Introduction to the Life of Julie Chase, Engineering Student (Probably)

Hello dear readers, and welcome to my blog.

My name is Julie Chase and, while I come from foggy Santa Cruz, CA, I am now a sophomore at Wellesley College in MA, a place where seasons actually exist. I am currently a neuroscience major and further plan on pursuing a Certificate in Engineering Studies from Olin College of Engineering or possibly participating in the Olin-Wellesley 4+1 Program. To this end, I am taking Wellesley College's ENGR 160: Fundamentals of Engineering, which serves as a gateway course to all of the Olin-Wellesley cross-registration engineering courses. Last year I took the first-year seminar ENGR 111: Product Creation for All, and discovered my interest in engineering. I guess my hobby of designing and building structures and products before my time at Wellesley should have been a clue to me that engineering was in my future, but apparently recognizing things that are right under my nose is not one of my talents.

I've decided that taking ENGR 160 will help me to better determine if engineering is something that I really want to continue pursuing and, if so, which specializations I should consider.Furthermore, I think that studying engineering is actually quite helpful even if I end up working primarily in other scientific disciplines, as I suspect will happen. Engineering is basically the application of scientific knowledge, which makes it invaluable to consider when deciding research topics and goals, and then again when interpreting the results of studies or experiments. Without considering the application of their discoveries, scientific researchers are seriously limiting themselves in terms of how their information is then used. I'm not saying that all scientists should follow a project from experiment to discovery to application to revision and on, but it is helpful if everyone involved along the way knows the basics of what happened and why at other stages. This would allow a research and development team to work together as a far more cohesive unit and thus produce far superior results.

Outside of taking far too many science courses in multiple disciplines and analyzing their various intersections, I also enjoy studying Spanish, music (I'm a classically trained singer), and theater (when I have time). I'm a member of the Wellesley College Choir, multiple activist organizations on the Wellesley campus, and an emergency medical services club (again, when I have time). Last year I also participated in WCircus, the Wellesley College circus club, which is currently on hiatus, and so I know how to juggle and do basic solo and partner acrobatics.

While I did have to run a blog for my ENGR 111 class last year, it has been a while, so I'm hoping that I'll remember relatively quickly how to balance the informal, conversational style of a typical blog and the academic style required by the more technical information that will be discussed on this particular blog.

Well, that's all for now. My next blog post should be covering designing, testing, and revising 2D bottle openers. See you next time for some actual science!