Engineering Projects

Today was quite a busy day. After Chinese class, I rushed over to engineering for my 2 projects. Let me just say that I was not impressed by these projects. During my first project, the professor said that this project requires us to work in groups and that this is something new for them. Some accreditators came and commented on the lack of group projects and teamwork in the department. So the teaching office put a requirement to do at least one group project in the third year. That's right, in the third year, one project, and that's it!! Far cry from my engineering classes at MIT where we were required to work in groups of 3 to do homework and only have to turn in one set of answers. What's really lame about this is the requirements for this first project. We were split up into groups of 4 or 5 to design something. We have to make 2 presentations on it but only 1 person presents during each of the two 15 minute presentations. Even my teammates were baffled by this one. And then, we're supposed to write 2 reports, individually. How are we supposed to do a project together when we're have to write individual projects? It's like in middle school when the teacher assigns you to do a group project and no one wants to work with anyone else so we would just split up the work, do our own research, and then come together in the last minute. That's so stupid. In my engineering design labs sophomore year, we had to work in groups for everything. And all my memories involve writing one report per group and our group would get together, sit in a computer lab, and write this thing together. We might be writing different sections but we're all there, discussing the project and proofreading each other's papers. I think making us turn in only one report makes it important that we (the team members) talk to each other. Because you can't really just copy and paste everyone's writing together, like in middle school. Everything has to make sense, reference each other, and flow together. Don't worry, I'll definitely let the project leaders know what my opinion of their "group work" is.

And in my other project, the lecturer handed us huge stacks of notes. He said that last year's group said that he lectured too much so this year he's just going to give us all the notes, skip them in the lectures, and let us read them ourselves. Dude, if you don't go over it in lecture, it must not be important. That's my view anyway. He's trying to chuck a whole semester's worth of geology and soil mechanics at us. I really feel sorry for people who haven't done soil mechanics. They must be so lost. I don't mind lectures though. Better than fake group work.

After this, I went to dinner, picked up the sleeping bags and travel journal that I ordered from Amazon, and forgot all about a talk that I was planning to go to. Luckily, Mahalia reminded me by sending an email. We met up on the way and go there a little late. The topic of the talk was "The Maoist Discourse and the Mobilization of Emotions under Mao" by Dr Yu Liu from the Departement of Politics. I think this was her dissertation. It was very interesting. She mostly talked about the Cultural Revolution. After hearing her talk, I have a renewed interest in learning history through a historian's point of view. I feel that "history" wasn't taught properly in primary and secondary school. I learned a whole lot of facts but not much about "how were people persuaded to do...", "how did they feel about...", and all the human aspects of history. It is, after all, a humanity subject, a social science.

This is one of the reasons why I'm really looking forward to going home this summer. I can go to the library, borrow lots of books like always, and read again. I didn't get to do this last summer in Germany. The Oakland libraries generally meets my needs since I always have a bizillion interests. I don't know where I am going to find the time to explore them all.