Definately getting my Masters post-undergrad.  That’s what everyone here has been recommending to me.  They also say that if I definately want to do research the PhD would be a good route.  Chris Hicks, a friend/coworker down here (the guy who takes me wakeboarding sometimes), mentioned Rolls Royce as a big company that does propulsion research.  They’re in international company, headquartered out of the United Kingdom (London?).  After briefly browsing their website, that would be a pretty cool place to work.  They have facilities here in the ‘States, but since they’re a company based overseas, that may provide an opportunity for travel to Europe.

In SNAME Redesign news… I’ve pulled the plug on development.  I had a talk with Adam about this.  For a little while now the redesign had felt like ORACLE (Online Research Advance Concerning Leadership Education, in other words the greatest acronymn EVAR!!).  Our sophomore year (of college) for our second year leadership project was to develop the class website.  Since I started my blog that year, there’s probably some interesting posts on it if you search.  Anyways, we built this page in flash that would replace Blackboard.  Students had profiles (like facebook) and there was a forum that would facilitate interaction between members.  That was the idea at least (sound familiar, cough, SNAME Redesign, cough).  Spring semester Steve’s (our advisor) leadership class actually used it, and it got decent reviews.  We were even in talks with a guy at the corporate research center…

(pause for work)

…to start our own company, and sell our website design.  When we got down to it though, something rubbed us the wrong way about the guy we were working with and we stopped.  Realistically I don’t think we would’ve made much from it.  From what we had, we needed more in order to have a viable product.  And we had plans for it, but there was a lot of stuff that we needed to learn before we could do anything.  I DEFINATELY couldn’t have done anything with it my Junior year.  That was by far my hardest year at tech.  Senior year will be hard but not as hard.  And now I’m also not double-majoring which makes things even easier.

Back to the redesign though… we were going the exact same route.  A bit earlier on in development… comparable to November of Sophomore year, but the exact same route, and I was making the exact same mistakes.  So now I’ve talked it over with Rob and I’m pulling the plug.  Instead, we’re going to make a presentation with a video and try to present to some SNAME people of what we think they should add to the website.  Whether or not they value our opinions is their problem.  It’s a matter of potential really.  With their current website there is very little potential for interaction between members.  Interaction between members adds important value to the organization.  It’s all about retention.

The presentation prep should be much easier for us to handle.  As I’ve said in the last few posts, next year is going to be a lot of work.

Oh, and read this FREE ebook:  http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/  It’s a pretty quick read, very thought provoking.  I’m gonna write a post about it later once I get a chance to talk with some other people about it.

From Work…