Learning Curve

I have a problem with the U of A. I've had it as long as I've been in the AME Department.

The problem isn't necessarily the teachers or the students, but both.

At first, I just thought the teachers couldn't teach, and then trying to not place blame, I decided that I must just not be able to learn in that manner and I needed to learn how soon.

Then I found out that students have all sorts of "resources" including old tests that are almost exactly the same as the tests that we then walk into. I already knew about solutions for homework, and I'm all right with those as long as the teacher is (and most are) because I take the time to learn what I'm doing instead of just blindly copying.

So really, students are able to perform really well on tests once they've worked similar problems that are nothing like the homework assignments. Some teachers try to get you to think outside the box during a test, and throw something at you that you haven't seen yet, to see if you know how to apply engineering skills to use what you've learned to solve a new problem. Then they grade the tests on curves so that it doesn't matter so much if the students don't score well, but they get the experience in thinking like an engineer.

The problem comes when the students have previous access to similar problems, and some are walking in blindly. The curve is then shot and there is usually a clear designation between those with resources and those without.

I've had this inner struggle with myself and what is honest. I would like to earn my degree because I've been learning for 5 years, not just copying and mimicking. However, because classes are graded on curves, honest people who could actually give the teacher more honest feedback on how he is teaching, look like the ones who are failing, even though we may be working the hardest and learning the most.

So now that I am working at an engineering firm, I'm starting to see how these practices have transferred to the working field.

My "trainer" never officially got his degree in mechanical engineering, but has almost 20 if not more years of experience, working with the genius engineers that are from the baby-boomer age. So, even without a degree, he knows a lot, even if he just knows who to go to because they would know better than he.'

The guy that I've been working with has been out of college for about 5 years, maybe less. My trainer says I already know more than him because I know how to work.

Currently my trainer is working in another office in another city because that's where he's needed. He travels back every weekend to see his girlfriend and actually stay at his house, but that's what he's doing now.

As I've been working with this other guy, I've been repremanded for pulling files from the "Standard Files" folder that we are supposed to pull from. He tells me to pull them from other projects. As we are issuing specs, sometimes he even forgets to change the job number as he is merely pulling from another project. Almost everything he does is from someone else, and it's almost like he doesn't even know how to do it himself. Sometimes I think he hands stuff to me because he literally doesn't know what to do and knows that I will at least ask questions and be able to learn how to do it.

So I've been doing some pump calcs with this other guy, and noticed that on his calc sheets the Static Head is negative. I remember giving some calcs like that to my trainer and having to figure out where I went wrong on the pump calc. That other guy just blows it off like it doesn't matter. So I called my trainer to see who was right and what it was all about, and he said that there is definitely something wrong. I just hope that the calcs we sent out for quote won't be too bad.

I guess I just feel like I'm regressing into one of those other kids who just does something and assumes it's right because it works. We'll just see how well the plant works! The sad thing is that I know I have forgotten how to do a lot that I knew how to do at one point. My trainer wishes he could be back, since he's supposed to be on our project anyway, but he can't do anything about it. They pulled him onto a project he never wanted to be a part of.

The good news is that I've been taught by him, and at one point knew how to do the calcs by hand, and that's why a red flag shot up when I saw that negative number. I'm just afraid that I'm forgetting so much right now that he won't be able to appreciate me as much as he once did. You see, I know I won't be working here forever because we are going to have kids, and who knows if we will even be in the same town after we graduate! I really liked working with that trainer because he fully intended on me being smarter than him when he was done with me because of my schooling. Thus he was training me and telling me who to talk to and introducing me to all sorts of people because he wants me to get my P.E. by the time I'm 27. I know I won't go that far (I haven't told him that though), but I like getting that reaction to my work, and it encourages me to work harder and learn more.

I just hope that this summer of regression won't require too long of a comeback to reach that point I was at on the learning curve. The good news is that now that I'll have been doing it the way kids do it in school, I should have such an easy time in school, not worrying about how well I learn and understand what is being taught.

I had a teacher once say "They call it cheating in school, but networking in the real world"
I think that there's only so much networking that can be done before engineers are going to find themselves in a situation that no one knows the answer to, and even worse, no one even knows how to start finding the answer because all they have ever done is networked.

[/cynical rant]

It's Thursday!

As Matthias works 75 miles away and stays with my parents Mon-Thur, I obviously look forward to Thursday all week, and dread Mondays. Some funny reactions that I wouldn't guess that I would have this summer are:

-I can't seem to fall asleep at a normal hour without Matthias. In fact, last night I was so tired that I forced myself to go to bed at 10, turned the lights out and just laid down and was so full of energy even though I'd been so tired all day....so I finally was able to get to sleep at like 11:30, but when the optimal time for me to wake up in the morning is 5:45...yeah.

-Because of the sleep issues, Thursdays are really funny! First of all because I know Matthias is coming home. I look so forward to work being over that I just keep watching the clock. Secondly, it's after 3 nights of not sleeping a full nights sleep, that I can't work linearly on any project, thus when I'm asking people questions at work it's like every 5 minutes I have a question on a different project. Luckily I had so many today that I was productive, because if I only have one project I end up getting distracted and having to check my email a lot during the day to regain focus. Today I hardly checked it at all.

-Lastly, I can't seem to form sentences very well. I have thoughts in my head, but they leave me as I am speaking. Thus I sound very silly, especially as I am talking to more people on Thursdays than other days because we usually issue drawings and specs on Friday.

Anyway, he should be home in about 15 minutes (or so), so I'd better do my 15 minute pick-up. I hope I can focus!

The bad news is that on Thursdays I'm ready to go to bed at 8, but it's like Friday night for Matthias, so I usually end up crashing while he's having fun and catching up on things.

I sure do love him!

Dancing in the Rain

I love the monsoon season. The smell of rain, the thunder and lightening, the sound of storms pounding on the roof and listening to the runoff fall, even after the rain is gone. Then I love the smell of the world after it has rained...that it's been washed and is all fresh.

This morning I woke up to a cloudy sky, and all morning as I was heading to and from different meetings it was raining such that I remembered how much I loved the rain in Seattle!

By the afternoon it cleared up and everyone was so excited that the sun came out. I was sad to see the clouds go, but the whole world was glistening...yes, even in the parking lot.

And to think that it's monsoon season, so storms happen all the time! I love it!

Thoughts of the Day:

Summer has done it's job!
Today I was at an hour and a half meeting at work, and I wasn't bored and actually kind of enjoyed it. I guess that means I'm ready for school to be back in session.

Mostly I think it's because then I'll get to see Matthias every day. Nine hour days are hard enough, but to know I'm going home to no Matthias makes them even harder. I think I have ADD when he's not home.

Secondly, I don't have to feel as bad when I take breaks during the school year. I guess that's one way I'm like my mom: I like to take breaks. The theory is that once I've lost focus, I really won't lose time in taking a break to regain focus. However, it's hard to take breaks at work and not feel guilty that for every 15 minutes I'm not working I'm wasting the company's money.

And finally, once school is in session that means it's officially our last year of school, and who knows where life will take us afterward! It'll be the first time in our lives that school won't be the answer (unless grad school comes into the picture, which we are hoping to avoid, but it's still an option). Either way, it'll be the beginning of a new chapter of life, and that's always exciting!

Mr. Darcy
When I am primarily drafting/designing at work, I have taken a new fondness to listening to books on my ipod. My good friend told me about this site librivox.org which has all of the books available to the public domain, many of which have been wiki recorded so that means free books!

Anyway, so I've been listening to Pride and Prejudice this week, and as I don't think I've read/watched the beloved story since I met Matthias, I just have a few thoughts.

One thing I always loved about Mr. Darcy is that when he fell in love, he fell in love and nothing could distract him but the pleasing of Miss Elizabeth Bennett, and that he just kept hoping to make her happy.

Matthias is always doing everything to make me happy. I'm so spoiled by it, but I love it, and it makes me want to do even better for him. I feel like I fail miserably most of the time, but he still loves me even though I'm nowhere near perfect. He gives me even greater images of the woman I will become, and I just have to try harder every day to be that strong, motivated woman, who will some day be as good to her husband as he is to her. Until then, just remember that I'm definitely grateful to be married to such an amazing man!

Growing Up
My sister and I just watched 13 Going on 30. My favorite part will always be the Thriller dance, but that's beside the point.

The premise of the movie is that on her 13th birthday she wishes to be "Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving" and wakes up to be 30 and have all of her greatest dreams come true, only to find out that she became a terrible person who nobody liked, but she got all her dreams, right? Turns out she gave up her best friend along the way, and she really regrets it. She goes home to her parents house (who she had also abandoned) and asks her mom if she had any regrets. Her mom says no and that all of her mistakes were just learning opportunities.

There are so many things I have done in my life that I am so embarrassed to remember ever acting that way. But I guess the whole point of life is to take things like that and learn from them, such that those situations will not have to happen again, or at least to my later embarrassment.

And for the Birthday Boy
Yesterday was Matthias' birthday, so we will be celebrating it tomorrow. I'm pretty excited as I think he'll really like his presents! The hardest part about shopping for him is that there are so many things that I can think of to get him, that it's hard to narrow it down to what I'll actually get him. The good news is, I'm pretty sure he'll love his presents!

I should probably go to bed so that I can sleep through some of the hours before his arrival! I sure do love Thursdays!

Harley is a Good Dog!

I suppose I shouldn't have let my first post here be a whiny one, but I really just wanted to remember that day. But here's something else that's kind of entertaining.

Like I mentioned, Megan and I are house sitting this week for some friends of ours. They have a great dog named Harley and a big hairy cat that has opposable thumbs named Romeo. On there fridge is a magnet that says, "My dog thinks he's human and my cat thinks he's God." That sums up their personalities pretty well, except that Harely more acts like an excitable little 5 year-old. Maybe 3 year-old, minus the crying when he's tired. He's very attached to his owner and gets easily scared by other people, though he took a fondness to Megan pretty quickly. Probably because she tries to baby talk to him in the same tone of voice as his owner. Thursday night when I got there from Sierra Vista, Harely didn't like me at first, but he got over that quickly because Megan was there and I gave him a cookie. But when Megan left for work and I went to fetch him from outside, he wouldn't get near me! He would just run about 20 ft away from me and bark while holding his tail in between his legs. I tried to coax him to come back inside, but to no avail. He was scared and wouldn't have anything to do with me. That is until I said the magic word: walk. I asked Harley if he didn't want to go on a walk with me. He stopped barking, pricked up his ears and peered curiously at me. Slowly he lowered his tail from between his legs, and he started to follow me towards the door. Then after I went inside, he bounded into the house straight to cupboard where he leash and harness are kept, nosing his way around. When I took then harness, he almost put it on himself he was so excited! He wouldn't even take a dog treat. So I went on a 20 min walk with him, my arm being pulled out of the socket the whole time, and we've been friends ever since!

One more anecdote. Megan and I rented Bridge to Teribithia last night and watched it on the big flat panel screen here at our friend's house. Harley just kind of curled up by the couch as we watched the movie. There's one part in the movie where the main character, like an 12 year-old boy, tells someone that he'd like to trade his four sisters for good dog. When he said "good dog," Harely stood up and pricked up his ears. Then about 10 seconds later, he laid back down. Yes Harley, you're a good dog!

Hum-dinger of a day

My schedule for this summer has been a long distance one and a little bit difficult. I've been commuting back and forth to Sierra Vista, working on post at the JITC in imagery standards. On a normal week, I'll ride a carpool van from Tucson to Sierra Vista, then work all week (staying with Megan's parents and riding with her dad) then take the carpool van back to Tucson Thursday afternoons. But how many weeks are normal ones? Maybe less than a third of them? More often than not, I'll stay in Sierra Vista for the weekend and Megan will be with me, then go back to Tucson Monday morning instead of me commuting, or I'll come on Tuesday, not Monday because of a vacation, or whatever. At any rate, I'm a very casual rider on the carpool van.

I was really excited to come home this weekend because I was coming home to house sitting at our friends' house on Ina and first. Megan's sister, Kathleen, was going to pick me up from the carpool drop off in South Tucson, and we were going to have a BBQ with baby back pork ribs (that we actually did on grill, oh so good) as just kind of a fun way to start the weekend. Well, wake up Thursday morning and I couldn't find my wallet. No sweat, I might've just left it at my work desk in a drawer or something. I go to work and it's not there. Oh well, I'll call Megan's mom when I take a break in a few hours and have her look for it. A few hours into work, I realize that I left my phone on in the secure lab that I work in (a big no no) where there is no reception anyway, so after diligently searching for a signal for those first few hours, its battery was shot, and the phone turned off. Hmm, now I really couldn't even call my mother-in-law to have her look for my wallet. I guess I still ended up calling her on an office phone, but I needed my cell phone in case anything went weird in arranging my ride home. The day went on and it was finally time to catch my ride to Tucson! I went and stood near the entrance of the JITC building, and waited, and waited, and waited. <> After 20 minutes had passed (about 15 minutes after the scheduled departure time of the shuttle) I had to admit that something was wrong. Either the shuttle was extremely early in leaving, it did not run that day and I was not aware (since I'm such a casual rider), or there was no one at JITC riding that day, so it passed without stopping and they didn't assume I was riding (since I'm such a casual rider). So I just sat in the rain, and cried. Well, not really. But it really was raining outside and I really did kinda feel like crying. For crying out loud, I couldn't even call Megan to let her know what had happened or Kathleen to tell her not to pick me up because my phone was dead!

I went to my father-in-law's desk and related to him my sad story. He wasn't planning on going home for another hour and a half, but he is always thinking about ways he can go out of his way to make things better for others. So he packed up his desk, said he needed to talk to someone and then he could take me back to his house. He arranged for a way to get to work on Friday, said he would figure out how to get a ride to everywhere he needed to be on Sunday, and then just let me take his truck to Tucson. Back at his house, I plugged my phone in to make some calls, searched my pants folded and put away in the dresser to find my wallet (I'd had some time to think about it), then took Steve's truck and I was back on my way to Tucson listening to conservative talk radio all the way home! Ahhh, what a relief. In the end I was only about 45 minutes delayed and we ate some of the best ribs I ever had, and by far the best ribs I've ever cooked! But I am extremely fortunate that Megan's parents have been so accommodating to me this Summer and that Steve let me take his truck for the weekend.

Scrapbooking!

So last night I read Megan's tutorial on drop shadows and another tutorial on templates, and now I'm starting to feel more comfortable with Photoshop Elements. I was up too late for my sick self last night, but I think this turned out really cute!


Credits:

Template Freebie from Weeds & Wildflowers June 30, 2008

Simply Black Alpha and Beachy Keen Kit from Melissa Bennetts Designs at www.sweetshoppedesigns.com

It's a Blog! San Diego Family Reunion

Matthias and I decided to start a blog in hopes that we'll be better at preserving our memories.

This past weekend was the family reunion for his side of the family. We went to the beach at Encinitas. So many kids, so much boogie-boarding, so much body surfing, and luckily not too much sunburn!

The first night there we decided to go for a walk to find something for dinner. Our hotel was the Ocean Inn in Leucadia. Such a quaint little town. Not the classy San Diego you expect like in Cardiff by the Sea, or Encinitas, but well-kept even if it's not the most ritzy. I loved the feel of it! We found this restaurant where it just happened to be Cuban night! Matthias got a cuban meal, but I saw Puttenesca on the menu (has anyone read Lemony Snicket?) and had to order it. Amazingly, I loved it!

The next morning we all went to the beach (which is just a short walk, although it's nice to drive with all those kids!). Matthias and I had planned on finding a place to rent boogie boards, but turns out that while we went on our morning walk along the beach, his parents had gone down to Walmart to buy some boogie boards for less than we figured we would have to spend in rental! We had a blast with the kids figuring out which waves to ride. Kambri and Michael tended to stay with us a lot, and got really good at boogie boarding. They were staying in our room since we offered to upgrade to a 2 bed room if anyone wanted the extra bed. I got quite the nice burn that day wearing my nice new suit. Thus, the next day I went in my plain black speedo with shorts and a t-shirt on over it!

I really love to spend time with his family. I just feel so lucky to have such amazing in laws who were so quick to welcome and befriend!

Random memories:

I received a compliment from his sisters! Seems like our goal of not gaining weight in the first year of marriage has been a success. Now let's just make sure that lasts another 95 years. (Once we lose the weight from eating 4 donuts each in less than 24 hours!)

Kambri was reading Twilight, and read it in less than 2 days even though she was on vacation in California! I definitely need to get a hold of that one!

When Leslie first saw me at dinner on Friday night, I was holding Emilyn (Becca's baby) and she was like "Megan has a baby?! Why didn't anybody tell me?!" We then corrected her.

Little Sydney kept coming up to us all cute and smiley, and then would turn on a scary "Rawr!" and giggle like crazy! Her other trick was to put her head on its side and say "ow!" and then laugh. We didn't get what was so funny, but she sure loved it and her laugh was infectious!

Because I hurt my foot on Friday in the ocean, I wasn't up for more than 4 hours in the ocean, so we went back to the hotel and ended up watching Jurassic Park/sleeping. 'Twas a much-needed rest, even if we didn't finish the movie.

There was a market called "Just Peachy" a short walk away from the hotel, so we went there and bought some produce. The apricots were only 99 cents/lb, and they were the best and juiciest I have ever had!

Family dinners consisted mostly of finding a park with a playground that all the kids could play at. The first one had too much water/sand, and the second one the kids still found water, but were discovered before they could become too dirty again.

Little Lyssie found a friend! She's barely starting to talk, and is still pretty shy, but she met this little boy at the park and when he went back with his family she found him, made eye contact, and then he came and played with her and they followed each other around. It was adoreable! Especially since before she went to find him she motioned to borrow my chapstick!

The last night in San Diego, after everyone was done with dinner, there was still a bit of evening left that we didn't just want to spend in the hotel, so we went and found a nice place to park and overlook the ocean. As we were walking, we got distracted by a remote control airplane, and then noticed a movie playing at the Hilton across the street! From the previews we knew that we had seen it recently, so we went and watched Meet the Robinsons on the lawn of the Hilton, where we even had blankets to sit on and free snow cones!

Gas prices were between $4.40 and $4.55. Sadly, it was nice to see around $3.80 when we got back home!

Lizzie, who was afraid of the ocean, would sometimes just run right into it! She's just over 1.

Matthias and I brought cribbage, just in case. Turns out his parents did too!

Too many good donuts!

Fish Tacos.

We also went to Redlands to visit my Grandparents and some of my cousins. It was a nice trip and I'm glad we went. We were so tired on Sunday that it's good we didn't drive home that day!

Now we're back. We both went to work yesterday for our 3 day week, but I ended up catching a little cold so I've stayed home today. Luckily my parents gave me some Mucinex, so I'm already feeling a lot better. Hopefully I'll be totally up to going to work tomorrow.

Sometimes I think that I run to far for too long that my body doesn't have time to get sick. Once I take a break, then I can get sick. Luckily it usually waits until the end of the vacation! Then I get a couple more days off!

Here's the family picture (with a random surfer guy who was so nice to pose with us!):