My Field of Study

So...what exactly do engineers do? Well isn't that the million dollar question. There are so many different ways you could answer this question. Here's a little bit of info about my field of study.

1. My field of study, engineering, is a pretty diverse field to go into. But no matter what, chemistry, physics, math, bio (and many, many more) are drilled into engineering students' heads. They study more of something depending on what engineering they plan on going into.

NASA. "NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center". 6/27/12 via Flickr. Creative Commons License.

Who made all of the Apollo projects, airplanes, and missiles? Aerospace engineers
Nuclear power plants? Nuclear engineers
Roads, bridges, dams, and airports? Civil engineers
iPhones, Androids, Macs, and PCs? electrical, electronics, and computer engineers

Not many people know exactly how much engineers do until they actually read about it.

2. I mentioned above what some engineers go on to do. I forgot a couple good ones though. Biomedical engineers go on to assist and design artificial organs. The gas you pump in your car was extracted from oil reservoirs by petroleum engineers. And I definitely owe my life to electrical engineers for developing GPS.

3. If you couldn't already tell, engineers do the impossible which is exactly what drew me to engineering. My high school AP Chemistry teacher was also a huge help with that too. If she wasn't as amazing of a teacher as she is, I can't say I wouldn't have dropped that class at second semester. I finally became passionate about something and then once I learned all that could be done by getting an engineering degree, I had to at least try.

4. Engineering is all about team work and solving problems by putting your thoughts together to think of the best solution. So big individual names aren't really a thing in my field of study, but rather big companies. Apple, NASA, Microsoft, Google, and Boeing are huge names in engineering, mainly because they do huge things. If you haven't heard of at least 4 of these, I may be questioning what planet you live on.

5. The top 3 journals in engineering currently are Nature Materials which is published in England. Nano Letters is published by the American Chemical Society in Washington, DC. Advanced Materials is published in Germany.

Reflection
I always love hearing people talk about what they're passionate about; we are all so different! I could relate to Grace's post because she also likes math and science (but just not as much as me). Nursing is very important along with politics which I read about in Gabee's post. I couldn't really relate to her passions because I am not the smartest person when it comes to discussing politics, but I wish I could be better at it so props to Gabee. They sound like me talking about engineering so I really think that we are all in the right fields currently. Hopefully everything goes well.

My Thoughts on Comments

Credible Comments

1. The person who wrote this comment was responding to an article about the Baltimore riots rather passionately. He or she seems extremely heated over police brutality and maybe even a little scared that it may never end in places like Baltimore. It's obvious that he has heard/seen first hand what exactly happens in these kinds of situations and he just wishes for them to stop.

2. Based on this comment, 'bacchys' seems to believe in equality between law enforcers and the average citizen as well as basic human rights. The whole scenario he gave about "five cops rolling up" and arresting someone for basically standing outside led me to believe that. They feel as if that is unfair and unjust and expressed that with the way he described this scenario.

3. I believe that this comment came from a credible source because not only does he bring in facts and statistics in his first paragraph, but he never once mentioned race. People often use racism as a blanket especially in police brutality cases. Whether he feels that way or not, the fact that he didn't take this as an opprotunity to rant about how Freddie Gray was African American increased his credibility for me at least.

1. This comment was made in response to an article declaring the charges against the six police officers involved in Gray's case. This person seems to be anxious to know the facts and definitely the answers to all of his questions. In his opinion, grand assumptions are being made without enough evidence which doesn't add up.

2. Based on the comment, this person seems to simply value the truth. He or she brought up several good points and questions regarding the autopsy report and the injuries Gray was said to have suffered. Three seemingly important questions were brought up that are essential to have answered before making an educated opinion about this.

3. The credibility of this comment was because of the fact that he or she wasn't giving opinions, they were giving known, released facts. They were focusing on what should be seen in Gray's autopsy based on what was heard from the article they just read.

Lacking Credibility...

1. Joseph was responding to an article about Baltimore preparing for more protests during Freddie Gray's hearings. He seems to fear America becoming very liberal and less republican and seems to wish more violence would be used by the police force in Baltimore.

2. Based on his comment, Joseph seems to value republicanism and law enforcement. Violence doesn't seem to make him nervous or sympathetic towards the people protesting in memory of Freddie Gray. 

3. He began lacking credibility somewhere between savages and Zimbabwe. What does Zimbabwe have to do with protests for Freddie Gray who lived in Baltimore? Since when are protesters referred to as savages? It all seemed a bit angry and over the top to me. But he IS the Chief Executive Officer at Stay-at-home parent so I could be wrong...

1. Crystal was responding to the same article as Joseph was. She seems to be a bit anxious or fearful about a massive group of young people spending their time focused on one issue dealing with legalities while they should be spending more time on their education. 

2. She seems to value education and peace as she stated the protests were pointless and "will only result in the arrest of more young people". Focusing on the bigger picture, Crystal would probably like these people to do the same.

3. Based on her comment, Crystal lacked credibility because she didn't really mention anything about the article or Freddie Gray specifically. She just kind of took the opportunity to preach about how education is the most important thing for young people today, which is all great, but isn't really a great response to this article.

Reflection

After reading Bailey's post regarding Hope Solo's arrest, I felt the same way after writing my post about comments. There are always those people who comment and seem like they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. I felt the same way about Joy's post. One of the not credible comments definitely wasn't as bad as the ones I was seeing or the ones in Bailey's post. However, the commenters were putting some of their fears in their comments maybe not even realizing it which is interesting. The fears weren't really the same because they were commenting on different topics.

My Controversy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Baltimore_protests

Freddie Gray was a 25-year-old African American man living in Baltimore. He was put into a coma on  after being handled by six police officers throughout his arrest that night. Nothing happened to the six police officers, but then the riots started for six straight days. 34 people arrested and six police officers were injured until the six police officers responsible got arrested. The mayor of the city didn't have much to say except for a weak attempt at keeping just how huge the mess was quiet.

After Gray's death, a 'purge' was threatened by the Baltimore rioters on the city to which policemen responded. A college campus was shut down. The White Sox vs. Orioles game was postponed until further notice. Bottom line, it was a huge, extremely violent mess with an even bigger clean up. It left that area of Baltimore in shambles.

Thanks wikipedia for the article. I hope it's not just me that is just a bit worried that this is going on in America...the country we live in. It sounds frightening, awful, and kind of like this shouldn't be happening here. But it is interesting that America is kind of seen as a safe place by its citizens and the world around us. Clearly that's not always the case. Seriously just think, what if this happened in the cities we lived in? How would you react?

Calendar Reflection

Gunn, Chris. "NASA Engineers Rehearse Placement of Webb Telescope's NIRSpec and Microshutters". 1/25/13 via Flickr. Creative Commons License.

I am an engineering major. In other words, I'm going to be spending a lot of time doing homework and studying and basically not screwing around. While this will be pretty hard, I think it'll help me in this class as well. In my weekly calendar, I have about 3-6 hours of designated homework and study time every day. I think it will really help me stay focused on school work. To relieve stress, I also have an hour work out session almost every day to take my mind off of things.


Reflection
After reading Lia's post, I was definitely comforted that I'm not the only one that's overwhelmed about the workload in college being so different than in high school. It's going to take some getting used to, but I feel good that I scheduled so much time for homework and studying into my calendar. Grace's post reminded me that I should stay confident and just do the work so there's nothing I need to stress about. I didn't really study in high school though except for the AP classes I took, but now every one of my courses is like an AP course. So in turn, I'll be studying for every single one of my classes in order to be successful.

My Writing Process

1. I definitely feel like I am a heavy reviser with my writing. Often times I find myself rambling on and on about a topic once I get going. Then about half way through, I realize that I just wrote half of a page on something that wasn't even that important to begin with. I figure out what I want to say and where I want to put things after I have my ideas formed into sentences.

Earl. "Do and Undo". 2/17/08. Creative Commons License.

2. My writing process does include little components of the other approaches, like procrastination and heavy planning. I've never been the one to immediately start something right after it's given to me, but I also never really need more than 2 drafts to complete a piece of my writing.

3. I do feel like my writing is successful; I always figure out what I want to say and how to say it the right way. However, there is always room for improvement.

4. I think it might be helpful to me to move away from the procrastination side of me and stick to mainly heavy revising. It's never fun writing under pressure, so it would definitely be useful for me to stop procrastinating and I plan on it.


Reflection
After reading some of my classmates posts, I realize that my writing process seems to be a bit like theirs but also very different. I am envious of what Hunter said in his post in that he is a very heavy planner and doesn't really procrastinate. Like I said before, I really should stop procrastinating, but also I should try a bit more planning too. It seems to work really well for him. I think I related much more to Betsy's post. She said that she tends to procrastinate especially when she doesn't enjoy what she's writing about. Also, Betsy feels like her mind kind of speaks its own language and is sometimes difficult for her to put her thoughts into words which made me feel a lot better about myself. I feel the exact same way as she does and knowing that I'm not the only one is comforting. I am inspired by Hunter to start planning more and maybe that will solve some of the issues I come to when writing.