He then talked about the trusses on bridges for a little while and we moved on to the next person. Then next guy that we talked to was a hydrolics guy. He did all of the figuring for where a river or creek would move so that it would not erode the supports of a bridge. After talking to all of these people, I noticed that all of these people worked as a team to make sure that their bridges were safe and that their bridges worked efficiently. They all talked about the different stages of the engineering process as well as the buisness aspect of working with budgets. I found out yesterday that there is a lot more that goes into the engineering field than just pluging in numbers to equations. I learned about the buisness side of the trade, and I think it sounds like a good job to have.

Journal #46 - Favortie Car

Well I have to say that my favorite car is obviously the 1997 Toyota Camry. I am not much of a car guy, so you can already begin to tell that I have no idea what I am talking about when I talk about cars. But this is the current car that I have and it is also the first car that I have ever had. I have taken care of it thus far, the only dent on the car coming from my brother backing into someone else's car a few years ago (this car used to be my brother's before he got a new car). My car may not look like much, but it is in very good shape for its age and it has served me well. It is black and looks just like any other car. I have a sweet steerring wheel cover for my steering wheel that says University of Illinois on it. I also have University of Illinois license plates on, thanks to my dad. I can hit zero to sixty in about a minute and a half and sometimes when I have to drive uphill, it doesn't make it up the hill. Just kidding about the last sentence, because my car actually works quite well. Thus far it has not broken down on me nor has a tired blown out. The worst thing that has happened to my car so far is having the sun roof stuck halfway opened, which was fixed with the love and support of my family. We were all worried deeply for my car, but it made it through the surgery bby the mechanics. He has been safetly driving around for the last six months injury free, except for that grinding noise in the trunk. I'm pretty sure that it is just the boogie man who moved from my closet to my car, but there is no way to know for sure. One time, I was driving my car to a friends house where there was a huge pothole on the side of the road. I accidentally took the turn too sharp and my tire went straight down into a three foot drop. Luckily my car is industructable and survived without a scratch, but that definately gave me a bit of a scare.

Journal #45 - Experience on American Literature Site

SO far we have not done very much on the site, but i have already learned how to make a site on google. Thus far, my team members have been wonderful. They created the whole site without me while I was gone to WYSE. They got a lot done without me here, and I am glad that I was assigned these two beautiful girls. Asside from the brown nosing, I think that this website is a good and different look to a project. It is good to get some experience with technology in our ever changing enviroment. It is also important that we reach into ourselves to find some creativity and see what we can get out. This project is combining our knowledge, credebility, and our creativiy all into one piece. We just completed a civil war project in our history classes in which people created a web page filled with our information. That project has helped me with some of my experiences thus far on the American Lierature Sites Project. I think that the only problem with this project is the fact that everything is online. I like being able to use my brain for a project instead of looking up all of my information. But that part will come when we analyze some of the Dickinson poems. I think that this project is going to help me with some of my computer skills as well as teach me a way to create a web page. I like working in partners as well, because it seems like it takes some of the pressure off of you individually. It can feel overwhelming when you have a lot of work to get done on a project and no one can help you with it. In the real world, people work in teams anyways, so we might as well go ahead and get used to this concept by working on projects together. I think that this project will help me with my team working skills.

Journal #44 - Animal Imagery

Once upon a time, there lived a young caterpillar. He felt as furry as fuzzy wuzzy the bear and he was a great crawler. He is the best crawler in the land and he could beat anyone in a race. He tops out at a whopping .1 mile per hour. This little caterpillar wiggles and writhes to the speed of light. He passes the other little caterpillars with ease and everyone looks up to him. All of the little caterpillars gossip about how great this young being can be. This little caterpillar had to face the fastest leaf looking bug in the area though. It is unfortunate that the leafy bugs are naturally faster than the caterpillars, but our little friend wants to be the first caterpillar to upset a leafy bug. They were challenged to a race, and the leafy bug was pulling ahead. The bug had long legs that carried through the race. He was going so fast to the point where he tripped and fell. The crowd was going wild as the caterpillar started to catch up after the bugs fall. The bugs moral was broken. The caterpillar was going so fast that he was seeing sounds and hearing colors. This little guy started to believe that he could actually beat the leafy bug. Then finally, with a final dive across the finish line, the leafy bug exploded into a giant firey ball of flame. As this spontaneous combustion started, the caterpillar crossed the finish line to defeat the leafy bug. The crowd gave the caterpillar a standing ovation as they welcomed their new champion. The race was over and the crowd was chanting for a speach. The caterpillar gave a heartwarming speach that encouraged all of the other bugs to try their hardest. The bugs all rallied around the caterpillar and they hoisted him into the air. This was a magical time and I am proud to say that I witnessed it.

Journal #43 - Best moment in 2010 Olympics

I did not watch too much of the Olympics this year, but one sport that I like to watch during this time of the year would be curling. I know that this sport may seem somewhat boring and that it may not take very much athletic ability to complete. But this sport produces champions just like any other sport in this world. I watch the women from Sweden win a gold medal this year. I think that this is an important time for Swedish people, such as my friend Ivar. I also wached some skiing , I think it was cakked something like the super G. It was something close to that, anyways I saw a lot of people fall down. I felt bad for all opf tese people because they each had spent all of their lives training for this one occasion and then they just went and fell down. These people do not get a second chance even though they could be the fastest in the world. I think that the biggest story overal was Apollo Ohno winning a record 8 career medals in the winter Olympics. I thought that this was really cool because speed skating is such a tough event. Each competitor fights each other for the inside position in the race, and many of them seem to fall towards the end of the race trying their hardest to win. think it is funny thought that he won one of his medals because the people who were in second and third fell down right in front of the finish line as Apollo sliiped in for his medaling finish. He did not really deserve that medal, but i guess he was good enough to get several others. He is a great athlete and he should be praised for his great efforts in his races during this Olypmics. Apollo should be back in four years to extend his large amount of medals that he has won during the winter Olypmics.