Thesis Presentations + IEP

Last week at school was pretty chill. We had some conferences to attend Friday, but most of the week was free to attend the thesis presentations of the cohort before us. There were some really great/interesting presentations/internships. It gave me a lot to think about with regard to what I want to do for my thesis. It is interesting to note that one of the presentations that everyone said was the best and "inspiring, even" did not get an A (I missed it), whereas good, but not fantastic ones that I saw did. I noted what questions were asked so that I can be ready to stun the jury this time next year. Several of the projects were in or required travel to Africa or Latin America, which could be fun.
At the first presentation, I took a full page of notes. At the rest of the presentations on the first two days I jotted down a few lines on each. By the third day,  I had pretty much taken to practicing my handwriting and taking down great quotations.

I don't yet know what I want to do for my thesis. We have so much freedom. I think it is more difficult to present, if you do a more business-focused project, rather than a research based-thesis; however, the evaluating juries consist of one faculty member from each consortium school, which means that the audience is really diverse and somewhat non-technical and purely technical report will be lost on them. Additionally, the engineering professors ask trying technical questions (as they should - it's your thesis defense), while the businessy guys propose horrible alternatives to your work. One management professor suggested transmitting hydro-produced electricity from southern-central Africa to Europe, nevermind the fact that you'd be building transmission lines trough countries with 2% electrification rates or that similar renewables programs in northern Africa are having trouble... Europe's demand for non-fossil derived fuels is more important.

 Each evening we had to stand beside the poster we had created for our Integrated Engineering Project (IEP) for two hours. This was poorly organized. No on knew who was evaluating us or how many profs were grading. On the last day, there were 17 posters and 1 professor who had to evaluate everyone's spiel, no one else was in the building, but we still had to stand attentively beside the poster on the off chance that someone walked by. We presented ours 2.5 hours into the session and there were several more to go after us. No one should have had to wait around for that long... my feet hurt so much, that I couldn't go out for the 4th of July.

Nevertheless, our project is pretty cool, we looked at a landfill in Mexico to see what the solid waste management practices were and what we could do about it. The results: barely existent and not much, but we have designed a fairly elegant solution. I'm just a little worried that we have expanded the scope too much and won't have a consistent level of quality in all of the aspects.

The most frequent question was "Why is it green?"

Some of my classmates organized an international dinner for the presenters and the jury members. It was fun to hang out with the older cohort after they were done presenting and soooo delicious. The first dish to disappear was the two Spanish tortillas (due to the large presence of professors from UPM?) followed closely by the homemade Mexican tortilla. Luckily the Mexican tortilla filling last much longer and I was able to create a baguette-taco. I made sweet potato-pecan couscous, an assortment of peanut butter and jelly/banana/honey sandwiches, and (eggless) chocolate chip cookie dough truffles. I stole the following photos form other social media sites:

Before

After

Dessert! Chocolate Cheese Cake, pineapple cups, apple crumble...

Concert and Dancing. (and lots of leftover baguettes)

I'm headed into a week with 8-16h classes every day + 5 exams and a field trip on one day! Yay Wednesday! Then the next week we have one more exam (that we know of, so far) and the final deadline for IEP with the paper, documentation and presentation of the semester long project due.  Then I'm (probably) off to the south of France for a few days before heading back to the States for 3ish+ weeks!

Baden-Württemberg + Paris

Hi. So, I haven't updated in a while because I was mostly just doing school work on campus. Leaving campus to go to the grocery store was a rare and extremely exciting event... I didn't think my musings on whether to buy bio applesauce or to spring for the pear-apple mix would be that interesting. My trusty readership has asked me for updates and I finally went on a little trip, so here ya go:

Last weekend I met up with a friend from highschool in Baden-Baden, Germany. This old resort town is known for its hot mineral springs with healing powers. We hiked part of the Panoramweg up to some cool castle ruins then back down through the city where we tasted the hot springs. 68C and very salty. I didn't really have any aliments that needed healing, but I (surprisingly) did not feel sore the next day.

First time in Deutschland as pork eater. 

Sunday, we headed to Freiburg where we checked out the cathedral, the Schlossberg park and its Aussichtsturm, and an organic  brewery. One thing that I really enjoy about crazy views like the one from the tower is that you get an idea of the energy situation of the area. We could see wind turbines, solar panels, and a biogas storage bubble.

Get out your 3D goggles- this was taken with the 3D panoramic setting on my camera... I don't think it worked. 

Afterwards, I  headed to Stuttgart to catch the night train to Paris. I spent my layover watching the England-Italy game and the Italian's celebration afterward was quite impressive. Driving around, waving flags and honking for over an hour. I can't imagine what their celebration was like when they defeated Germany a few days later. My favorite participant was the guy who just drove his Ferrari around: not honking or flag waving.

An uncomfortable train ride later, I woke up in Paris -- 3 hours after I expected to arrive. (There was one routing option where I could have changed trains in Metz and arrived at 7:30, but for some reason I opted to just stay on the same train). I got some breakfast, journeyed to the domestic train station to stash my stuff, and set off on foot to explore. I got a little disoriented (there is the Arc de Triomph and a smaller model of it in some park and my phone sent me to the miniature) and walking took much longer than I expected. I ate a a fancyish picnic lunch and took care of some business at the Swedish embassy (they have surprisingly little security).

Strawberry, mint, pepper ice cream.

I spent the rest of the afternoon chasing down the actual Arc, but didn't want to wait in a two hour line for a free ticket (I'll book online before I go next time) and catching random glances of la Tour Eiffel. I also hit up a grocery store with an american section and scored some bagels and soft baked cookies.

 

The trip reminded me just how awesome Germany is/can be (or maybe I was just glad to be outside of Nantes for a change). The jury is still out on Paris....

Just three weeks left in my semester and oh so much work left to be done. I'm giving a poster presentation on our semester-long project on Monday: "Analysis of a Municipal Solid Waste Landfill in Jalisco,

Mexico and Mitigation Strategies." (Yes, the title is a bit grammatically unsound, but our tutor insisted). I also need to arrange for my travel back to the US and around Europe for the summer. 

A+, cj

(that's short for à plus tard -- until later)