Reflection

If your screen is glossy enough, it's quite easy to reflect.  Simply click this black square and look into your screen.

The actual content of this post happens when you click the "Read more" button.

Sorry.  That was the wrong kind of reflection.  According to Dictionary.com, reflect (not to be confused with genuflect) means  to think, ponder, or meditate, and I'll be using that definition for the remainder of this post as I reflect upon this past semester, what went well, what didn't go well, and the stuff I just wasn't there for.

At the beginning of this semester, I had no idea what iFoundry was.  Due to a communications mix-up, I didn't even know whether I got in or not.  Then came the iFoundry orientation (iLaunch) which, while it was a lot of fun, I left still somewhat confused as to what iFoundry really was.  Sure, I learned that it was designed to create more well-rounded engineers by teaching something called the "missing basics", and that someone really likes affixing lowercase i's to the beginning of nouns, but I didn't know how we were going to do that.  Actually, at that point, I doubt anyone really knew what we were doing--not even the professors--since the professors pretty much told us, "we'll do what you want to do."

I guess at this point, I should probably clarify what iFoundry is.  iFoundry is a new organization (started this year) within the engineering department of the University of Illinois.  It is dedicated to transforming the engineering curriculum to better prepare engineering students by giving them a greater breadth of knowledge in the areas outside of math and science which are necessary to be successful in the workplace.  Judging from the fact that I can actually define iFoundry, I'd say I am no longer confused.

The professors gave us a framework for meeting and making decisions, but it was up to us figure out what we would do and how we would do it.  We iFoundry students split up into four groups based on what we wanted to do.  I joined the group "Art and Engineering Design", because I like art, and I like design, and I like engineering.  After choosing our iChair (which, in any normal organization would just be called a "leader"), we decided upon some of the things we wanted to do.  One thing a lot of people wanted to do was a project of some sort.  After all, we are the art and design group--shouldn't we, you know, make something?  Despite the huge interest, it took almost a whole semester to decide what to do, so we haven't actually done a project yet.  Except, we did.  As part of the in-class portion of iFoundry, we were put in groups of five and given an Arduino, $100, and a few weeks to decide what to do with it.  As you can see on this blog and here, we came up with some pretty interesting and fun projects.  Before that, we built steam powered cars out of tin, soda cans, and various other iDoodads (I am well aware that that is not a word.  I also don't care. :P).  Here's what I think of those two projects:

I must return to studying, so I'll cut this a little short.  We took a field trip to SOM to check stuff out, but I had an unavoidable class that day, so I couldn't go.  We also talked with Gerry LaBedz from Motorola quite a bit, which was both entertaining and very informative.  I must go.  Goodbye!