Tag Archives: final projects

It’s Crunch Time

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Next week is the last week of classes of the 2017 Spring Semester! This also means that “It’s Crunch Time” before we head towards summer. It is time to finish those last semester projects/presentations and study for finals.

On Monday, I have a presentation in my Social Responsibility and Ethics Management class. During the semester, we had to volunteer and do ten hours of community service hours as part of a project called Civil Engagement Project.

The following day, I have a group presentation in my Strategic Management class. We will report on how our company did during the eight rounds simulation. During those rounds, we produced sensors and sold them on the market. We were competing against other groups in our classroom.

Thursday will be my last day of classes at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University!

There are no classes on Friday as this day is dedicated to studying. My professor in my Aviation Labor Relations course will post our final exam on Canvas (online); we will have two days to complete it.

I will have a total of four “real” final exams that will take place during finals week (Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday). My other exams for my other three classes will be taken online.

In just about two weeks on May 8, I will be graduating!

Here are 10 Study Tips to help you prepare for your final exams:

  1. Do not look at the course material for the first time the day before the exam. Most professors mention the dates of assignments, quizzes, and exams during the first week of classes.
  2. Take notes in class and review them on the same day you took them.
  3. Start looking slowly at the material a week or a few days before the test. You will learn and memorize a lot more if you study a little bit every day.
  4. If you created a study guide, try to break it up and study one part at a time. It will be easier if you study it in small chunks instead of reading the whole study guide again and again.
  5. Create a short song or a series of letters when you have to memorize things involving steps or chronology. One time I had to memorize the 6 types of religious conversion. So I just remembered the first letter of each word and it sounded like this IMEARC.
  6. Repeating things loudly or writing them down many times on a sheet of paper will help you to remember the information for the exam.
  7. Quiz yourself or get a friend to ask you some questions. I often use Quizlet to test myself. There is a test option where the website generates a set of questions from the data you have to learn.
  8. Get all the information possible you can from your professor. Sometimes, they will tell you the format of the exam (multiple choices, true or false, short answers, short essays and/or long essays) and the number of questions.
  9. Take a break. Don’t study for hours in one sitting, but take some short breaks and move around.
  10. The night before the test, don’t stay up late at night to study. You should have studied a few days before and be ready. You will do better on the on the exam if you have a good night of sleep.

Good luck on your exams!

Nicolas

Don’t Get Behind

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Last week was so busy and it felt like it was finals week. I had a total of four exams during those five days, including three exams on Wednesday.

I had a test in Social Responsibility and Ethics in Management, Aviation Labor Relations, Elements of Biological Science and Business Quantitative Methods. Most of the tests I had were multiple choices. My Science exam was take-home and it was online so it was not that bad!

Before last week, I didn’t really have a lot of work to do, but I can now say the workload officially kicks in.

Don’t Get Behind

Do your homework and other assignments in advance instead of doing everything the day before it is due. If you don’t understand a question from the assignment, you’ll have time to either meet the professor or send him or her an email. You won’t be confused and on your own at midnight before the assignment is due the next day. Sometimes, the homework can look easy at first, but it can require more time than you think to complete it. It happened to me a couple of times where I thought simply answering questions from the textbook would require less than 30 minutes. I was wrong.

I’m not saying you have to study weeks in advance before an exam, but you shouldn’t teach yourself the material the day before the test. I think the best way to learn the material  is too study a bit every day. Writing stuff down also helps you to remember it.

On the days you don’t have anything to do, think about if there was anything you could do to get ahead of the game. This is my piece of advice for this week.

Until next time,

Nicolas

Exciting Class Projects

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Summer is only a few weeks away which means that projects and final exams are approaching quickly. I have three aviation-related projects due in the next two weeks. Yes, you saw the words exciting and projects go together in my title. This is probably one of the first time that I’m in school and I’m working on projects that are not boring. If you are a prospective Aviation Business student or you are just interested in the world of airports and airlines, I’m sure you will enjoy this story!

Airline-Airport Operations
The first group project is in my Airline-Airport Operations class. We have to write a report analyzing the relationship between airlines and airports. In our group, we have decided to do it on the effects of an airline merger on a hub airport. More specifically questioning if Delta Air Lines should keep Cincinnati Northern/Kentucky International Airport (CVG) as part of one of its hubs. CVG is located between Atlanta and Detroit, and many of its routes are overlapping with the two cities mentioned. In the past few years, the airline has greatly reduced the number of flights in Cincinnati. When airlines merge, it often happens that at least one of its hubs will close. For example, when Continental merged with United in 2012, Cleveland lost its status of a hub. Cleveland is located right between Newark and Chicago (two of United’s hubs), making it inefficient to operate a hub due to its close distance between the two cities.

Boeing 767-300ER of Delta Air Lines

Boeing 767-300ER of Delta Air Lines

International Aviation Management
In my International Aviation Management class, each team was assigned a different topic related to aviation operations in Europe. We have to identify potential markets for Aegean Airlines to develop. The largest airline of Greece faces competition all over Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Our group focused on European ultra low-cost carriers (ULCCs). We are analyzing the markets that are currently not served by large low-cost carriers such as Ryanair, EasyJet, and Vueling. Our goal is to recommend Aegean new destinations to fly to.

Airport Management
Finally, my last project is for my Airport Management class. For this project, our class needs to determine if San Diego International Airport (Lindberg Field) should stay where it is right now or if the airport should be relocated in an area with more space.

Photo: Google Maps

Photo: Google Maps

As you can see from the image above, the airport is very limited in growth due to its geography. There is the interstate at the east of the airport and water and ports surrounding the south and west of the airfield. Further, there are industrial buildings and a small residential neighborhood at the north of San Diego International Airport. The airport also operates with a single runway system which limits the number of flights the airport can handle in a day. The runway length (9,400ft / 2,865m) is a factor that limits the number of international flights. In hot temperatures, aircraft require more runway length to lift off the ground than usual. With a longer runway, the airport could potentially welcome new airlines and offer more destinations to the San Diego residents.

I hope you enjoyed my brief overview of my aviation projects. Have a great week and keep in mind that summer is almost here.

Until next time!

Nicolas

Contact the author at berniern@my.erau.edu

November & An Update or Two

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Hello hello everyone! It is finally November! Sorry I have not written anything in a while. It has been crazy busy on my side! School has been coming along. We are almost done with the semester. We have a little bit less than a month left. This is when all your final projects and final assignments are due. I finally figured out what my MATLAB final project is going to be, a NASA database! I got the idea from a friend, Julia. She knows how much I like NASA so one day we were sitting in class and she happened to mention the idea. I sat down and did some planning with my professor and he loved the idea. I must have been in his office for about 2 and a half hours just planning. He gave me some really good ideas and we brainstormed the project. I am really happy with what we came up with so now I just have to execute it and I have a month to do it!

For my CATIA project it is moving along! We are going to measure and model 10 parts tomorrow since my caliper that I ordered finally came in! I am really excited to get working on that because like I said before, I am doing a space shuttle pullback toy. Yes, NASA again!

November is going to be full of schoolwork, schoolwork, and more schoolwork. But there is still a break for Veterans Day coming up on Wednesday and Thanksgiving Break later on in the month. I will also be going to Kennedy Space Center later in the month. It has been too long! I miss my second home!

I almost forgot! Besides the craziness of school, during one of the Society 4 S.P.A.C.E. meetings, we had a guest speaker, Ronald Caswell, who worked on the ISS and Shuttle. He spoke for about an hour and a half about the Colombia and Challenger disaster. Let me tell you, being a space nerd myself, I knew a lot of information about the two disasters but I learned a whole lot more! It was a pleasure hearing him speak about his work. I loved how passionate he was. It was like nothing was stopping him from doing what he loved. It was truly a great experience to hear him talk.

Life has been flying by really fast lately. Final projects and last semester as a freshman. I have even started looking for a place for next semester. Time has flown by since the Fall Semester started. I cannot believe it is almost over. With all the craziness of school, I have taken time to relax and have fun. I have hung out with some friends and had a Netflix day where I sat and watched Netflix all day. Yes, it was a nice break from all the school craziness and stress. With a little less than one month left, it is time for the big push. One more month and the craziness of fall is all over!

Hold on Riddle kids! We are almost at the end! Have a great Monday everyone!

What a Week for Space!

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Hello readers!

They had all sorts of MAVEN stuff up at KSC this weekend – loved it!

Boy was last week a great time to be a space-enthusiast (and a Kennedy Space Center season pass holder)! I hope you’ve all heard of the MAVEN mission that is en route to Mars as of last Monday. It’s a NASA mission that will be studying the evolution of Mars’ climate and atmosphere – Mars Atmospheric Volatile EvolutioN. And because my research interests are the Martian atmosphere, I’m looking forward to seeing what it brings us. But more exciting were last weekend’s festivities down at the Cape. All weekend they had speakers and specialists giving cool presentations about the mission and other aspects of NASA science, and I was there Saturday and Sunday to see it.

My lame tourist photo with Atlantis

Saturday morning I was up bright and early (legitimately early, I’m talking about 6 am) to head down to KSC with the Honors Student Association. I’m not member of HSA (though apparently I’m *technically* an “inactive” member just for being in the honors program), but they let me come just because I’m friends with the whole executive board and my season pass gets them free parking without costing them a dime on admission. So, y’know, it was a win-win. Of course the first thing we did was head over to the Atlantis exhibit, as none of them had seen it yet. It’s still just as breath-taking the second (and third) time around. After that we went over to listen to a NASA speaker, who was the director of astrobiology, give a presentation about MAVEN. It wasn’t super technical, but very cool all the same. The most entertaining part was the group of probably 5 or 6 year old kids who thought they knew the answers to all of her questions: “Why are we interested in studying Mars?” “Because it’s so hot? Because it’s the only planet without life?” Kids these days, am I right? (I assure you, my children will be completely educated about the universe and its workings before they are even toilet-trained.) They also kept asking about the astronauts on the MAVEN mission; I suppose “un-manned” just doesn’t make sense at that age. But I digress. After the talk I went over to speak with NASA’s director of astrobiology, because I never pass up the opportunity to schmooze a NASA employee. We chatted a bit and I expressed my interest in Martian science, and she gave me the name of somebody to contact asking about possible internships. No word back yet, but she’s probably pretty busy with the launch and stuff. We’ll see I suppose…..

Beautiful photo I took of the rocket garden at sunset.

Bill Nye the Science Guy in the flesh! Bow-tie and all.

Sunday afternoon I was right back down at the Cape to see their featured speaker, who was none other than…. Bill Nye the Science Guy! He gave a fantastic talk about why space exploration is important. Which was really cool to see in person, considering my American public schooling in science consisted pretty heavily of his show (I know you all can relate! Or at least those of you in the USA – my boyfriend, from India, didn’t even know who he was! :O) It was another great day at the Space Center, aside from my car almost running out of oil for some reason and having to stop at a Sunoco in the middle of nowhere to put three quarts in. And trust me, I can tell you the physics of how an engine works, but I certainly don’t know my way around one!

We couldn’t see him super well from where we were sitting so mostly watched the screen. Still cool!

MAVEN’s smoke trail in the sky, seen from near campus.

Monday was the big day – the launch! Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to go down to the Cape to watch, but I did go out to the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse that is about half an hour from campus to try and see. We had a clear view of the coastline where it launched from, but unfortunately it was too cloudy to see it take off. It was okay though, because I had a live video feed on my iPhone that way cooler than watching a bright dot in the sky. And when the clouds moved out we were able to see the smoke trail it left behind. MAVEN has been on its way for about a week now, with only 9 months and 2 weeks left to go until it arrives!

I really did take this with my iPhone. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Oh, I forgot to mention, as if spending the day at KSC and seeing Bill Nye on Sunday wasn’t cool enough, I got to spend some time on the university’s telescope to do some moon observations for my astronomy class. It was exactly the night of the full moon, and what a sight it is through a telescope! By the way, if anybody tells you that you can’t take pictures by holding your iPhone camera up to the eyepiece of the telescope, they are very, very wrong. I took what are probably the coolest photos ever taken with an iPhone camera, hands down. I’m very excited to get our new telescope next semester, which will be the largest in the state of Florida! Hear that, prospective students? If you’re interested in space, ERAU is definitely the place to be. 🙂 See below for some up close photos of the moon’s surface, taken by an iPhone camera….

 

 

Well, the semester’s winding down faster than I expected. Last week I spent a lot of time working on homework and projects, hoping to have some time to relax over Thanksgiving. I’m getting on a plane Tuesday afternoon to head back up to Minneapolis for the break (unfortunately there’s no snow to greet me). Which fell at a terrible time this year, because we get back next Monday and that’s the last week of classes! I’ll probably be working most of the break, since I still have some final projects to finish up and exams to study for.

My gorgeous new space book 🙂

I almost forgot – this week was also the 15th birthday of the International Space Station. And Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It was definitely a big week for space! Also, I won a really awesome space book in a raffle at Cookies & Craic (a bimonthly get-together for the ERAU Physics department, where you get to eat free cookies and chat with faculty and students.) It is leather bound and has gold page edges and a cloth bookmark and beautiful color photos. I love it. 🙂 Also, NASA has started posting summer internships, and there is a planetary science position posted for Ames Research Center that I really really want. So pray to whatever deity you worship and cross all your fingers for me to get that – thanks!

Beautiful on the inside too

That’s all for now folks, tune in next week for my exciting recollection of Thanksgiving break and final project panic mode! Because I just wouldn’t be a proper college student without the latter.

And email me! I promise I don’t bite. SchroeL2@my.erau.edu

-Lynsey

New Building, Homecoming, Weekend Shenanigans, and Neutron Stars

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Greeting, readers!

It seems like it’s been forever since my last post – I’ve got a lot to cover!

Me with my poster, standing in what we think is going to be a chemistry lab.

First things first, I should talk about the Board of Trustees tour in the new COAS building that I’ve mentioned was coming up. It was pretty anti-climatic actually. We stood in a lab next to our posters (each lab had a poster) and the board walked past without much more than a glance – it was over in about ten minutes! A couple stopped to ask questions, but most just commented on the name of my lab (ECLAIR – brilliant, right?) and asked if we were excited for the new building. Nonetheless I got to walk around and take some pictures of the new building (at least one hallway on the first floor), and I talked to an astronaut on our board of trustees. Any day I get to talk to an astronaut is a good day. Not that we talked about space or anything, but still. Pictures from inside the building below!

 

Picture of a really cool ribbon dance at the Diwali show.

That weekend I went to the Diwali show put on by the Indian Student Association, which was super cool. I am preparing for a trip to India in May (and just got my Visa today!) so it was really neat to see some of the culture. Also did some shopping at the Halloween store – the best time of year is right after Halloween when all the cool stuff at the Halloween store is half price. Plus that weekend was “semi-annual time travel night” AKA daylight savings (c’mon, which sounds cooler?) so we all got an extra hour of sleep! Best night of the year. As a result, a bunch of clocks on campus (and in my apartment, because I can’t be bothered to change them) were running an hour ahead that week and my internal clock was very confused.

Last week was homecoming week, which doesn’t mean much to me because I’m not a sports person, but it’s a pretty neat week around campus. Different clubs on campus make big sculptures of random stuff (“spirit signs”) and do some really cool chalk art drawings out on the sidewalk. Unfortunately it rained before I could get pictures of them :(. There is also a concert, a carnival, and a comedian every year. I didn’t attend the first two things (nor the homecoming game – to be honest I don’t even know which sport it was this year…), but I did go see the comedian, Demitri Martin, and he was hilarious. Riddle always manages to get some pretty big names for comedians and bands and such for events like this. In the last couple years we’ve had Bo Burnham and Jim Gaffigan for homecoming comedians, and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and All American Rejects for the spring concert.

I don’t have enough pictures for this entry, so here’s a giant cookie I made this weekend. Just because.

I had a fairly productive three day weekend. The end of the semester is nigh, and as a result I have a big pile of projects. The last month or so of the semester is always crazy. I keep telling myself I’m going to start working on things before the last week, so we’ll see if that actually happens. Though I did already do some research for my software engineering research paper, which is a big head start! My advice for college: Don’t procrastinate on end of the semester projects! You will have sleepless nights and you will regret it.

Also this weekend I went to see the new Thor movie, which was awesome. I definitely recommend it! Any movie that has spaceships AND medieval sword-fighting stuff gets two thumbs up in my book.

In other news, I’ve been starting to talk about my thesis with my research advisor, which is crazy. But definitely exciting at the same time. I will probably continue my work with Martian atmospheric gravity waves. We have definitely had some success with the vertical wind calculations over topography – and Mars certainly has some interesting topography! As far as a topic goes, I really have no idea. I will just have to see what comes to me I suppose… good thing I still have a couple years ahead!

The next couple weeks are definitely going to be busy, but Thanksgiving break is just around the corner, and I’m fortunate to get to go home again this year. It will be nice to escape and get some time in the snow (hopefully)! Though the weather has been great here – it’s finally starting to cool down. Once you survive the heat of April – October, the rest of the year in Florida is fantastic. Plus if you come from somewhere cold, everybody back home gets super jealous in December and January.

Photograph by National Geographic Channels/ Nate Evans
CGI IMAGE: The Neutron Star sucks up the Earth in bits and pieces.

I didn’t talk much about academics this post, so allow me to share some cool stuff that I’ve been learning in my astronomy class… So after a star dies it sometimes leaves behind what is called a neutron star, and these stars are super dense – they basically pack the entire mass of the sun into an area smaller than Colorado. If you had a piece of neutron star the size of a paperclip, it would be so heavy that, not only would you not be able to pick it up, but it would fall through the ground and out the other side of the Earth. Then it would turn around and fall back the way it came. It would keep doing that until the Earth was essentially destroyed. Cool, eh? In fact, last year National Geographic did a show about what would happen if a neutron star was headed toward Earth and we had to save the human race – and part of it was filmed here on campus! Here is a link to a local news article.

Speaking of space, this weekend I’ll be going down to Kennedy Space Center to see Bill Nye give a talk about space! How cool is that? And thanks to my season pass it won’t cost me a dime.

That’s all I can think of to talk about this time around. I should mention that I got my first ever email from a reader – so I know that at least one person is actually reading my random ramblings. Which is awesome! If there are more than one of you, the rest should definitely feel free to email me any questions you have about ERAU. Give me some ideas of what you’d like me to write about in these entries. Or, y’know, just send fan mail. 😀

Until next week, folks!

-Lynsey

SchroeL2@my.erau.edu