Weekly Report 10/19-10/26

This past week was a stressful one. It was a week with a large workload, but I believe I handled it well. I'm still working on making calls to professionals, but have not had much success. That's mostly due to a low volume of calls on my part though. Luckily I have a list of biomedical engineering specialists in the area so now it's just a matter of finding these professional's contact information and reaching out. This list has dozens of names, so hopefully casting a wide net will get me some interview opportunities. This week will be focused on getting those interviews, because I'm behind on those.

After working on the assignments this week I spent my time researching prosthetics. I found that the field is expanding at a faster rate than I originally thought, which is just as exciting as it is intimidating. I need to remember though that with proper training and education I can be one of those people making headway into new projects to help those in need.

My main constraint and cause of stress has been a lack of time outside of class to take care of what I need to take care of. Luckily my main commitment at the time, marching band, is coming to a close, so once the season is over I should be able to focus much more of my time into this class.

Weekly report 10/12-10/19

I felt that this week was fairly productive. I found out more information about my field of study by researching articles for the research assessment. This included an amazing article about an artificial heart that could almost replace a heart entirely and didn't even beat. I also watched a TED talk about a new advancement in prosthetics that allows the brain to almost directly interface with the prosthetic by practically rewiring the neurons that would normally control the arm into the chest muscles. Then electrodes would pick up on those nerve impulses and carry them to the proper channel in the prosthetic arm. Further research shows that there is progress to use fiber optics to pick up on the same data, allowing for further reduction in the bulk of the prosthetic and even allowing them to grow in complexity. This has me really excited to join this field of study and eventually work on these projects.

I'm still behind in my calls, but I have found a list of names that work in the biomedical engineering field and once I do more research for contact info I should have a substantial amount of people to call or email to set up an interview.

Weekly report 10/12-10/19

This week in ISM I made more attempts to contact professionals. I still have little success, but I'm thinking this has less to do with the people I'm calling but it has more to do with how I'm trying to contact them. Most of my attempts have been past 2:30 and on the phone when I should be trying to email them either in the morning or at Lunch. This should help me get more responses. I have almost exhausted my contact list, but luckily I should be getting some help on that front with friends helping me find more contacts.

This week we had our Business Symposium which gave me excellent feedback on my interview skills. I believe that this event has helped me improve as a person and given me renewed confidence in finding interviews in my field of study. On top of feedback, I was able to network a bit and even got a professional's email address to help set up an interview. Maybe once I start this first interview it'll snowball into even more interviews, as most everyone has told me that getting the first interview is the hardest part. Once I do get this interview though it should be easier for me to get the information I need and make informed decisions about my mentor.