Last Class

Today was our last day of class and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. It was a shame that I had to leave at 5:30 because all the presentations were great, people have more creativity than I ever thought they did. Out of all the presentations Nick's one really got me and I agree with him in a lot of the feelings about this class. For sure this class was one of my favorites this semester, I just felt that we were hanging out, just everyone talking and watching videos. It actually took me a while to realize how much I was learning because of all the fun we were having, it is difficult being an engineer to understand that you can learn without having to solve multiple math problems.
I also agree with Nick in about how shy I am and how open I felt that I was in this class. Normally I only talk on classes were participation is a huge percentage of your grade. Here whenever I felt like talking I was not shy about raising my hand, and even though I tried my best not to do presentations, when I did the ones for inspiration I just felt that I was talking to a group of friends. It is really hard to feel that way for me, but somehow it happened to me in this class for the first time ever in PSU.
And yeah it was really time consuming, and really frustrating to know that even though you are working so hard for this class you might not get an A just because another group got lucky and got more hits than you did, or did more money, or had a better idea. It is sad but I guess it is life. We just need to realize that the grade stays in PSU while the knowledge stays with us for life.

SHPE End of the Year Banquet

I couldn't go to class on Thursday because I had the End of the Year Banquet for my club and I was the one in charged of doing the event. The event turned out to be really nice after all the struggled that it was to plan it. Two weeks ago I had it all planned out: the food, the room, the invitations etc, everything seemed to be working out until I realized that my RSVP list was already at 60, and we had a room reserved for 60, and there was still 2 more weeks before the event. It was hard to change rooms, figure out a way to fit everyone there (we ended up with a list of 80 people), but we did it.
The event was really nice and simple, the president began talking about our major events of the years, then we followed up with a video with pictures, and ended up presenting the awards. We awarded all of our sponsors, our member of the year and our executive member of the year. We also awarded other 3 outstanding SHPE-members, these were defined by a point system that we have that gives points to each member according to how active they are in the club.
The ceremony concluded with a speech of the president for next year.

Week off before Final's week

I think it is hard enough to do 4-5 final exams in a week, and on top of that there are so many projects due on the week before finals, making it impossible for us to start studying early for finals. I strongly believe that we should get a week off right before finals. This will help everyone study and get ready for the week that is coming ahead. I know that there is supposed to be a rule here at PSU, I believe it is that the maximum of a final grade that can be defined in the last two weeks of class is 30% and I know from personal experience that a bunch of professors make huge projects due the week before finals even though they also have finals on finals week. Sometimes summing up to more than 30% of the final grade for the class being defined in the last 2 weeks of class. Even though some have a final that is 20% and a project that is 10%, which will make it fine according to the rule, the problem is not the percentage but the time and effort that both of them need in order to score a good grade. I just hoped that I didn't had two weeks as crazy as the ones coming up. And a great solution could be a break right before finals.

blackberry smartphone

The blackberry smartphone is impossible to live without once you’ve experienced owning one. I just got mine this semester, after debating whether to get the Blackbery or the Iphone, and don’t regret my decision at all. My favorite accessory on the phone is the Pandora application and the Blackberry Messenger. Pandora is great because I can listen to various types of music anytime, anywhere. Blackberry Messenger is absolutely free and let’s you chat with anyone who has the same application. It is wonderful because I can keep in touch with my family and friends back home at all times for no cost at all.

IE department centenial

This weekend the Pennsylvania State University's Industrial Engineering department is celebrating their 100th anniversary. The Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering is the first Industrial Engineering department on the world, founded in 1909. Right now ranked on 4th nationally in undergrad and 5th nationally on graduate, Penn State IE has a lot more to celebrate than just the 100 years of its foundation; all of what they have achieved in this 100 years is amazing, where more than 7,000 industrial engineers have received degrees.
To commemorate this 100 years of excellence we are having different events through the weekend including, tours of the Leonhard building, picnics, competitions and a semi-formal banquet on Saturday night. A bunch of alumni will be attending these events, so will the faculty/staff of the department and some of the current students.

Happy Bday PSU IE department!

Exrteme Engineering

So if you read my previous post, hopefully you know what HSLC is and that it was this weekend. Well as mentioned on my previous post Extreme Engineering is our main event of the conference. It was a complete success and I think that high school students as well as us enjoyed it very much. The task this year was to create a boat that would be able to carry at least 1500 bbs and to be able to transport this "treasure" for a given distance. The teams well also tested on velocity, presentation, price, and innovation.
So this challenge started on Friday where we (the extreme engineers leaders) picked our teams after interviewing each student for a 1 min period. That night they picked their positions in the teams (President, VP, CEO, or whatever position they came up with) as well as their team's name, boat's name and their first sketch of this boat. On Saturday night they started building taking in consideration the dimensions requirements and the budget limitations. Every material had a price and the cheapest your boat was the most points you would get in that category. They only had a couple of hours to build it and the results were amazing considering the age of these students.
At the end every team was awarded with first place each on different categories. The real winners were the leaders of each groups. Us (the extreme engineering leaders) got together with the judges and told them who was the high school student that showed the strongest leadership characteristics and we award these students with digital cameras.

HSLC

My club SHPE (Socierty of Hispanic Engineers) is hosting next weekend our yearly High School Leadership Conference sponsored by Xerox. In this conference we bring around 40 high school students, usually juniors and seniors, to introduce them to PSU and to engineering. We aimed for Latino students that are interested in engineering, but we don't reject anyone so however is interested in coming can come. Normally it is really hard to get Latin students to come because of the perception that their parents have of college students, and being a Latino myself I know how our parents can be with trusting their kids to others. We do two trips to their high school to try to introduce the conference, ourselves and to show the parents that we are trustful and that their kids would be safe with us for the weekend, but is still not that easy to convince all of them.
On the conference we have one main project, which changes every year, but its basically an engineering project that would last for the entire weekend. Students get divided into groups of 6 students and get to win really good prices. Aside from this project they go to several campus tours including the Beaver Stadium Tour, the FAME lab tour, and the Nuclear Reactor tour. These students stay with different members from our club, but only with the ones that live on campus, since they have to be on campus due to PSU policies. We are getting ready to welcome the students for this year, which should be here on March 27th.