Christopher Ankeny

Reflection

When I first got excepted into the AE program all I ever heard about was the 5th year thesis. Redesigning a building by myself with hardly any supervision seemed like a impossible task. Over the years viewing the presentations always got me nervous because it seemed like I didn't know anything and I would never be able to complete thesis myself. In these last two years my summer internships were absolutely invalueable and gave me a greater knowledge of how electrical designs were completed. All of the sudden the last year presentations didn't seem so overwhelming anymore and at the point I finally thought I was ready for thesis.

Penn State AE prepared me quite well for the year long senior thesis project. The project I chose had a somewhat complicated electrical system which took a good deal of time for me to understand. My first thought entering thesis in the fall was why would we be doing these technical reports if we are suppose to be redesigning the systems anyway? My answer came in the spring when the redesign started. Without the technical reports I would have never figured out my system and understood what I was exactly trying to redesign in the first place.

The overall experience of senior thesis I would consider to be a huge success. I feel that I am finally prepared to enter the work force and contribute to new building designs. I learned so much this year about designing systems and time management skills. I have always been one to try and work ahead so I don't get caught without enough time to finish, but trying to layout an entire semesters worth of work I found to be a challenge. It seemed like I could never get where I wanted to be in terms of fnishing the pieces of the project. In the end it all worked out and I still had two days left so I think I did quite well for myself looking back on it.

CPEP and Discussion Board

Creating a website was something I was not looking forward too. It turned out in the end not to be so bad. Being provided with a template was a huge help in figuring out how the layouts should look like. Since I am a novice at web design I was pleased with this helpful template. The organization of the website is great and breaks up what we completed in our thesis very well. Being able to show this website off to people gives me a sense of satisfaction about all the work I put in and not having it buried away in some box in my attic. These websites are also a great tool for the future thesis students to model and see what all goes into the project and how we went about it.

The discussion board is a good idea and thanks to all the professionals who responded promptly to the questions we had for them.