Senior Project, Part III
My design team and I gave a 12 minute presentation about the project yesterday. It went well. We each talked for 3 minutes (there are 4 of us team members) in a classroom of about 30 students and a few professors, so it wasn’t really a big deal for me. Believe it or not, I feel quite at home talking science in front of a group of people (last year I gave an hour long lecture about computer programming to a group of 100+ students).
The main thing I was worried about was that my team members would do a poor job on their part of the presentation (as I have said before, they weren’t overly involved in the technical details of the project, so they seemed rather unsure of themselves as we prepared). Fortunately, everything went really smoothly and everybody sounded pretty confident and convincing, so I was happy about that.
Afterwards, one of my team members came up to me and said, “You know, you’re really eloquent! I was surprised!” Uhh… thanks??? (Actually, I get a lot of “compliments” like that).
Today, I gave a short demonstration of the device to the professor and the TA. They both seemed impressed. The professor told me that he’s looking for a PhD student who is interested in embedded systems. He said he’s got research money! Nice! Maybe I will look into that. He would be a really good professor to work for (he’s really easygoing and friendly).
Tomorrow morning, my team and I must attend a poster session. We made a poster that shows an overview of the project. We basically just hang up our poster and loiter about for an hour as various people peruse the posters. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Posted: May 7th, 2008 under Engineering.
Tags: college, communication, embedded systems, projects, research
Comments
Comment from Nathan
Time 2008/05/08 at 3:09 pm
congratulations!
Are you looking into doing your PhD next, or your master’s, or a job?
I was talking with a student who is going to get his PhD in Chemistry (he just graduated with his BS in it), and he said that the university would pay for it completely as well as a stipend, because he was going to be a TA/lab assistant/researcher/gopher. Would the UI do that for you, as well? Or would you look at another place?
Comment from Jed
Time 2008/05/08 at 9:09 pm
Yeah Matt, awkward is a good word to describe it. It was basically as I predicted… we just stood around and waited. And waited. I will write more detail later. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers.
Thanks Nathan!!! PhD studies are definitely one of the things I’m considering. Yep, funding is the cool thing about graduate degrees. Basically ALL major universities (including Iowa) offer MANY opportunities for PhD students to make significant salaries. There are enormous fellowships (full tuition, room, and board + benefits + $20000/year stipend). Most professors have big bucks to spend on hiring research students. TA salaries are very good. etc. etc.
But yeah, I would most likely do grad school here at Iowa, because I know a lot of the professors, and I have a fairly good reputation, and that kind of thing is a big help when applying, etc.
Comment from Jed
Time 2008/05/09 at 12:50 am
I wish that Cedarville had graduate programs in engineering. I have heard a lot of good things about that school!!
Comment from MattTheMusician
Time 2008/05/08 at 8:13 am
Those always seem to be really awkward, I mean… unless they have a connection to one of the students, all of the posters, all of the scientific information condensed onto one poster is just overwhelming. I’m probably just ignorant, but when I go down to the physics department at Coe, it always confuses me. I try to understand the posters. To no avail…
Glad your presentation went well. Good luck today!