The inside scoop on the life of a UBC Mech student
Finals can be a stressful time of year. Now that I’m finishing up my 3rd year of Mechanical Engineering, I’ve personally had my fair share of those panicked last minute cram sessions (and have learned to avoid them at all costs).
If you’re interested in learning about how I personally get through finals nowadays, you’re in luck! The first ever Mech Ambassadors Vlog covers just that, check it out!
Music: Bensound – Hip Jazz
Hello everyone,
I’m now back at UBC for the second term of my third year of Mechanical Engineering, which is on Term 1 of the winter session in the Co-op schedule. Trying to explain the Co-op schedule is always complicated, so I’ve just started saying I graduate on May 2020 (assuming everything goes as planned).
I ended up taking an online course over the summer and I strongly recommend it. It didn’t feel like an extra burden on top of Co-op work since it was only one course and now I only have to take five courses this term instead of the usual six.
And the best part?
Only one course starts at 8:00am. A dream come true.
Now, when I was first looking at this semester on paper it seemed like an easygoing semester. Only five courses? Sounds like smooth sailing to my final year. But engineering being engineering, this term is just as packed as all of my other ones. Here’s my quick student perspective off the courses this term.
MECH 325 – Mechanical Design 1
This course applies to all options of the Mechanical Engineering program (Thermofluids, Biomedical, Mechatronics, and General. More info on those here).
You learn all about gears, pulleys and all sort of mechanical systems. There’s tons of information and equations coming your way so get ready to soak in all types of variables. There’s group work involved with designing components and small mechanical systems, but not every week.
MECH 327 – Thermodynamics 2
Oh boy, here we go again. Thermodynamics 2: 2 Hot 2 Handle
Only students in the General and Thermofluids options of the program have to take this one. It’s one of the most important and applicable courses for the field I want to go into after graduation (energy). That first midterm didn’t go so well though, so this class has been my top priority.
The second midterm is two days from the time I write this, so wish me luck.
MECH 328 – Mechanical Engineering Design Project
This one applies to all options and it’s the main design course this term. The project this year is to design an autonomous ocean microplastic sampler.
Here’s a little information on microplastics and why they are increasingly a problem in the ocean: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/microplastics.html
The project is actually pretty neat, but it’s quite a bit of work. We don’t have to build anything, but we do have to develop our design using engineering design principles. This means that we have to be very thorough with our decision process and there’s tons of documentation is involved, so it’s good preparation for the engineering field.
MECH 386 – Industrial Fluid Mechanics
This course only applies to the Thermofluids option, so it is one of the more interesting courses for me. It’s essentially a continuation of previous fluid courses, but more grounded in industry applications. There’s a semester long project involved where you contact companies and try to solve problem they are having specific to fluid mechanics.
I did pretty well on the first midterm, so the course is currently on my good graces. The turbulent flow midterm is just around the corner, so I’m not sure that good grace will last.
PHIL 101 – Philosophy 101
This is my non-engineering course this term.
I highly recommend taking Philosophy. It’s a nice break from the regular engineering courses were we get smacked over the head with all of the rules that we have to follow. The physics and math with equation after equation after equation. I feel like this course provides a different perspective on things.
It’s nice to take a step back and go “Wait, do I even exist?” If I don’t exist neither does that grade I got on the Thermodynamics midterm. There’s comfort in that.
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And that’s about it. Two design courses, two regular engineering courses, and one humanities for a total of five courses.
Like I said, it looks like a pretty straightforward semester. After this it’s an 8-month Co-op and then my final year. I just have to make it through this term first.
Now that I’m done with finals, I have some time to reflect back on the first term of my 3rd year.
I haven’t gotten my final grades back, so I’ll have to hold on making a complete judgement, but overall I think this semester went smoother than MECH2. If MECH 2 was a 10/10 on a difficulty scale (for the sake of argument) this semester was probably a solid 7/10.
Here’s my overall impression of my classes:
MECH305: Data Analysis and Mechanical Engineering Laboratories
The class has recently been redesigned and this year was its first run through. It’s essentially labs and statistics. There are five regular labs in total, which draw on concepts from other courses. You go in, follow the procedure, and write up a lab report. The next week you expand on one of the regular labs by setting up your own objectives, and deciding how you’ll carry the experiment out.
At the very end of the course, there was one big exploratory lab report in which we were free to explore anything we wanted using the techniques we learned throughout the semester. My team ended up wiring strain gauges to a hockey stick in order to determine the forces applied to it during a slap shot. We even had someone that had played hockey semi-professionally take some shots with it, shot-out to Jackson. It was pretty neat.
MECH 358 – Engineering Analysis
This class was by far the most abstract out of all of the classes this term, since it builds on linear algebra concepts. You learn how to solve equations that can be incredibly hard/impossible to solve numerically, like the heat equation which you’ll come to know and love (here’s a quick preview of that lovely equation). I didn’t particularly enjoy linear algebra back when I took it on 1st year, but I actually enjoyed this class. My biggest takeaway from the course was that even though we have large amounts of computational power, you have to be clever in how you go about computing certain problems.
Homework consists of matlab and lots of “why doesn’t my code work.”
MECH360: Mechanics of Materials
This class is a continuation of solid mechanics in MECH224. There’s a lot of material covered, so doing the practice problems and tutorials is a must. Luckily, there are tons of online resources. There’s not much to say about this course except study hard for that final. I got completely blind-sided by it, and I’m still sweating about it. Don’t let that happen to you.
MECH 375: Heat Transfer
The class is technically called heat transfer but we all referred to it as thermo. We covered a lot of material, and in my opinion it was one of the more challenging classes this term. There’s correlations and numeric tables all over the place. Prepare to sprint with your hands during exams. For the final you get a crib sheet, which is a 40 page formula packet.
Surprisingly, I enjoyed the topic as a whole. The class was held in the MATH building and I hope for the sake of anyone reading this that you never have a class in that building. The seating arrangement and the size of the chairs is terrible. That classroom get a -1/10 from me.
MECH 380: Fluid Dynamics
Here’s another class that I really enjoyed. It felt like an intro to aerodynamics. You gain greater insight into drag/lift and learn about mach numbers and shockwaves. The concepts can be tricky, but I found it manageable. Engineering Analysis, Heat Transfer, and Fluid Dynamics all tie into each other, so if you understand one it can sort of help with the others.
Like I said, I’m still waiting for my final marks so I might be singing a different tune once I get them back, but this year wasn’t so bad.
Now it’s back to Co-op for the summer.
Wish me luck,
Rigoberto
I’d forgotten how stressful looking for a Co-op summer placement can be. It’s my second time looking for a placement so I thought it would be easier, but it’s turning out to be just as difficult as the first time. That being said, I’ve learned some things along the way.
Job applications take time and effort, so it’s easy to procrastinate at the beginning of the term. Finding a job for the summer can feel like a midterm that’s a couple of months away. You know you should be working on it, but there’s quite a bit of time right? If you’re like me, a month can feel like an eternity away when you’re just trying to survive the week.
If you start early enough, there’s usually not much competition. There will be quite a few job posting with relative low number of applicants. As the term goes on, the number of job postings will start to go down and the number of applicants per post will start to shoot up. 50, 60, sometimes even 100 applicants per post will start to become the norm. As the term goes on, school also ramps up with midterms and projects, making life a lot harder.
My advice is to not try to cram job applications. It’s not impossible to find a job later in the term; it’s just harder and more stressful, so start early.
That’s my first point.
I was in this situation last year. It was getting late in the term, and I still hadn’t found anything. So, I widened my search. I’m personally interested in clean energy and it just so happens that UBC has a Clean Energy Research Centre. I contacted the professor in the research area I was interested in, and managed to secure a 4-month position which was later extended to 8-months.
This brings me to my point second point: research opportunities on campus.
As I’m sure you know, a large part of what professors do is research. If you’re interested in the research area they’re in, talk to them. They are a really great source of knowledge, and if they don’t have a job for you, they might be able to push you in the right direction.
Not only will research give you valuable experience, but you can see if research is something you would like to purse in the future. I personally had a blast in my position. I got to work with hydrogen fuel cells, which was a technology I had always been interested in. I even managed to attend a fuel cell conference here in Vancouver which had presentations from industry leaders from all over the world. Because of that, I now have a comprehensive layout of the fuel cell industry and know what companies are based here in Vancouver. This will be extremely useful if I decide to pursue a career in the industry. All of this happened because I talked to a professor.
So be proactive; you would be surprised about what you can find at UBC.
Good luck,
Rigoberto