Floating Away (12/7-12/13)

A large proportion of my worries disappeared after the submission of my original work. To be honest, I felt a lot more stressed about the Set-Up and Completion Log rather than the Original Work itself. As soon as I had heard that we would need to turn in a log of our work alongside the final result, I knew that I would have to put in more effort than was required on the assignment. As an aspiring engineer, I am well aware that attention to detail while recording the progress of work is an indispensable part of what may comprise my future career, which is why I put a virtually identical quality of work into the log itself as I did into my original work. While the reward resulting from my decision is almost negligible as of now, I am certain that it will pay off later as I am further educated in the various responsibilities of an aerospace engineer in college and will serve as a valuable addition to my portfolio. Speaking of the future, the deadline for mentor selection is rapidly approaching. After having thirteen research interviews with professionals from all over the world and from nearly every subdiscipline of astronautical engineering, I have a wide array of options in terms of potential mentors. Despite being an individual who occasionally enjoys being efficient in my work, I poured a large degree of effort into finding individuals that specialized in spacecraft design and were willing to meet with me. Although I initially was only able to contact aerospace engineers from disciplines that were far out of my interests, the interviews I had with them expanded my closed mindset about future career paths I could walk down in the future. While I managed to reform my search methods after thinking about confirming my interests in spacecraft design, I still found that a large majority of individuals in the field were largely removed from the public (in terms of contact), making me wonder what extent of the space sector remains confidential. In my research thus far, I have found that detailed information is rather unavailable even on the Internet and in specific databases, and from my interviews I have learned that the confidentiality is largely due to the fact that space is such a new and developing field. Going back to the subject of mentor selection, I have already sent an email to my first pick for a mentor. Now it is a matter of waiting and hoping that some professional will be willing to offer me their time and experience and make my experience in the Independent Study and Mentorship program phenomenal.