School is fast approaching!

In 4 weeks the Fall semester starts. I'm extremely excited and am anxiously waiting for the semester to start. In preperation for the semester, I bought and am reading all the books assigned for my Fall classes. I'm almost done with the first (EECS 320) book and am about to start my EECS 451 textbook. I also read a great Mechanical Engineering book last month and am halfway through a Chemistry book I bought. I'd also like to get in two books on UNIX and UNIX Networking by the end of the summer. Before the semester starts I'll make a follow up post listing all the books I managed to cover in the past 6 weeks.

I have found that I am very ADD when it comes to reading. To solve this I listen to music and alternate between reading and working out. I bought a workout bench for $75 and am loving it. I use it for all my dumbbell exercises. I've been working on a home server and created a Wiki for personal reasons, my workout routine is on there. This routine is a huge enhancement from my original workout routine. I researched all the major muscles and found dumbbell exercises that focus on each. Unfortunately I discovered muscles I haven't even touched! One being the "Pectoralis Major". I tried lifting some 35lb on it and that was not going to happen. I ended up pulling a muscle. I'm sore as hell today but it's gotten a lot better, I should be fine by tomorrow or the day after.

In addition to all my reading and exercising, I also have news about my internship. With only 3 weeks left, I'm anxious to finish it on a good note. Visteon has been good to me, the directors even took all of us out to a baseball game (Tigers vs. White Sox). It was in a suite, very nice! I have a meeting with my director, my supervisor, and my supervisor's boss. I essentially get to explain everything I did. I did quite a lot, so I'll have no problem discussing it all with them. I learned a lot this past summer and am extremely glad I took this position over going to Taiwan.

With the summer almost over, I have a lot to finish up. I've kept contact with friends to a minimum, have been focusing on my work, and am going to finish this summer having accomplished a lot. I will be ready for next semester! I will do great. I am so excited.

Second Month of the Semester!

With midterms coming out, a lot of time is currently spent studying! On top of that my friend (who with her 4.0 is just getting plenty of interview requests!) has been asking for help on improving her interview responses. We've been lately going over all these crazy questions, known as "microsoft questions", trying to have fun while simultaneously preparing. On top of that we have gone through answering generic questions such as "tell me about a problem you faced and how you solved it" or "how did you deal with working with someone you hated" and so on. She's done a great job so far and it really has shown with her interviews. My hopes are that my experience with my personal projects will get me the opportunities I want, I have so much experience that I really feel it gives me the edge against even some of the top people here at school. We'll see though. I'm really excited about the summer though, I recently joined another research group and as a backup plan I always have two research groups to work with over the summer. It's nice having a backup plan!

All good so far

I've been able to keep up my confidence so far, everything seems to be going great. Really enjoying my professors and I have two wonderful friends who have been crucial to my success thus far(I'm very lucky!) As of now I've been putting some effort into getting a summer internship, we'll see what comes up. I wish I could say more about what has been going on but school is quite consuming of my time. I'm still working off my lazy habits; I used this week's exams as an excuse to slack off on next week. With a 4 day weekend I'll play catch-up. Meeting a friend over the weekend to get most of next week's work out of the way. After this semester I'll be able to really gauge what I can expect in the future.

Internship

Just received a letter stating that I was selected to receive a Jack Kent Cooke Fellowship for this summer. If I am chosen by a faculty research sponsor I get to spend either full or half time (40 or 20 hours a week) doing research at UM-Ann Arbor. I am really excited at this opportunity, and am very thankful to Mr. Harrill and Dr. Naber for providing the recommendations that made this possible. Here's to hoping everything goes smoothly!