Day 52 - Crunch time for Presentations

So today was much more busy than I thought it would be, and little bit less satisfying. First I left to go to school to work on my homework a little bit in an attempt to lesson the workload in the upcoming days. When I arrived, there were already some people there, but the large majority was either still at home enjoying their day off, or sleeping off their adventures from last night. Instead of going with them, I slept of the crazy days. Heh, now I know why they're called that. Oh! Just a little side note, apparently the Cologne parade was a total bust from what some of my classmates told me. It was really cold, and there were so many people that were going absolutely bonkers. Instead of making the experience a lot of fun, it just made the students that went uncomfortable and confused. It probably didn't help that they were one of the only ones that were not drunk. So staying in Bonn was probably a good thing to do.

Anyway, I worked on my signals and design homework due within the next few days, just kind of hanging out with the people around while I waited for anyone to come that I could work with. When my group showed up, we wanted to make a model of our design for the presentation tomorrow, so I tried to make one out of Popsicle sticks, string, and hot glue. It didn't go well. Instead, we decided to go out and get play-doh so that we could make a much better model. After the failed Popsicle stick adventure, I went out to the local Pizza Hut with some friends and ate there for lunch. Now I know what you're thinking about me going to Pizza Hut for lunch, but this was completely different than any Pizza Hut I've ever been in. Yes they had the to go place right outside for a quick grab-n-go, but on the inside was a nice dining area that was just like a nice Italian restaurant.

Some of the people that worked with me today

After lunch, we went back to AIB for more group work and studying. My group and I worked hard, and came up with the final draft for our presentation tomorrow, before we left for a quick lunch and to grab some play-doh. I guess today was an American food day because I went to Subway instead of the Doener place that was right next door. To be fair, it's been a while since I've had Subway, and I've had Doener probably every other day since I got here. After dinner, we walked to the Galeria for a little bit of play-doh for our sculpture. I'm sure it was pretty funny to see 3 adults buying something like play-doh, but it's a vital part of an engineer's tool-belt for the sole purpose of it's amazing moldable abilities. While we were in the store, we saw this awesome recreation of a Star Wars clone made out of Lego's. After buying our molding material, we bought some gelato before heading back to AIB to make our model.

Look at this! It's so cool!

At AIB, I found out that the movie Gravity would be shown at 7, so I quickly made the model before heading over to the other studio to watch the movie and give myself a break for a while. The movie was actually pretty good, but I don't think I'll watch it a second time. When the movie ended, it was rather late, and since my walk is 20 minutes away, I didn't want to go by myself back to the house. Unfortunately my neighbor wasn't one of the people that watched the movie, so I was a bit at a loss until I found that a lot of my classmates that didn't see the movie were still working hard at their project. Since it was either a choice of going home to work on my work (where I would most likely fall asleep) or working at AIB where I would get a lot of work done, I just decided to stay until the first night bus came and dropped me off two blocks away from my house.

At AIB, I finished up the last bit of the power-point for tomorrow by creating a solid model using a really awesome software called Inventor that created virtual 3-D objects. I worked a little bit on my homework, and statrted this blog so I could just go right to sleep in preparation for tomorrow morning. While there, I noticed something...a sort of trend if you will that seems like all engineers fall into. I noticed taht when you look at the distribution of work over a period of time before a deadline, only about 10% of the actual work gets done in the first 80-90% of the time allowed. Once it gets close to the deadline (about 10-20% of time left) then the creative juices get going and the remaining 90% of the work gets done, usually with pretty good results. This held true as we stayed at AIB working late into the night.

Anyway, that was today. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and I get to wake up early to go to the 8 am service at the Muenster because tomorrow is completely full with presentations, group meetings, and classes, and I'll want to go home as soon as I'm able. That means I get to leave by 7:15. Woohoo... I'm anticipating going on the cruise next week, but I probably won't be able to update while on the cruise. Don't worry though, I won't update all in one post the minute I get back. I'll keep a document of each day either on my phone or on my computer in Word and take a lot of pictures. When I get back, I'll post the first one, and then post each subsequent "day" in about 1.5-2 hour increments. So if you don't see this post updated for more than a week, that's why.

Tomorrow starts off Lent, which means no meat or reading fictional stories online anymore (what I'm giving up. It'll be a struggle) and a 6-week(ish) wait until Easter. Oh! and my presentation is happening.

Wish me luck!
Erin Z