Hey everyone!
It’s almost it ! I only have a week of internship left! And it’s feeling like it’s the end: last Friday, the Bridgestone strike finally ended. I spent about four weeks covering that issue, and it felt really weird. But it’s for the best, these people were out of work for too long. During the time I covered this conflict, I actually learned a lot on how to write objective articles while making sure I wasn’t making the whole situation worse.
Anyway, that’s over! It’ll feel a little weird this week: for the past four weeks, I had been working on the same topic pretty much every day! I did a ton of other articles (on farmers, other strikes, competitions, schools, construction work, etc) , but I started my day with phone calls to figure out what was going on in the Bridgestone factory that day! Now I’ll have to find new topics every day. At least I can still work on it one more day: our readers will have to know how going back to work feels like after a two months strike!
This week, the newsroom crew changed again. It’s summer, and everybody is taking his vacations in turn. I’m the only one who’s been there every day for the past seven weeks. I have to say, it makes my work a little harder: every week, I have to adapt to new coworkers, and I’ve already changed three times of supervisor! Working hard on my flexibility there… They all want different things from me as far as topics or writing style, but I think it’s somehow a good thing. Overall, I’m learning a lot.
Now that I’m about to leave, people here are starting to know me. Despite the fact they’ve all been on vacation at some point, I’ve been here for seven weeks so they’ve had time to come back. They’re nice people, but I don’t think I’d like to work here for real. It would be too much of the same thing. Eight weeks here was just enough time to have fun writing articles about local things, but I need something else. I guess it helped me narrow my career focus. That’s one of the points of doing internships, right? Plus I got a ton of articles published. It’ll be good for my portfolio. They’ve used me a lot. Before I started I thought I would be mainly scanning documents for them, or something similar. I was hoping they would let me write a few articles. In the end, I had to write an average of two to three articles a day for eight weeks. It was awesome! I also learned a lot about how to behave in the workplace, and how to adapt to what is asked from you.
After this, time for a little bit of vacation: I’m going to Sweden for a few days. And then almost immediately going back to school! This summer went by fast!
Have a good day!
Every pilot, it seems, knows from the very beginning that he/she wants to pursue a career in aviation. I knew it the second I stepped foot into the cockpit of a FedEx Express Boeing 727 at Newark Airport. Even though I had no clue what I was looking at or what I was doing for that matter, it seemed just as cool then as it does now.
I was an A- student in high school and I was a member of both the National Honor Society and the Italian Honor Society. Throughout high school I enrolled in as many dual enrollment courses as possible and took AP exams during my senior year. All of which turned into seventeen transfer credits to the University. I’ve basically wiped out a semester for a fraction of the cost. I definitely recommend it, because it’s a good eye-opener to college coursework, and because you can’t beat the prices.
The remainder of my senior year of high school, involved a program called “Senior Seminar.” A class where each student enrolls him/herself in an internship; I choose flight training to become a pilot. To receive my flight training I attended a local flight school at Essex County Airport (Caldwell). I enrolled in a Part 141 training program to ultimately receive a private pilots certificate. I started out learning the basics during ground school, which was one-on-one with my flight instructor. I preferred this method over large classes, because it offers the student a better understanding of the material. In addition, my school had a full video library available to its students for training purposes, to reinforce each lesson. I highly recommend these videos from Jeppesen and King Schools to better any pilot during flight training. Throughout the course I learned many operations, maneuvers, and gained a knowledge about the aviation world. Overall I was loving every minute of it!
Today was the final banquet for all the interns and co-ops. They showed up a really cool video about the launch day of the BIRST Project I talked about last time. I’m hoping they publish it on YouTube so I can share it with you guys. Sometimes pictures are proprietary information so anything that you want to distribute outside of the company has to go through an approval process. At the banquet my payload team presented our mentor with a trophy we made. One of the interns had a trophy from when he was younger and we wrapped the little topper man in duct tape (symbolic of the duct tape on the payload) attached an alien paratrooper to one outstretched hand and a mini Ball flag to the other hand. Then to represent all the epoxy we used on our project we dripped some over the trophy which had a final appearance a little like gloopy icicles. Overall the present was quite ugly but it wasn’t our goal to make something attractive, just something to signify the summer fun.
After taking the train out of Munich, we arrived in the small town of Traben-Trarbach around lunch on the 13th. We dropped off our things at the quaint little hotel, and headed up to Mont Royal for our glider flights! I was a little nervous about being shot up in the air, and I let a lot of people go before me. However I finally gathered my courage, put on my parachute, and climbed into the glider. The take off was pretty intense, but it was a beautiful view and definitely a fun ride!!! I am very glad to have done this, and I definitely believe this was one of the highlights of the trip. You can check out the video of my take off from the airfield at 
Hello everyone! I’ve been doing some sweeet things lately! The payload that I’ve been working on is FINALLY done! Last night we did some final “smoke bomb” testing. If you’ve ever seen the skydivers that jump and the stream of smoke comes out from behind them, we’re using one of those little devices, minus the skydiver of course. All of our little alien paratroopers were wrapped up and loaded into their piston shaft (it takes a very long time to preflight those little guys, wrapping each of their parachutes precisely). And then today we launched! We went to a ranch out in the middle of nowhere in Kiowa, CO.
There were 4 different launches scheduled. The first was a rocket made by an employee of ULA, it was 10ft tall and flew to like 5,000ft above ground level (AGL). The second was about 2 ft tall and was a scale model of a V-2 rocket and it went to 4,000 ft AGL, the third was called “The Boomer” and launched to about 13,000ft! It was awesome! Then our rocket was launched, it had 10 payloads total (because the payload that I worked on had 4 sub payloads). For anyone that is familiar with model rockets, we flew on a class N engine.
It took us a while to find all our payloads after launch. Since we were out in the middle of nowhere we had to trudge through a lot of brush and cactus, in the end we found our flag, smoke bomb, audio visual locator beacon, and about a dozen of the aliens. On my facebook I posted a video of the launch with my payload and also a video of “The Boomer.” There are also a lot more pictures. Check them out!
Some of my friends came into town last weekend and I went white water rafting! We decided to go on the “advanced beginner” route since we wanted a bit of a wild ride. The water was SOO cold. I suppose that makes sense because only a few hours before it was snow that was melted and ran into the creek. We also took further advantage of being in Colorado and did some serious hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park.
On Friday we flew from Paris to Munich to begin the Germany section of the trip. The flights had been booked for us, and we got to take Air Berlin (check out the picture). I was very impressed by this low-cost European carrier, and will certainly fly them any time I can in the future. Upon arrival, we got checked into our hostel and only had a few hours remaining in the day. A few friends and I headed straight for the city center of Munich, known as Marienplatz. It was definitely the liveliest area in the city, and had a lot of things to see and do. After a nice dinner we headed back to our comfortable room to get prepared for the next day.
Saturday afternoon, we headed back into central Munich to the main Deutches Museum building, which included airplanes but had also many other displays. At this museum, we got to see many different military aircraft from Germany. Also, there was a Lufthansa Boeing 707 cockpit that you could see into. It is very cool to notice the huge differences in cockpits from many years ago when compared to cockpits of today. Another interesting display was the section on German air traffic control. Aside from the aviation part of the museum, we were encouraged to stay after the session and check out the rest of the exhibits. This museum was certainly one of my favorites and housed exhibits on nearly any technological advancement you could imagine. Some things covered were aviation, space exploration, boating and navigation, nuclear energy, computers, assembly lines, robotics, and thousands of other items. The never-ending array of information was fascinating, and I could have spent a much longer time at the Deutches Museum.
After a long Saturday of work, we were rewarded with a free day to end the weekend. I started my day on a free walking tour and saw a lot of the city. Some of the better sites included the Hofbrahaus, Glockenspiel, Frauenkirche, Mozart’s temporary home, and the City Hall. Although those sites were quite breathtaking, they didn’t even compare to what I was about to experience. That afternoon I hopped on a train and decided to visit the Dachau Concentration Camp outside of Munich. From the moment I arrived I felt the power of such a devastating place. The barracks, the showers, the washrooms, and the museum were almost too much to handle. And then, when I thought I had seen it all, we stepped into the gas chamber and crematorium. The entire time I visited the site I couldn’t help but feel saddened by certainly one of the low points of the human race. However, it was quite a sobering experience, and I certainly will never forget how I felt and what I saw at Dachau.
Munich has been a great way to begin our visit in Germany. I have really enjoyed the city’s liveliness and culture. The German language is very different, but I am having fun trying to use some of what I learned prior to leaving. I am excited to head out to Traben-Trarbach, where our group will take a glider flight. I hope you have enjoyed my Europe journals, and if you have any questions about the trip or something else, email me at 
Lately I’ve been working on a solar array sizing program. I never really liked programming before, but actually applying it to things that I’m interested in is actually pretty cool. In the program, you input the power loads (how much power the instruments need) and some other information which is specific to the satellite such as orbit altitude, and what you want to make your solar array and batteries out of. Then it spits out answers like how big your solar array needs to be, how many batteries are required and the eclipse and sunlight exposure times. I’m still working out a few final input error checks and the form the user fills out, but I’m excited to see my final product!