July and Unified by Ana V. '15

O.O and lots of pictures

October 14, 2012

I have a billion things to say about this semester already and I’m not even done writing about this summer! WHY?

Before I go back to this summer, my life thus far has been a conglomoration of time speeding hazily by. I’ve been…

Trying to cook food more without setting off any alarms (a sure sign of sophomore-ish maturity, or so I think)
Getting my first taste of Chipotle with the bloggers
Spending a lot of time in the Unified Lounge (Unified is a course 16 class sophomore year that I will without a doubt write more on later when I catch up to October…) and building gliders for it.
Running away from getting (not even my own) birthday cake on own face.

(1)

(2)

(3) I’m not sure who drew that but it’s awesome.

(3) Balsa wood gliders, that is.

(4) She had to retaliate against getting cake smeared on hers. >:)

In any case, I must return to my summer before winter rolls around. During July, I worked for the Office of Engineering Outreach Programs (the same place where Sandy Tenorio <33 works. I was working at the STEM Program with Kristen Peña ’12 (my amazing co-instructor) for a new Engineering Design course.

We were basically told that we could teach a group of 20 rising 8th graders anything we wanted relating to engineering design for a little over a month.

Rising 8th graders. Did I even know what the word “engineering” meant at that age?

So during training, we brainstormed. How was the class to be structured? How do you explain all of the physics and decision making involved? I could definitely say that in many ways, being an instructor helped me not only appreciate ALL of my teachers 100% more (seriously, the amount of time it takes to plan one class out from scratch is ridiculous.)

In any case, what ended up happening was that each week was focused on one engineering discipline, with guest speakers coming in thoroughout the week to cover disciplines that were not covered in our curriculum. Another big part was the projects they did.

We had them build putt-putt boats in the mechanical engineering week, parachutes for aero-astro week (!!!), prosthetic arms for biological engineering, and we also had them design a system of making the program itself more environmentally friendly.

I absolutely loved teaching them, and I’m excited to see them around throughout the year. Most of them also participate in a mentoring program also run by the OEOP office.

Besides seeing students grow as learners (and as engineers!), of the highlights of the program was definitely painting my whole self yellow, and cheering like crazy for the yellow team on field day.