Half Way Point
So here I am half way through the term. Half way through the internship. Half way out of my mind. I think I might have taken on too many responsibilities this quarter.
Full-time student (12 credits)
Research Assistant
Internship
Restaurant Server
A given day there is always a ton to do. However, this internship hasn't suffered at all because of my other commitments. I have been working hard with Andrew to finish up the first draft of the manual, and we hope to be finished by next week sometime. Its been hard to make significant headway during the week because we keep experiencing updates to the program that were implemented while we were out of the office. When we come in to work it is not uncommon to see that pages have changed, however what changed is rarely obvious.
We were told by our boss today that we could have four new employees to user test our manual draft. Aside from a few minor errors with the program itself this internship feels great. Our boss will be sending us a list of tasks that we will integrate into the user test questions. I guess some students from my internship class will also be testing with us, which will be nice to get a broader base of feedback.
On Tuesday (4/24) I was at work on a four hour shift and it felt like only one hour. It was great, maybe this means that I should persue this kind of writing more outside of college – I can't wait.
As the weeks go by…
Ever since freshmen year, the quarters seem to go faster and faster as I get older. It is possible that it is because I have lived longer than I had during my first year. For example:
I'm being hopeful in that I set my life expectancy somewhere around the low to mid 80s we will say 85.
Year Age/Life Expectancy
Freshmen year: 18/85 = .21 -> 21% life lived
S. Senior year: 23/85 = .27 -> 27% life lived
Great so I have a percent of the total time that I've been around. A quarter on average is 3 months. (~.25 years)
.25/85 = .3% of total life expectancy
So when we look at what .3% actually looks like compared to age; time really is going faster:
1 Quarter / % of Life Expectancy Used
Freshmen = .003/.21 = .014 or 1.4%
S. Senior = .003/.27 = .011 or 1.1%
1.1 % < 1.4 % -> Quarters during Freshmen year truly were longer than following years.
So, it is apparent that each quarter is really a smaller percent of our overall time lived. The brain sure is a crazy thing, I am sure it knows all this, it just likes to keep to itself.
This feeling of time moving faster relates to everything! Spring break during elementary school seemed to last ages, whereas 2005 Spring break was over before it started. (thanks work!)
Interesting as it may be, I think it is time to pay more attention to class.
Initial Internship Observations
So far, so good. This internship at VECO is going great. Any request that has been proposed to management has been met by the next time I get into the office. Everyone on site is extremely happy to have interns helping out. My co-intern is really cool and we have a lot in common so working together is really easy.
One of the first big problems that was encountered was determining what level of security we wanted to write the manual at. At first the decision was made to write it at the administrator level, that way all sections would be covered and it would be easy to remove sections that did not apply at the generic user level. Eventually we decided that doing this would not work the way we wanted and would make our job far more difficult. Therefore we created a dummy account and set the new user’s settings to the lowest level. Default Joe!
Next week we will be contacting the programmer of the site we are working on. Should prove interesting.
Senior Year and Sinus Congestion
So the last quarter of my last year in college is finally in motion. It is spring mind you. So why the sinus congestion?! I don't have allergies and yet lung slugs continue to take residence in the ol' respiratory system.
School is hard enough as is; internship, class, research assistantship, work, taking away from free time. People that want to spend time with me get pushed to the backburner (set on 3). The work continues to pile up, those waiting for my time interact less and less. WHY? Cause I cant breath right!
Stupid, stupid sinuses, why do you torment me so – it's the spring!
