With the new year coming, people are starting to talk about their resolutions for the next year. A lot of my friends have graduated and are working which makes many of their goals completely different than mine. Making a plan to save for an apartment, crazy vacation, etc aren’t really things I’m able to do right now. But along those lines, at this point in my life I feel like I want my goals to include more than just school plans. And this is where the subject of this post comes from.

School at any level can pretty easily dominate a lot of your time, focus, and energy. However, when you get to the graduate level, you’ve been in school for so long that it is really important to look at other areas of your life, and make sure you’re making at least some progress there as well. I don’t want to graduate at 26 and feel like I’ve just graduated from high school in terms of all other areas of my life, and herein lies the importance of non-academic goal setting.

So here is my list of NON academic goals for 2011:

1. Start a travel fund. With TA and other positions available to graduate students, it is possible to stay on the positive side of your bank account. In the past, I have generally just thrown anything extra into a savings account and tried to forget about it, but I want to spend some of it now! I’m going to try to save $150 a month and get out of town once a term. There are quite a few places locally that I haven’t been to in a while like Victoria, Whistler, Seattle, and in the summer there is lots of camping and other things to do.
2. Max of 7 hours of TV a week. This may even sound like a lot of TV for most people, but I love watching TV! Over the past couple of years though, it’s maybe gotten a little ridiculous. I keep up with…almost everything, and I actually look forward to going home and plunking myself down in front of my friend the TV. The downside is that somehow an entire can magically disappear. There are a lot of other things I would like to do in the evenings besides TV, so hopefully chilling it on the all-eveningers will help me get started on those other things.
3. Take a picture everyday. Ok, this is a bit of a weird one, but I NEVER take pictures. I have maybe 5 pictures from 2010 (including the Olympics!) and it makes it easy to forget some of the cool stuff that’s happened. What I think about be kind of awesome, would be to get a photo album with 365 slots in it, and fill it with one picture from each day. AND with me cooling it on the TV, I might even go out and do stuff worth taking pictures of! I wonder if I can get the camera in my phone to overlay the date in the corner of the pictures. That would make organizing them a lot easier!
4. Cook something completely new once a month. Fairly self-explanatory; cooking can be really fun, and trying to make new things will hopefully re-interest me and get me out of my currently somewhat bland rut.
5. Go Snowshoeing. I’ve always wanted to and never had. Mountain Equipment Co-op does daily rentals for $12-15. Maybe I could make it a MEGA trip!

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It’s that time of the year. As people start to struggle to find parking lots in shopping malls, and the store managers busily put on Christmas carols to attract more customers, grad students stay quietly tucked away in labs. Last couple of weeks have been very hectic for me, as I tried to do my class project for Dr. Nagamune’s MECH 522 course (Advanced Controls). I felt like I was back in undergrad trying desperately to finish programming a real-time OS in time for submission. I slept on the cold floors of empty classrooms accompanied by piles of empty pizza boxes that loosely held onto leftover pizza crumbs.

Being cocky, I started working on the project super late. We were given about a month to work on the project, but I couldn’t decide on a cool project that merged the class contents with my thesis project. So I hesitated for a few weeks, until I realized that I had a week left. From then on, it was just a relay of late nighters for me and many of my classmates who also happened to be my labmates.

Coffee, of course, is the liquid of life at times like this. In one of those nights, I was sat in the lab staring at an empty coffee cup trying to figure out how many cups of coffee I had drank that day. To my mild surprise, what I stared at didn’t lead to a conclusive answer to the “how many cups of coffee…” question, but rather lead me to believe that coffee cups lids (that of the picture is McDonald’s) look strangely like a robot’s head. Crazy, don’t you think? I thought so. I thought that I’ve been doing research in robotics for so long that I am totally losing it – everything looks like robots now. But doesn’t it?

Well, whether I am losing it or not, I have no option. I am passionate about the field, and can’t help it but to continue being in this field.

Then, Friday came along, and MEGA held the usual coffee social. With the generously donations from the department, we had fortune cookies with coffee which turned out to be quite interesting.

I had been reading lots of papers, doing lots of extra stuff to make my class project fancy and awesome. But what’s all the bells and whistles for, if you can’t even get the most basic thing working? Anyway, the fortune cookies were totally relevant to the project I had been working on. Kind of scary. The first one said “There is a tendency to carry activities too far”. Yup, totally what happened with the project. Can’t deny that…. And then the second one said “Give your undivided attention to things that are basic”… yup… also agree… gotta get the basics down before dreaming about the bells and whistles.

Anyways, I thought it was really funny how fortune cookies for grad students seem so fitting. Or am I interpreting it wrong? I probably am… I mean, the first one ‘carrying activities too far’ could mean some other activities other than things like class projects. It could be fun event planning, or sports or … you know…

Well, Kristy got a funky one though. Hers said “You will master any feelings of inadequacy you may be having”. Hmm… I wonder what that means… But anywho, thank you Jen and Heather for letting us take the fortune cookies for the coffee social. It was a lot of fun! 🙂

Kristy opens her fortune (cookie)!!

A fortune cookie of wisdom - it knew exactly what went wrong with my class project

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Hello Readers!

Last Friday was the last day of classes for the term!  I can’t believe how fast it went by.  When I first started, I didn’t really know what to except, and in some cases, even what I was supposed to be doing, so I thought it might be useful to go through what a typical day this term was like for me.

First off, a little bit of background on how my program works, and the UBC schedule in general.  I am in the Master of Applied Science program (MASc), which is a 24 month thesis based program.  The program can take more or less time depending on the progress of your project and when you are able to defend your thesis, etc.  I started this past September, so I hope to graduate by September 2012.

In addition to the thesis project, you also have to take 18 credits of grad level courses which you pick with your supervisor.  We have a seminar class, where everyone takes a turn presenting their progress on their projects each year, that is worth 2 credits which leaves 16 credits.  Since most courses are 3 credits each, many students end up taking 6 courses (for a total of 20 credits).

So this term has been mostly course work with some thesis project work.

Course Work

I am taking two courses this term, and three or four next term depending on how busy that turns out to be.  I only will need 3 in the second term as one of my classes is 4 credits, but the extra one I always wanted to take in my undergrad, but it never fit/worked out.

This term I was really lucky since my classes were right after the other (9-11am) on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, leaving my Tuesday’s and Thursday’s open.

How I decided to schedule my days this term was to try and maintain “normal working hours” instead of just going home when my classes were done.  My boyfriend works really close to campus so we drive in and leave together which has worked out really well (and lets me avoid the crowded morning buses!).   I get to campus by 7:30 which gives me about an hour to work on whatever I need to before going to class.  I then spend the rest of the morning in classes, and have the afternoon to work on assignments, labs, projects, thesis work, TA-ing, and whatever else I need to do.

As a graduate student, you are given a desk and computer, so you always have a place to go to get work done and leave your stuff which is a lot nicer than dragging everything around with you and having to go to the library.

Thesis Work

A lot of the first 8 months of the program is dedicated to course work.  I have been doing background reading on areas related to my project, and designing a setup to test what will eventually be my project.  I meet with my supervisors every two weeks, where we discuss the progress I’ve made, and they give advice and answer questions I have.

My project is to design a device to aid in the diagnosis of lower urinary tract conditions in men, such as benign prostatic hyperplasia which affects 50% of men by the age of 50.  One way to do this is to look at changes in urine flow.  Many of the devices on the market that do this today are very expensive, making them only available in large facilities and specialists offices.  My goal is to design a much more affordable device so it can be available anywhere.

A schematic of the setup I have designed to test my eventual design is below.  I have ordered all of the components, and I’m hoping to receive them soon to assemble it before the January term.

TA-ing

I TA-ed for the first time this term!  It was a lot of fun, but took a lot of time.  Marking was definitely the weirdest part – being on “that side” and having to take off marks, but the students were fun and it was a good experience.  Be prepared to give up the good part of at least a weekend marking each “activity” (ie. lab, quiz, etc).

For Fun

I think this is one of the most important parts of grad school.  Since not many of the people I know went back for grad school, it can be hard to find people to talk to who understand what you’re going through.  You also spend a lot of time on your own working on stuff for your courses or research, and its easy to start feeling kind of disconnected.

Mech has a graduate association called MEGA which I’ve really enjoyed becoming a part of.  It is made up of other mechanical graduate students that meet once per week and organize a variety of events such as Friday afternoon coffee’s , BBQ’s, and parties.  It is a great way to meet people who are going through the same things you are, and who want to have fun along the way.

Volunteering

There are always lots of events happening of campus looking for volunteers, and helping them out can be a great way to find out about things happening in your field, networking, or just an excuse to get out of the lab for a few hours.  Some examples of places I’ve volunteered this term include the ASME Congress (which AJung made a great post about!), and the Mechanical Engineering Open House.

Well this post ended up being a little longer than I planned.  Thanks for sticking it out, and I hope it gives you an idea of what, at least in my experience, the first term is like as a Mech Master’s student.

Happy Monday!

Kristy

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