Georgia Tech, on the surface, booms with technological advances and state-of-the-art research. Undergraduate students build a strong kit of engineering tools (I can't really speak to the quality of other programs) and leave the school with plenty of opportunities in industry and academia. But by all appearances, they are not happy to be here. I mean, at all. I've spent the past couple of days counting the number of people I've seen walking around campus with friends, laughing or smiling in any way, and have seen two. Two people smiling in as many days.
Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. Giving students the benefit of the doubt, it's conceivable that most of the areas I frequent on campus -- the mechanical engineering buildings, the machine shop, miscellaneous classrooms -- give little cause for excitement. However, I also eat lunch every day in the main student center, and there's hardly any difference in student demeanor there. I'm not saying that the entire undergrad population at Tech is unhappy or disinterested. I am saying that no air of excitement, enjoyment, or even community exists in the day to day lives of the students I see walking around campus. (And again, hopefully my observations don't generalize to Tech's whole undergraduate body.) I can't tell if these students' emotional starkness is caused by overburdening coursework and scholastic obligations or a lack of social outlets... or if, sadly, the students really see their college experience as a bland and depressing hurdle race to get over and done with. But the effect is self-reinforcing. Uninterested people make for uninteresting campuses, and uninteresting campuses don't do much to excite the student population. Eventually the students habituate to the climate, and the high-school dream-world of college becomes tedious in reality.
...Which makes me appreciate Duke even more than I did when I graduated. That school placed a monumental emphasis on community -- through IM leagues, a separate freshmen campus, religious groups, school-sponsored parties, concerts, housing blocks, and more. It rallied students around the basketball team to absolutely cement school spirit. I know several Dukies who chose our school over their acceptances at Ivy leagues and others exclusively because of the Duke basketball. (I never before realized the true power of sports.) Duke's efforts ensured that students held a(t least one) common interest with others so that they had a foundation upon which to form relationships with tons of other people. There were definitely still awkward introductions and friendships, but students were happy, and it was evident in every corner of campus. Almost everyone found a comfortable environment to learn and to live, and as a result most of us were satisfied with our time in college.
This welcoming atmosphere is what GA Tech seems to lack, at least at the undergrad level. It's slightly different for grad students -- by our nature, we're a lil' masochistic, and we volunteered for several years of servitude with our eyes wide open. But we have an ironically great time doing it. I was lucky enough to fall in with a lab of guys who share similar interests and an uncannily similar sense of humor. But undergrad... undergrad is supposed to be one of the highlights of a young adult's life. It's silly to invest that four+ years in misery. From an efficiency standpoint, it's almost wasteful. As far as Tech goes, it's truly sad if students don't enjoy their time there. I hope I'm wrong about it, and I hope people are smiling when I'm not looking.
Update:
"Undergrad here is liquid pain. distilled down into a little vial, and you drink it."
-- John C., former student
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
..and vindicated
Take that, dreariness. I'll be back for the sunrise someday.
In other victorious news, the first inklings of progress began stirring in my windtunnel today. With the help of the masterful George Woo, particle image velocimetry (PIV) data, the bread and butter of research papers in our lab, was successfully acquired. The PIV process is conceptually pretty simple: put particles in a flowfield, take two snapshots of their locations with a known time between pictures. Velocity = distance/time, so PIV allows you to calculate the velocity vector at any point in the flow. With the velocity field at your disposal, it's relatively easy to hash out a description of the pressure around an object, its lift, drag, and vortex wake, and a myriad of other useful pieces of information. It's a very powerful research tool. In my case, I took PIV on a the wake of the well-known (and even documented here, in this very blog) cylinder in cross flow. I'm not going to claim the code spat out velocity vectors that were accurate, but they do have directions and magnitudes, which techically makes them data.
I'm beginning to grasp why it takes so long to become a "well-baked" researcher, as my advisor puts it. Few have graduated with a Ph.D. from our lab in less than 7.5 years.
- First, you find your way around the lab, figure out where the duct tape is: 0-3 months.
- During and following this time, you read journal papers presumably related (or in my case, unrelated) to some vague project your advisor is dreaming up: 0-2 months.
- Congrats, if at some point you get funding! Mad rush to design a data-taking system, a model of some phenomenon, and determine the best of a billion ways the two could fit together: 0-5+ months.
- Then, data taking. Get comfy, this will take a while.
That's as far as I've gotten. This stuff absolutely takes time. Next I will slam my head against a windtunnel until data comes out (of the tunnel, preferably), which will take years. Somewhere in the future lies a novel idea, a paper or few, a proposal, and heaven-willing, a degree. But it's as much the process as it is the result that's important (and I suppose marketable) to making a researcher. Depth and breadth, they say. The process teaches you creativity in problem solving and perseverence in the face of constant setbacks, and it provides you with a dallop of elbow-grease to apply when the round peg doesn't fit in the square hole. The result... well, the secret to getting a result is unknown to me at this point. When I figure it out, you'll be sure to hear no matter where you're reading this, because I'll be screaming for joy at the top of my lungs. But with my new found excitement for PIV, the process has begun.
In other victorious news, the first inklings of progress began stirring in my windtunnel today. With the help of the masterful George Woo, particle image velocimetry (PIV) data, the bread and butter of research papers in our lab, was successfully acquired. The PIV process is conceptually pretty simple: put particles in a flowfield, take two snapshots of their locations with a known time between pictures. Velocity = distance/time, so PIV allows you to calculate the velocity vector at any point in the flow. With the velocity field at your disposal, it's relatively easy to hash out a description of the pressure around an object, its lift, drag, and vortex wake, and a myriad of other useful pieces of information. It's a very powerful research tool. In my case, I took PIV on a the wake of the well-known (and even documented here, in this very blog) cylinder in cross flow. I'm not going to claim the code spat out velocity vectors that were accurate, but they do have directions and magnitudes, which techically makes them data.
I'm beginning to grasp why it takes so long to become a "well-baked" researcher, as my advisor puts it. Few have graduated with a Ph.D. from our lab in less than 7.5 years.
- First, you find your way around the lab, figure out where the duct tape is: 0-3 months.
- During and following this time, you read journal papers presumably related (or in my case, unrelated) to some vague project your advisor is dreaming up: 0-2 months.
- Congrats, if at some point you get funding! Mad rush to design a data-taking system, a model of some phenomenon, and determine the best of a billion ways the two could fit together: 0-5+ months.
- Then, data taking. Get comfy, this will take a while.
That's as far as I've gotten. This stuff absolutely takes time. Next I will slam my head against a windtunnel until data comes out (of the tunnel, preferably), which will take years. Somewhere in the future lies a novel idea, a paper or few, a proposal, and heaven-willing, a degree. But it's as much the process as it is the result that's important (and I suppose marketable) to making a researcher. Depth and breadth, they say. The process teaches you creativity in problem solving and perseverence in the face of constant setbacks, and it provides you with a dallop of elbow-grease to apply when the round peg doesn't fit in the square hole. The result... well, the secret to getting a result is unknown to me at this point. When I figure it out, you'll be sure to hear no matter where you're reading this, because I'll be screaming for joy at the top of my lungs. But with my new found excitement for PIV, the process has begun.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
thwarted
One of my New Year's Resolutions for 2009 was to discover a hobby I found interesting enough to invest time (and money) in for the rest of my life. Photography, check. With James' help, I was able to cross that bullet off my New Year's checklist before January was a week old. Photography is highly technical, and the physical principles that enable the capture of light falling on objects are completely clever. Photography takes me to new places (cf. Amicalola Falls), and it helps satisfy this human need I have to immortalize my memories so that, frankly, they doesn't disappear forever when I'm gone. I'll expound on that last point later. All in all, a hell of a hobby.
So I've been trying to keep my camera clicking. For the past half a year (long before I declared photography a lifetime hobby), I've searched for a perfect photographic vantage point overlooking Midtown/Downtown Atlanta. A place worthy of capturing the city's skyscrapers and lights in a majestic way. A place, that is, where the view is free of power lines, construction cones, and the scraggly barren trees that infest the city in the winter. Last night, Mark and I thought we had found this mythical place up by Atlantic Station. Excited, I set off this morning while most of the city was still asleep, hoping to catch some sunrise rays through the downtown buildings:
Fail.
A blanket of fog obscured the skyscrapers that would otherwise dominate the middle and right side of that picture, and construction work leveled any scenery in the foreground (we couldn't see that lower area from the road last night). I was so disappointed, I didn't even bother straightening the barrel-distortion in post-processing. Maybe I'll return to the spot tonight or tomorrow morning. Regardless, it's not what I want, and the hunt continues. A hobby that it is a challenge, check.
So I've been trying to keep my camera clicking. For the past half a year (long before I declared photography a lifetime hobby), I've searched for a perfect photographic vantage point overlooking Midtown/Downtown Atlanta. A place worthy of capturing the city's skyscrapers and lights in a majestic way. A place, that is, where the view is free of power lines, construction cones, and the scraggly barren trees that infest the city in the winter. Last night, Mark and I thought we had found this mythical place up by Atlantic Station. Excited, I set off this morning while most of the city was still asleep, hoping to catch some sunrise rays through the downtown buildings:
Fail.
A blanket of fog obscured the skyscrapers that would otherwise dominate the middle and right side of that picture, and construction work leveled any scenery in the foreground (we couldn't see that lower area from the road last night). I was so disappointed, I didn't even bother straightening the barrel-distortion in post-processing. Maybe I'll return to the spot tonight or tomorrow morning. Regardless, it's not what I want, and the hunt continues. A hobby that it is a challenge, check.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
more and less
It's no secret that educators interact differently with different types of students, especially those who are at different levels of maturity. However, I think a few teaching practices aimed at maximizing student absorption should be common at all academic levels, and that list should definitely include "encouraging student engagement". Students who aren't paying attention almost definitely won't learn what's being taught in the course (from the teacher, at least).. Making material accessible to the students in a verbal and visual way, on the other hand, allows their brains to forge some personal association with it. The more paths that information takes to travel to your brain, the better.
Engaging students, easier said than done, I know. Anyway, I'm not posting to preach about effective teaching techniques, but instead to document an observation, which struck me during Experimental Methods this morning. It is as follows: In high school, (my) teachers strove to engage students who were eager to learn. They called me at home, they dreamed up fun games to make lecture points stick, they spent extra time on a difficult topic when necessary. In undergrad, the tone changed, and most professors were less inclined to initiate personal relationships with their students. With a few notable exceptions like Roman Civ., the material being taught was more likely the glue that bonded me to my classes than the professor who taught it. (Admittedly, this could be a symptom of the classes I took, proportion of lectures to seminars and labs, etc.) Still, though, professors who knew their lecture material cold could grab their classes' attentions by posing questions and highlighting subtleties.
Here grad school, the professors teaching my classes largely ignore me. Even when I ask questions, even when I attend office hours (though they are usually very helpful). They have no impetus to engage me -- I'm in their class to help my research and edge me closer to a degree, and they know it. I wouldn't say that they disregard their students' interest in the material, but they just don't do much to encourage it. As in high school, I still seek the knowledge they offer.. but instead of providing me their wisdom with an open hand, my professors scrawl it in dry erase marker on the whiteboard and leave me scrambling to grab and organize it for myself. Where is their desire to pamper me along, to make sure I understand the material, to engender a passion in me for it, while my high school teachers were so eager to?
I know my professors here have less time to commit to students. I know that they have higher expectations of me than anyone has previously had, and that they assume I'm self-motivated enough to wrestle the material into submission by the mere nature of my enrollment in grad school. I'm just saying that a sliver of human expression in their lectures, maybe turning from their frantic writing on the board to deliver a relevant personal anecdote, would go a long way towards rekindling a passion for learning. Instead, classes often feel like a marathon to cram my head full of nature's fundamentals and mathematical approaches to modeling them. I wonder if others in my classes share the sentiment... Maybe school just doesn't come easy anymore, and I'm looking to blame the teachers.
Engaging students, easier said than done, I know. Anyway, I'm not posting to preach about effective teaching techniques, but instead to document an observation, which struck me during Experimental Methods this morning. It is as follows: In high school, (my) teachers strove to engage students who were eager to learn. They called me at home, they dreamed up fun games to make lecture points stick, they spent extra time on a difficult topic when necessary. In undergrad, the tone changed, and most professors were less inclined to initiate personal relationships with their students. With a few notable exceptions like Roman Civ., the material being taught was more likely the glue that bonded me to my classes than the professor who taught it. (Admittedly, this could be a symptom of the classes I took, proportion of lectures to seminars and labs, etc.) Still, though, professors who knew their lecture material cold could grab their classes' attentions by posing questions and highlighting subtleties.
Here grad school, the professors teaching my classes largely ignore me. Even when I ask questions, even when I attend office hours (though they are usually very helpful). They have no impetus to engage me -- I'm in their class to help my research and edge me closer to a degree, and they know it. I wouldn't say that they disregard their students' interest in the material, but they just don't do much to encourage it. As in high school, I still seek the knowledge they offer.. but instead of providing me their wisdom with an open hand, my professors scrawl it in dry erase marker on the whiteboard and leave me scrambling to grab and organize it for myself. Where is their desire to pamper me along, to make sure I understand the material, to engender a passion in me for it, while my high school teachers were so eager to?
I know my professors here have less time to commit to students. I know that they have higher expectations of me than anyone has previously had, and that they assume I'm self-motivated enough to wrestle the material into submission by the mere nature of my enrollment in grad school. I'm just saying that a sliver of human expression in their lectures, maybe turning from their frantic writing on the board to deliver a relevant personal anecdote, would go a long way towards rekindling a passion for learning. Instead, classes often feel like a marathon to cram my head full of nature's fundamentals and mathematical approaches to modeling them. I wonder if others in my classes share the sentiment... Maybe school just doesn't come easy anymore, and I'm looking to blame the teachers.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
..apparently
We constantly change our shape. Our bodies bend, minds stretch.. even our awareness broadens and narrows to focus on a particular event. Humans (though they seem sturdy enough) are inherently fluid entities, and fluids behave in curious and unpredictable ways.If a steady stream of air, water, apple juice, etc., flows over an object, and that object decides to accelerate its motion, it experiences a force dragging it backwards. Because the object has to "push" the fluid in front of it out of its way when it accelerates, that volume of fluid is effectively incorporated into the object's mass -- physicists will readily recite to you Newton's laws relating mass, force, and acceleration. This additional mass that results in an extra force is known as the object's apparent mass.
Ok, so armed with that knowledge, we're ready to digest this random journal article and calculate the forces on accelerating salmon in suitably wide rivers... i.e., who cares? Well, glance at the above picture (thanks to Milton Van Dyke, a man worth googling). Replace the big white dot with yourself, and the foggy incoming flow at left with your stress and anxiety and workload and appointments meetings sleep schedule cell phone bill relationship trouble, and flat tire. Suddenly, bits and pieces to the right of the pictrue -- that's not a just vortex wake streaming off of a cylinder in cross flow.
The point is, humans are related to each other and to their environment and to the phenomena therein so intrinsically that they can't be decoupled. Many interactions are not "inter"actions at all, but occur within your own head. I want to explore these relationships, these occurrences, through different windows. And document my slice of it. Possibly through fluid mechanics and from other engineering perspectives. Possibly through photography. Possibly through my own relationships, and at times, through haikus. The category of human experience never gets old, literally, because our interactions, at least in some small way, are always new. The situations always change.. and we often change shape in response.
All right, /end intro. From now on, less flowery speech and more meat.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
