Well folks, I've got a week to go until my dissertation defense.
I'm not particularly excited or anxious, just tired and ready for it to be over. Unfortunately until then, I've got to polish my presentation, poke my co-authors into actually reviewing my final paper, and keep supervising my undergrads.
*sigh*
Hey Professors and Senior Researchers.
Please do invite your team out to lunch occasionally, and invite additional related students too, which helps floating students feel like a valued part of the community.
Also, please do not pick a buffet where it's $20 for lunch and you can't take leftover portions home.
#AcademicChatter #GradSchool #GradStudentDaily #Academia #Research
Haha!
I am unstoppable. I have access to my rocket payload 's CAD files, a powerful computer, and a resin 3D printer.
This, friends, is the Solar eruptioN Integral Field Spectrograph, also known as SNIFS. Also also known as my PhD work which I'll be defending in November.
It's approximately a 1:12 scale model of the payload, printed in resin.
#AerospaceEngineering #3Dprinting #GradStudentDaily #AcadenicChatter #science #engineering
Also, shout out to the integration engineers who are all long-time professionals in the field who respectfully looked to a grad student for approvals and decisions. I had observed one single integration and launch before that, and there I was telling them what was okay to do with the payload and when they could do it.
I'm absolutely sure I had no place being in that role, but they treated me like I was supposed to be there anyway. Thanks.
Hmm. How do I politely write that when we took our rocket down to WSMR for integration, I was the primary decision-maker and the person all the test engineers reported to for 7 of the 12 days we did integration?
Like, I'm writing my thesis and detailing what I did. Looking back, It's crazy that I, a grad student, was the primary point of contact for this $5mil mission and had to approve every time the 20-odd integration engineers I didn't know interacted with the payload.
#GradStudentDaily
It's my thesis and if I want to include a selfie of my teamates and I at dinner displaying an entire plate of limes which we have consumed, I can.
A thesis is for documenting and demonstrating all the important things a student has learned over the course of their PhD. I learned that between the three of us, we can easily consume 21 lime quarters at dinner. Scientific fact.
Oops. I forgot that I took my bowl home from work yesterday to clean, and didn't bring a replacement.
Guess I'm heating my dumplings in my coffee mug for lunch today
#GradStudentDaily
Nothing to look at here. All perfectly safe Ln2 handling.
Don't worry folks. We have 4.9 degrees between us. We know what we're doing
#AerospaceEngineering #GradStudentDaily #GradSchool
Oh god it's starting to be real
#PhD #GradStudentDaily #Graduation
Work: We really value grad student opinions in our new director search. Would you like to serve on the director search committee? It'll be about 60 hours of work during the fall semester.
Me: Cool. Is there funding to cover the students' time?
Work: ....
Work: This is a service position
Is there a phrase for when you're working well beyond your limits, so you stop to take care of yourself, but someone else is volunteering to work well past their limits to try and get that work done, and now you're just feeling bad no matter what?
If a PhD is a marathon and not a sprint, I just hit my kick last week (10 hour days, crunch time to get this rocket ready to fly).
With 2.5 weeks left to go, I now get to figure out if I kicked too early or if I can finish strong.
#running #PhDlife #AcademicChatter #GradStudentDaily #aerospace #aerospaceEngineering #rocketry #racing #marathon
Time for some cowboy modifications!
(Aka we get the Dremel/grinder out and tear that sucker up)
#GradStudentDaily #AerospaceEngineering #SoundingRocket #Rockets #Rocketry #NASA #LASP #CUBoulder #Engineering
Space burrito.
(Rocket payload bake-out for the weekend. We've got the heater tape on, the vacuum pump running, and a nice blanket of aluminum foil)
Ugh. Sometimes work is stressful. We're baking out our rocket to clean the inside and we've got an expensive camera inside. I checked on it and it said 180 degrees, which I was sure was too hot (thinking in Celsius). Freaked out a lot because that's way over the camera's recommended limits but I can't open it and check.
Thinking more on it, I think I'm good. I touched the outside and didn't burn myself. Whew probably not 180 C. 180 F (80 C) much better.
#GradStudentDaily
Hey folks, guess what.
ROCKET PAYLOAD STUFF!
#GradStudentDaily #Aerospace #Rocketry #AerospaceEngineering
Want to see the inside of a mirror grating? Well here it is!
This is a UV reflection grating that's been bonded into its mount. The mirrored surface is facing away from us.
We can see dark circles where the epoxy is attached to the glass, one on each edge. Notice the bottom one is round and dark and even. We like that. Now notice the one on the far wall from us. It looks like it has a star pattern. That's an air bubble and that's bad. That bond is weaker than the others
#GradStudentDaily
How do you make round pegs fit into slightly smaller round holes? Liquid nitrogen! (And a hammer)
I'm currently at the #SHINE23 conference to talk about studying the #Sun.
Today is student day, and its pretty cool to be interacting with 84 people who may be my colleagues for the rest of my career.
#AcademicChatter #SolarPhysics #Heliophysics #GradSchool #GradStudentDaily #Student
Ugh. I knew I was overworked, but I wasnt aware how much.
Other #SoundingRocket projects generally have a collection of part time professional engineers (electrical, mechanical, thermal, etc) and also have senior and junior grad students, a PI who's there 40% of the time, and a fleet of undergrads. This is normal for a rocket reflight. (10x easier than from scratch)
I have the normal professional engineers, me, a PI who's there 20% of the time, and 2 undergrads.
From scratch.
