Reflection

Thesis was always one of those things I could never picture before it happened.  No amount of pre-research, viewing of previous presentations, or conversation/warnings from former AEs can ever prepare you for this “experience”.

Two semesters, countless renderings, and a few reams of paper later, I’ll do my best to describe the indescribable.

Time management has proved to be the greatest asset you can have for this project.  The first semester forced time management with several deadlines, which were occasionally a bit tight but ultimately made the semester a lot smoother.  The spring semester had really one deadline – the interim submission for lighting and electrical work kept me on track, and it’s because of them (and a lot of luck with the computers) that I finished early.  Best piece of advice I can give – work hard and consistently throughout the spring semester, and finish as early as you can.  People tend to lose their sanity, profanity filters, and tempers the last couple of days, and it’s a lot more fun to watch this from the outside than be a part of it.

The Lutron presentation in December was humbling, to say the least, but giving that presentation and getting that feedback improved my designs dramatically and made the spring presentation a lot easier.  Speaking of which, the final presentation itself was one of the least memorable 14 minutes of my life – in the sense that I don’t actually remember most of it, only the question and answer period after it.  I suppose I could watch the video recording of it, but I’d rather just assume I did insanely well and live in self-delusion.

I think having a website for this course has helped me share a bit of my college experience with my family.  My mom and grandparents would let me know when they read something new on the site, which was good but a bit strange that they were as on track with my thesis as I was.  Unfortunately, no one in my family is an engineer, so a lot of the comments from them were along the lines of “I can’t understand most of it, but it looks nice…”.  A+ from the family ; I doubt the faculty are going to be as easy to please.

This experience has been challenging, stressful, and nerve-racking, but also really rewarding and dare I say a little fun (hey, 100 sleep-deprived college students in 1 building late at night has to be good times, right?), and as much of a pain it has been at times, I am ultimately happy I went through it…and even happier that I will never have to do it again.