Quelly Wk 10-1: B7, Reflection

B7: Reflection

Reflect on course and its effect on your profession and your future

My experience in this class was mixed; and I say that acknowledging that I am taking this class concurrently with other classes that have lead me to my current head-space. I am not passionate about architectural engineering. What I am passionate can be summed up with a couple of observations,

which I will come back to. I'm going to start with a few observations first.

• I was not "inspired" to work on my AE391 projects. While I felt good about understanding the content, and I loved working with Revit (when it was cooperating), thee end result itself was just another assignment to me. It wasn't extraordinary exciting to me. It wasn't a reason to get out of bed.  
• I was EXTREMELY "inspired" to work on my database/matlab assignments for both this class and AET480. The project in the other class was/is to write a matlab program that will be integrated with other software/languages to ultimately controls a wireless light switch. I have had more fun creating the new  system from my own vision then I have had all term designing our 391 project. 

So I am left to conclude that I the architectural-ness of the engineering isn't what I love doing. I think buildings are so cool, and to design/built them well is important.I'm not sure where this will take me.  I'm not going to consider any change in major, even if I weren't so far along in my time here at Drexel. And specifically to this class, I loved the survey of the IB areas  we covered. I have always enjoyed survey classes so much more than content classes. I think it is way more important that we (via classes and structured learning) have exposure to areas of content, and not depth of content; then we construct/assimilate the knowlege needed to explore what we want to explore. Also, I think my dislike for 391 is that it is teaching us the workflow of engineering. And that any problem solving that happens, happens within the workflow, rather than revamping the workflow. And Yes, I do see this stream of consciousness reflection starting to connect back with Integrated Design. Where I did like this class because I connected to discovering ways of building intelligently, and less on on an intelligent building as a produc/noun.

I might just be challenging the norms. Would not be the first time I've done that. 

Commentary

1. Dee Dee, I would agree with your thoughts about Professor Mitchell. I think [and i genuinely mean this, and am not trying to get on his good side for my late final paper] that he is one of the most progressive teachers here at Drexel. He has both the content level to be a mentor (rather than a lecturer) and that his assignments reflect models of growth over content/workflow. I keep going back to the internal debate i have about is IB a noun or verb. I think that it is becoming clearer to me that it is indeed a verb.  I am interesting to see how other people define it in their presentations, but I think it is more about reinventing the workflow/norms rather than making a better final result; the better result is just a side effect of the process. 
2. Lauren. I appreciate your thoughts on Databases. I think this was my favorite project this class, and second favorite this term. My roommate is a computer scientist and she is always trying to have conversations with me about what she is doing at work (at least what is not classified that is - she works at Lockheed). I liked learning about how the data we create every day is stored and transferred around the "cloud" of our networks. thanks for sharing. 
3. Jacob, I also realy enjoyed the futurist aspect of the class. Not only were we thinking about what ideas already existed or were in use, but where are we headed. There is a lot to think about how all these technologies will become ever more intertwined with each other and our lives.

Notes From Class (Presentations)

• None