the air

2007 has been another remarkable year for me. To put it frankly, the following milestones are what label 2007 a great year:

• A perfect semester: 4.0 semester GPA
• Caterpillar senior design project
• Elgin Industries internship
• Published paper

There’s nothing more gratifying than seeing straight A’s on your report card. If you aren’t already aware, there is nothing superior to earning a 4.0 GPA in a semester. However, the challenge now is, can I do this again? Since the spring semester of 2006, my GPA has been on the rise. It started out from a 3.71 and here I am, on top of my game. Here’s the secret to my success: it’s really not that hard. You just have to be willing to sacrifice some things for the greater good.

Senior design is considered the final hurdle before graduation. Due to my plan of study, I took senior design a semester early, but next semester, I have pretty laid back courses. Senior design is like an unpaid internship that is graded. From my experience, it is relatively difficult to earn a grade lower than an A.

An internship with Elgin Industries was definitely a high point for me. It came on the heels of attending the national IIE conference. I learned a great deal of what exactly industrial engineers do in a small company and the fact that I really need to move out of the Illinois region. What I really need is to move to a larger company in a warmer climate. Here’s hoping for 2008.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of mine is getting a research paper published at the national level. I got the opportunity to present a paper at IERC2007 in Nashville, TN and learn about other interesting research projects that graduate students as well companies are pursuing.

I don’t want to sound as if 2007 is going to be the only year for me. That’s why, I’ll go ahead and keep this recap short and sweet. Here’s to another great year!

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I can’t believe it, but we are past the halfway mark for 2007. It feels as if the year just started a couple days ago. I hope that this year is progressing well for everyone. I am actually very pleased as to how productive and beneficial this year is turning out for me. However, this post is about the month of June and not really the entire year thus far. June has been a pivotal month for me. It marks my return to blogging “normally” and securing an internship. For the most part, these two events put together have really transformed my life and are continuing to play positive roles.

Blogging On Up

Two key things have happened on my blog since my return to normal blogging at the start of the month. For starters, I have seen an increase in traffic to my blog, which is a very good sign. Secondly, my blog’s layout/theme has changed drastically. In my opinion, the new looks is far more aesthetically pleasing than my old MistyLook theme. Much of the new traffic can be credited to the fact that I am writing more and my participation in a few Blog Carnivals. Earlier this month, Jane May had written about blog carnivals and I decided to try it out. Lo and behold, my blog enjoyed great traffic for some of the posts I had submitted and evidence suggests that my reader base has increased.

Internship and Life

Since receiving an internship, my summer plans have changed quite a bit. Rather than taking summer school and spending some quality time reading, I am spending more time working and have little time for myself. I still plan on accomplishing my reading goals, but it appears that my GRE plans will have to be shelved for some time. This internship is definitely a major plus because I now have relevant work experience in my field of study which should help me land better jobs and internships in the future. Since I am making money, it is safe to say that I am going to have a far more comfortable summer now. At least I can now go out and buy the things I have been wanting for some time and follow Jennifer’s message of opening an online savings account.

Things to Do

I still have problems trying to encourage more people to write comments on my blog, but that is an area that I want to research and see if I can improve it. I think I’ll be spending a significant amount of time trying to improve my blog’s overall look as well. Although I have not monetized my blog, it is my personal goal to keep improving this blog in any way I can. That is one of the reasons why I am always evaluating my blog and entertaining suggestions from everyone. So go ahead and let your thoughts flow into my blog. Tell me what you like or don’t like. If you don’t want me to blog, go ahead and say that, but be sure to tell my why. Don’t be shy

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Summer is now officially in full swing for me now that the month of May is over. This summer is definitely going to be a busy one. As of now, my summer will circle around taking summer school, studying for the GRE’s, doing my USOAR research, and random errands. In between all those mundane activities, I plan on reading some fantastic books. As I mentioned earlier, it is my hope to read more books by Paulo Coelho and enhance my own perspectives on life.

May/Spring Semester Reflection

I’ll keep this part short. The month of May was a rather fun month since I was able to return to my blogging and attending IERC2007 in Nashville, TN. Perhaps the biggest problem with May has been my slow return to “normal” blogging. If you have been keeping up with The Air, you will notice that in the previous months, I was able to maintain a post per day average. However, due to certain events in April, I had to move away from blogging and focus on my classes. Now that all those headaches are gone, I can resume my normal blogging and it is my hope that during the month of June, I can maintain a post-per-day average. Overall, the semester has gone extremely well since I was able to exceed my own expectations and improve my overall GPA.

Road Ahead

I’ve already mentioned what my plans are for summer, but I am also eager to kick off my last year as an undergraduate student in engineering. This last year, I will be the President of IIE, NIU Chapter so that in itself should be a rewarding experience. In addition, I will be taking senior design, which is generally considered the final course a student needs prior to graduation. Senior design is basically a semester-long project that entails cooperation with a company and your advisors. You essentially have to solve a real-world problem with your team and present the results to the company at the end. The reason why I have to stay longer at NIU is because of general education requirements, which I will complete by the end of Spring 2008 and will also begin my grad-level courses in January of 2008. Overall, I am expecting an exciting school year that I will think about once August rolls around.

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March has been quite an interesting month for me. Not only was it filled with some surprising moments, it also marked somewhat of a downturn in my blog. Much of the shortcomings for this month can be attributed to the fact that I became extremely busy with my school work and I could not afford to spare precious moments to write on this blog. I think it is significantly better to write quality posts rather than maintain a post-per-day that has absolutely no quality to it. To offset the possibility of losing all the readers, I decided to run a contest as well. Although there are some things that I wish I did a bit differently, everything about this month has been quite successful and I’m very thankful for that.

Failed Goal

I did not successfully accomplish my goal of having at least one post per day. Although I did average a little more than one post per day, I was unable to write daily. Throughout this blog, you will notice that I strongly emphasize the fact that every successful blogger should have at least one fresh post per day or maintain some sort of consistency. I chose my consistent platform to be one post per day. The biggest obstacle I have had in the past couple of weeks has been the amount of increasing work due to courses. I have so many projects due and meetings that sometimes, I have no choice but to start sacrificing tasks which are not essential to school. Even in the days ahead, I am looking at significant problems due to school and there is a strong likelihood that I will have no choice but to miss days writing posts.

March Contest

This is by far one of the most important highlights of the month regarding this blog. I started this contest as a way to not only alleviate the burden of writing daily, but also a way to increase traffic. All in all, it was a successful contest because I was able to increase the amount of readers and it taught me to have a bit of a thicker skin. Apparently, there were a few folks who thought my contest was a way of “trying too hard” to gain readership. It was even suggested that I run a contest once my blog is more popular. My only answer to that point is the fact that it does not matter when I run my contest. I’m not here to simply bribe people. Rather, it was my hope to create more awareness about my blog and it worked. Those who criticized my move were aware of my site and came to visit. In my opinion, my goal was accomplished and there is a lucky winner. I decided to give someone a gift certificate from Amazon because I feel they have some good deals and free shipping. Essentially, the winner of the contest can buy something and not pay a single penny for shipping. Overall, I am pleased and a huge thank you to Jennifer Lynn over at BrokeAss-Student for advertising my contest.

Blog Improvements

I also spent some time this month improving certain areas of The Air. Most importantly, I revamped the layout of the Must Reads section, which is now known as The World of Air. I realized that the older layout was simply too congested and did not present the material in a pleasing way. I also added a module to the sidebar known as The Air Club, which will basically link some of the best articles I feel I have written. Although the World of Air also has similar content, I think The Air Club will also be used to highlight posts of special interest. Generally speaking, I’m not quite sure where The Air Club will evolve into, but I am willing to try new things and see where they lead to.

New Technology

For the first time, I got a chance to try out both Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Live Writer. Both applications (Word 2007 in the Office Suite) allow me to publish directly to my blog without the need to login to my blog and type away. The advantage to this is the fact that I can write several posts in advance and save them for later, all on my computer. I don’t think either application will completely replace the need to login to my blog since there are tons more administrative features on my blog that I cannot control through another application. I think using Word 2007 to publish my posts is a great idea since it checks spelling and grammar at the same time, unlike Windows Live Writer. I realize that although I am using Word 2007/Windows Live Writer, I am still unable to write daily. However, the spare moments that I do have, I do write partial posts and as soon as I complete them, I publish them.

Flights

The past two months have shown me great things about myself and this blog. I was able to win two scholarships, one for independent research and the other for academic merit. I am very pleased with the progress I have made academically and I thank everyone for playing a role in my success. You may not believe it, but you too have contributed to my success by just visiting my blog and encouraging (directly or indirectly) to continue writing and never giving up. As April swings into full motion, it is my hope to be able to post daily and see how things progress. I think some of my new goals for this blog will be to increase the number of readers, start moving up on the Technorati scale, and try to find ways so that there is more lively discussion in the comments section. I think I have a few ideas of how to go about doing so and I cannot wait to see how the month of April unfolds.

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The month of February was definitely much more event oriented than January. A quick look through the archives and you can easily see that there were some great moments throughout the month. February marked the month in which my revered Chicago Bears lost to the Indianapolis Colts in Superbowl XLI (41). It also was the month in which I wrote a bit more about my blog in general. I wrote about the different plugins I use and some new additions. This was also the month in which I also implemented a Creative Commons License to all my posts and the entire blog. I guess the main reason why I did this is so that people would be kind enough to credit my writings whenever they used it. At least that is my hope. I think the highlight of this month was my branching out to different areas. I finally got around to writing about politics, even though I am still shying away from writing too much about political events. In addition, I also updated the categories I am using and updating them as more and more people offer ideas and suggestions.

On a personal level, I was able to attend a couple job fairs and pass my resume around. I’m not sure why, but I still am not willing to post my resume online just yet. I’ve also had the opportunity to assist Jennifer in her move from TypePad to a WordPress powered blog and I found that to be a refreshing experience. However, for the most part, this month was busy for me both online and offline. I also had to deal with futile server issues, which still persist today sporadically.

I’m really pleased with my progress both academically and with this blog. I look forward to the different challenges that lay ahead and the educational opportunities that will come attached.

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