Welcome to Mark Miller's Senior Thesis e-Portfolio
Reflection
Ah yes, the senior thesis experience. I guess it is like any thing in life; “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”, “sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you”, and “you have to keep on keeping on”. Looking back on everything, I would say that, “Oh, it wasn’t all that bad.” But, in reality, I actually remember the many headaches that I had with this project. And to call it a “project” is somewhat of an understatement; it was more like a life consuming event, at least in the last three weeks. As the purpose of this page is to reflect on the entire experience, I will keep the tone light and fun, the rest of the documents maintain the formalness that may be required of the CPEP site. I’d like to begin this reflection from day one, the day I found my building.
I worked at Leach Wallace Associates as an intern in the Summer of 2005. Towards the end of the summer, a couple of the VP’s got together and developed a list of buildings that we could use for our thesis buildings in the upcoming academic year. I must say, it is so helpful to choose a building that is from a company that you have previously worked at. I tried to get several building that weren’t done at Leach Wallace, and I would equate finding drawings and contacts to the ease of giving a grizzly bear a root canal without anesthesia, somewhat unpleasant, as you may imagine from the mental picture you have in your head. At any rate, I chose Sibley Memorial Hospital’s Grand Oaks Assisted Living Facility Addition. The existing building’s MEP design work was not done by Leach Wallace, but they did the work for the new addition, so they had all the contacts and drawings that I needed to start my work in the fall semester. They were really great in sponsoring me for drawings cost, and helping me out in any way that they could, I am very thankful for everything they did.
The fall semester of the “Thesis Experience” is structured and well defined. The tech assignments were the equivalent of semester projects that you may have for other classes. This structure was nice for me, as I have a tendency to procrastinate, the deadlines for each tech assignment helped me to stay on schedule and get the work done when it was needed. The tech assignment provided me with an excellent understanding of my building, as I had to look through the drawings and figure out how the building was working. Tech assignment 3 is somewhat different for the lighting electrical option in that you are already thinking about your new design work. The schematic design presentation that we gave at Lutron was a great way to get the ball rolling in the design phase of the lighting depth. The comments of the lighting designers were very helpful, and geared the lighting design in the right direction come Spring semester. With these comments and the work I had done for my previous tech assignments, I could begin to develop a proposal for the work that would be done in the Spring, AE 482.
The Spring Semester was a lot different than the Fall Semester work as it was all on my shoulders to get things done, there were some progress checks, but the fact that I didn’t have to hand things in until the very end was again a concern, remember, the procrastination problem? I managed to work on lighting layouts and design in the time before spring break. After spring break, I felt the pressure and the urgency to get things done as time was running out. For the remaining time after spring break thesis consumed my life. But, I guess all is well that ends well, because I was chosen as a thesis finalist, which is quite an honor!
The biggest thing that I have learned from the experience is that time management is of the utmost importance. And although I felt the pressure of everything, the mental timeline that I had in my head for the amount of time I felt it would take to get things done, was right on. So, I guess I learned that sometimes I have two outlooks, unrealistic and realistic. In my ideal world, I would have had the thing done early, turned in, the whole nine yards. But, to be realistic, I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but I still managed my time in such a way that it got done, and I still have a whole head of hair with few gray hairs. The biggest thing is to have confidence in your designs and your intentions. This is a project that has a big picture and many small details; if you concern yourself with too many of the details, you won’t have a good time trying to get it finished. Overall, it was a good experience; I feel that I learned a lot and am proud of the work I did. But, this definitely isn’t one of the things in life that I’d like to do all over again, once was plenty!
CPEP and Discussion Board Reflection
Before this class, I had no experience with web design. The template that
was provided for the website was very easy to use and maintain. It was nice
in the fact that you could make a professional looking webpage with limited
experience. It is a great way to document your work and provide a reference
to your project from any computer with an internet connection. I did not
have that much experience with the discussion board, as I did not use it
to post questions. But, judging from the responses that other students received,
it appeared to be very helpful, with great responses from those in the professional
industry.
ABET Outcome Survey, Course and CPEP Reflection.