We Move In Packs

One of the most different parts of being a graduate student is the idea of having an actual group; in undergrad I had my capstone project research group, and the set of people I did homework with every week, but we were always ships passing in the night as the semesters changed. We had our own traditions and space (a group of us adopted the first floor conference room for daily homework problem debates), but we were all interested in very different things, and ended up in very different career paths.
In grad school you have a dedicated group of people who share the same advisor, space, and general research interests. A major tip I was given as a senior applying to Ph.D. programs was to choose an advisor and group I felt comfortable with. The idea was to find your niche within a larger program, so that when you needed something (from choosing classes to learning a new polishing trick), you could turn to the guy/girl sitting next to you and ask with reasonable results.
Coming from a smaller (I graduated with about forty other mechanical engineers), very tightly knit undergraduate program, I knew I was going to need something more than just office mates. As I searched for my perfect program several things became immediately obvious to me. One of these was how well all of the professors and students got along, not only with each other but also within the groups in smaller settings. I visited and interviewed with several big universities during the summer and Fall of my senior year, and had incredibly different opportunities at each one.
When I visited Ohio State a few months later during a dreary February weekend, I entered Watts Hall and found a great program. I met many of the students I would be working with (and decided I’d love to carve myself place in their circle), I found a professor I respected and knew I’d love working with for the next few years of my life, and decided I was going to be a Buckeye.
So here I sit, five months later. I have five officemates, and there are several more group members who occupy the next few rooms down in our corner of Fontana Labs. They are definitely a unique set of engineers, each from a different undergraduate background, and several from very different parts of the world than Buckeye country. They’ve all adopted me, and have made a space for me within the group. Each one of them is more than happy to answer my seemingly unending lines of questioning. And once every few hours, we make our way down to the third floor for coffee and tea, always in a pack.

Orientation

Well I had orientation about a month and half ago. All and all it was a good experience. I chose to stay on campus for the night since I’m going to live on campus. Every meeting that we had was very informative. I feel so much better about getting a degree at The Ohio State University. My academic advisor is a life saver — she has guided me through the whole process of scheduling. The only thing that I didn’t like about orientation was the amount of downtime that was available. I felt like we could have done more. A few friends and I went to the Campus Gateway and found a pretty good restaurant that we’ll definitely hit up on the first day of school. I would highly recommend everyone to stay on campus for the night whether or not you’re going to live on campus. It was definitely a great learning experience and I made many new friends.

Hey Everyone

Hola, so I’m a bit new at this kinda thing so please bear with me through my lack of creative writing skills. Anyhow I’m a second year MSE student staying here in Columbus for the summer trying to get in some good research experience by working for the department here in a graduate lab. It’s a lot of fun so far, well compared to working on a factory floor like I did last summer, and I would suggest taking up research for anyone who gets the opportunity as early as possible. I got this job Autumn quarter of my freshman year and sticking with it pretty much ensured that I would have a job for summer that doesn’t involve the food industry or manufacturing lines. Research also shows up well on resumes since managers generally like to bring in people who have some experience. As for what I do, I basically set up, run experiments, and do all the necessary sample preparation. It’s a bit more interesting than it sounds, although things like polishing can be pretty boring, especially since I get to work with materials that I hope to work on for a career, namely mmc composites. Well that’s about all I have now, time to have fun studying for a Math 153 midterm.

-Aaron

Like Mike

GE is being overrun by engineers named Mike.

I found it amusing, and I was actually quite grateful, on my first day this summer when I discovered that half of my group is named Mike. I’m terrible at matching names to faces, so this situation has made my odds of getting people’s names right way better than usual. In my mind, I declare people either “Mike,” or “Not Mike,” with startling accuracy. It’s gotten to the point where now, I have a hard time remembering female engineers’ names (which used to be so easy, since there are so few of us), but when I’m introduced to a male engineer, more often than not, his name is Mike. Just today I met a new Mike. Last week I got to check out some hardware on the shop floor with another Mike (who I refer to as “Design Mike” in order to differentiate him from “Manager Mike,” “Old Mike,” “Young Mike,” “Banana Mike,” and “Last Summer Mike”).

This morning, I was sitting in on a meeting with Young Mike, and I happened to glance up at the wall of the conference room at one point to see Prof. Williams watching me from within a picture frame.  Prof. “Not Mike” Williams is a bit of a legend in the materials department at GE – as soon as someone hears I’m from Ohio State, they gush with (well-deserved) praise for him and usually a fair amount of ribbing. He used to be a GM there, and from what I gather, he was pretty well liked!

Last Friday, when Design Mike invited me along for a meeting and side-trip to see some disassembled engines on the shop floor, I’m afraid I may have leapt to my feet before he could even get the words “shop floor” out. (Any invitation away from estimating volume fraction via grid-counting would have probably elicited the same response.) I got to see an assembled section of an engine for which I’ve been doing some work on much smaller parts, which is always cool. Plus, I love the shop floor. Love it, love it, love it.

I find it awkward during these internships, however, to find a good balance between working on things with which one is familiar and learning about something completely new and sometimes beyond the scope of one’s base knowledge. Last summer, I’d asked Last Summer Mike to go a bit more in depth on a project I’d been working on for him. He prefaced his explanation with the disclaimer, “Where would you like me to start? I don’t want to talk down to you…” to which I replied, “I don’t mind if you talk down to me. I don’t know anything, so I’m okay with that.” He laughed. I think it’s good to enter into a learning experience like these internships with one’s pride tucked away from time to time. I won’t be insulted if people have to spell some things out for me in basic terms, because I know that the reason I returned to GE is because I have so much to learn.

The Beginning of Something New

Hi! I’m Hallee, and I am a first year graduate student. And by first year I mean very new grad student; I only started last week. Just some about me to start off:

I graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in May, with a bachelor’s of science in engineering, mechanical engineering. As of September 24 this year I will be starting a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering, specifically focused in metallurgy. I grew up in Columbus (Upper Arlington), and graduated from Columbus School for Girls. At first, I was very hesitant to return to Columbus for grad school, but I fell in love with the MSE department here.

As I said before, I just started in the department last week. So far, I’ve been getting all of the administrative/red tape things out of the way, such as setting up internet access, scheduling for the fall, etc. However, I’ve also been able to actually start doing real MSE things. For example, I’ve spent a large part of today trying to learn how to use a drop furnace to heat treat steel samples. This is not a huge deal for an MSE student, but if you remember, I am currently a mechanical engineer who is trying to dive in to the world of MSE, so this led to some interesting situations. Thankfully, everybody in my research group has been helpful and willing to stop and help prevent me from setting something on fire!

Speaking of, I am going to run down a floor and check on my samples. Wish me luck!