I just started studying for the FE exam and it's almost hard not to panic. There's so much I don't know. I tried taking a "diagnostic" exam for the morning (general) session and... didn't get very far. I got through most of the math section but I don't seem to remember a lot of differential equations or linear algebra. I think I can get those problems with some reminders of what's what though. The scary thing is when the test switched to sections like computers where I didn't know anything. As in, have never seen questions like that ever. I totally do not remember how the periodic table works. And we never really did materials in such depth. I got tired after a while. I will try the statics and fluid sections tomorrow. Hopefully I will have more luck with those since that's what I do... There's so much material in this test. I have 11 weeks.
Today I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. We went out to a site where some condos were being renovated because of a fire a few months before. There were almost 20 students from MIT. It was really cold. I think the first few hours was below freezing. And we were working outside, of course. I got stuck with shoveling snow all day long. They had put a huge pile of lumber and it was buried under a few feet of snow. The guy said they wanted to find wood they had set aside to make the scaffolds. So I thought it was a few pieces of lumber, on the order of 20. What he forgot to mention was that that was where they keep all their lumber for the entire construction. So there turned out to be like 200 pieces of lumber buried and frozen under 3 feet of snow. Shoveling snow and throwing it over the fence is a very tiring job. At some point, we realized they weren't going to use the lumber that day and no one was coming to sort the lumber out. So we just stopped working on this. After that, I didn't feel like doing anything so I held the ladder for Mike. This turned out to be a bad idea because I started to become very cold. Not sure why I decided not to wear boots. Anyway, the rest of the people were putting up insulation for the house. Big house so lots of insulation. We didn't even finish.
I feel like this type of volunteering where you just show up and try to help is not very effective. If you have a team of people working together, you would want to know everyone's skills and knowledge. After you work together for a while, you get to know your teammates and things go smoothly (ideally). But we just sort of showed up and while it's good to have help, it took them a while to decide who's going to do what. And the job assignments didn't utilize the available labor very well. I'm sure we helped out, lend a hand, was appreciated. But I just think we could've been so much more effective, done a lot more. We probably hindered some people at their own work too. Anyhow, I learned all about shoveling snow. So if I ever end up living anywhere cold...
Tomorrow, my D-Lab team is having a reunion Yay! We're having brunch at Fire and Ice. Should be fun. Although it's not as if we haven't been seeing each other all the time. I think we all make time to say hi and chat when we see each other. This trip opened up a whole new world for me: Africa. Such an amazing place. It also brought poverty to a whole new level for me. I think I'm just beginning to understand the meaning of infrastructure.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Settling back in
Classes started yesterday. Settling back into student life. I'm taking a lot of civil engineering classes this term. A lot of design classes, actually. My classes are all Tuesday and Thursday classes. I have a lab on Wednesday. I have no classes on Mondays and only one on Friday. So it's going to be an interesting semester. I don't really like how my Tuesdays and Thursdays are overloaded but I think it's okay. I mean, I think I've had it worse before... Anyway, it's good to see everyone again.
I'm taking 4.5 classes this term. A lot of them have projects so that's bound to be time consuming. Aside from passing these classes, I need to take the FE exam in April and the GMAT at some point. And I need to spend some time looking and applying for scholarships for grad school. Sometime before June, I also need to decide what I want to do this summer.
The practical thing to do this summer is to find another internship with a civil engineering design company, get some experience, and get paid. But there are also cool stuff out there like the Kawamura Fellowship and IDDS. I haven't even decided whether or not I want to apply for IDDS yet. But either way, it's a choice between an engineering design experience or a "personal growth" experience. Not sure what's best.
I'm taking 4.5 classes this term. A lot of them have projects so that's bound to be time consuming. Aside from passing these classes, I need to take the FE exam in April and the GMAT at some point. And I need to spend some time looking and applying for scholarships for grad school. Sometime before June, I also need to decide what I want to do this summer.
The practical thing to do this summer is to find another internship with a civil engineering design company, get some experience, and get paid. But there are also cool stuff out there like the Kawamura Fellowship and IDDS. I haven't even decided whether or not I want to apply for IDDS yet. But either way, it's a choice between an engineering design experience or a "personal growth" experience. Not sure what's best.
Monday, February 2, 2009
The Schools
On Friday, all the country groups did presentations on their trip. There seemed to be a common theme of things not going the way they were expected, many lessons learned, and cultural experiences. I noticed afterward though, that our group went to one of the most (if not the most) "underdeveloped" country.
The Indian teams talked about the crazy traffic. Where we were, people hardly had bikes, never mind cars. We were usually the only car on the road. The roads were bad and getting around was a difficult. Most people had to walk hours to get into town or the market. We didn't have to worry about dark, smelly latrines because many of the places we went didn't have toilets anywhere. We showed a picture of one of our schools that must have looked really bad to the class. But in reality, this school is one of the better schools in terms of structure. Out of the six schools we worked with, only two of them had walls. The others were just sticks. Even benches for schools were hard to come by. Many kids carried benches from their homes to school and carried them back at the end of the day.
Here's a picture of one of the better schools. When the school was constructed, they didn't have enough money to have a roof for the left part of the school. The rains took away some of the blocks.
Another school. The blue thing is a tarp. So basically very thin plastic.
Sticks and thatched roof for a school.
The Indian teams talked about the crazy traffic. Where we were, people hardly had bikes, never mind cars. We were usually the only car on the road. The roads were bad and getting around was a difficult. Most people had to walk hours to get into town or the market. We didn't have to worry about dark, smelly latrines because many of the places we went didn't have toilets anywhere. We showed a picture of one of our schools that must have looked really bad to the class. But in reality, this school is one of the better schools in terms of structure. Out of the six schools we worked with, only two of them had walls. The others were just sticks. Even benches for schools were hard to come by. Many kids carried benches from their homes to school and carried them back at the end of the day.
Here's a picture of one of the better schools. When the school was constructed, they didn't have enough money to have a roof for the left part of the school. The rains took away some of the blocks.
Another school. The blue thing is a tarp. So basically very thin plastic.
Sticks and thatched roof for a school.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Getting to Sierra Leone - a non-trivial task
Now that I've posted some pictures, maybe I can start writing about the trip. Actually, I've been writing about this trip all day. We're spending these few days just documenting everything we've done these few weeks...
Anyway, before we left, Amy (the course instructor) made a comment about not really feeling the distance because we're traveling by plane. However, I think our group definitely felt the distance since it took us 2 extra days to get to the country.
I had our flight plan posted earlier on the sidebar and it was crazy enough as it was. 3 different flights, one of which included a stop. Boston to Amsterdam to Brussels (to Senegal) to Freetown. We had only an hour for our connecting flights and we missed the first one. It was just way to far. We had to go from the "International" part of the airport to the Continental part of the airport. And we even had to go through customs because we were entering the Schegen States. So it was utterly ridiculous. Ben even tried to run to the terminal. Anyway, it took two hours or so to figure everything out and in the end, KLM booked us a flight to Nairobi, Kenya leaving the next night. From Kenya we fly to Ghana and from Ghana to Freetown. They put us in a hotel near the airport for the night. So instead of being in Africa, we ended up staying in a pretty nice hotel with an amazing buffet. We got all our meals at the hotel, curtesy of the airline. We even ventured out into town that night even though none of us had winter coats. It was freezing cold in Amsterdam. Yalu and I couldn't believe we were back in Amsterdam so soon. I mean, we enjoyed ourselves last time we went but didn't expect to visit again so soon.
We chilled the next day, trying to learn some Krio and Temne (local languages). We got to the airport super early, did some gift shopping, and then checked in. The airline also gave us a voucher for 10 Euros and we got dinner with it. That was totally unnecesary because all of our flights fed us meals. We then spent many more hours on airplanes, going in the wrong direction. By the time we finally got to Freetown, none of us were feeling all that great. Three flights in a roll is just way too much. I had to take motion sickness pills twice.
Freetown (Lungi) airport was another adventure. I'll write more later because I'm getting really tired. But at least we got to the country. I think after we missed our flight, all of us were crossing our fingers, not knowing whether we'll actually manage to get to Sierra Leone
Anyway, before we left, Amy (the course instructor) made a comment about not really feeling the distance because we're traveling by plane. However, I think our group definitely felt the distance since it took us 2 extra days to get to the country.
I had our flight plan posted earlier on the sidebar and it was crazy enough as it was. 3 different flights, one of which included a stop. Boston to Amsterdam to Brussels (to Senegal) to Freetown. We had only an hour for our connecting flights and we missed the first one. It was just way to far. We had to go from the "International" part of the airport to the Continental part of the airport. And we even had to go through customs because we were entering the Schegen States. So it was utterly ridiculous. Ben even tried to run to the terminal. Anyway, it took two hours or so to figure everything out and in the end, KLM booked us a flight to Nairobi, Kenya leaving the next night. From Kenya we fly to Ghana and from Ghana to Freetown. They put us in a hotel near the airport for the night. So instead of being in Africa, we ended up staying in a pretty nice hotel with an amazing buffet. We got all our meals at the hotel, curtesy of the airline. We even ventured out into town that night even though none of us had winter coats. It was freezing cold in Amsterdam. Yalu and I couldn't believe we were back in Amsterdam so soon. I mean, we enjoyed ourselves last time we went but didn't expect to visit again so soon.
We chilled the next day, trying to learn some Krio and Temne (local languages). We got to the airport super early, did some gift shopping, and then checked in. The airline also gave us a voucher for 10 Euros and we got dinner with it. That was totally unnecesary because all of our flights fed us meals. We then spent many more hours on airplanes, going in the wrong direction. By the time we finally got to Freetown, none of us were feeling all that great. Three flights in a roll is just way too much. I had to take motion sickness pills twice.
Freetown (Lungi) airport was another adventure. I'll write more later because I'm getting really tired. But at least we got to the country. I think after we missed our flight, all of us were crossing our fingers, not knowing whether we'll actually manage to get to Sierra Leone
Back from Sierra Leone!
I can't believe I've just been to Africa and back. The trip was amazing. We had so much fun and so many adventures. I will try to write about them here over the next few days/weeks. We need to spend some time documenting all our project stuff so that students in the future won't have as many surprises as we did. I will upload my own pictures soon but in the meantime, here's some pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/yaluwu/SierraLeone#
http://picasaweb.google.com/ebrooks5/SierraLeone?feat=directlink#
http://picasaweb.google.com/yaluwu/SierraLeone#
http://picasaweb.google.com/ebrooks5/SierraLeone?feat=directlink#
Monday, January 5, 2009
Zero Hour
Can't believe I woke up so early. It's 8:30am over here. I went to sleep at around 3:30am this morning. Stayed up talking to some friends. We always chat about the most random stuff ever. It was good though because I went to sleep right away. Anyway, I was waking up this morning and was feeling pretty tired when a lot of adrenaline rushed into my body. Could not/didn't want to fall back asleep.
I have a bunch of little things to take care of today and then I'm all set. I'm glad we're leaving on a weekday because everything closed over the weekend. These posts lately have not been very interesting. Sorry. Right now I'm just bored, want to wait until 9am before I head out to run some errands.
I will have very limited Internet access for the next 3 weeks. I think we'll be going to an Internet cafe once every few days. Not sure. Don't know how convenient it will be. Probably not at all. Again, check the D-lab blog because I doubt I will have time to post anything here. Link on previous post.
I think we're all pretty excited about this trip. I'm worried about all these flights and missing one. We're cutting it pretty close on all our connections. And Sierra Leone is not a top spot on any airline's list so it will be pretty difficult to find another flight that will take all 7 of us on board if we managed to miss one of our connecting flights. I'm also worried about having to sit through 4 takeoffs and landings (each). Motion sickness. blah.
I guess I'm still in shock that we're able to do this trip. What other place in the world would fund such an expedition? We're getting heavily subsidized to go on a trip that may or may not have good results. I don't even know what we can consider success for this rammed earth thing. Anyway, wish us luck!
I have a bunch of little things to take care of today and then I'm all set. I'm glad we're leaving on a weekday because everything closed over the weekend. These posts lately have not been very interesting. Sorry. Right now I'm just bored, want to wait until 9am before I head out to run some errands.
I will have very limited Internet access for the next 3 weeks. I think we'll be going to an Internet cafe once every few days. Not sure. Don't know how convenient it will be. Probably not at all. Again, check the D-lab blog because I doubt I will have time to post anything here. Link on previous post.
I think we're all pretty excited about this trip. I'm worried about all these flights and missing one. We're cutting it pretty close on all our connections. And Sierra Leone is not a top spot on any airline's list so it will be pretty difficult to find another flight that will take all 7 of us on board if we managed to miss one of our connecting flights. I'm also worried about having to sit through 4 takeoffs and landings (each). Motion sickness. blah.
I guess I'm still in shock that we're able to do this trip. What other place in the world would fund such an expedition? We're getting heavily subsidized to go on a trip that may or may not have good results. I don't even know what we can consider success for this rammed earth thing. Anyway, wish us luck!
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