Moving Faster

At this point in ISM, things are starting to move much faster than they have been previously. Just this week alone, we had an Interview Assessment, Research Assessment, and Topic Proposal due, and I'm finally realizing just how valuable time management can be for this class. We were given a lot of time to work on our assignments in class, so I continued contacting more professionals and updated both my blog and portfolio to include all my latest research. Also, I had two more research interviews this week, and they went really well! The first was with an instructor at UT Southwestern and the second was with a professor at UT Dallas, and through these interviews, I was able to really focus my questions on the specific aspects of biomedical engineering that I'm interested in, which are prosthetics and tissue engineering. At UT Southwestern, I was given a tour of the labs and saw different components within the process of creating prosthetics and orthotics, and I was amazed by just how complex and multi-stepped this process actually is! There are so many types of foot attachments, which are chosen depending on the patient and his activity level/needs, and the tour opened my eyes to the working environment and tasks of a prosthetics engineer. At UT Dallas, I learned the importance of undergraduate research in helping narrow down your specific topic of interest within the broader field of biomedical engineering, so I'm definitely going to take part in this valuable experience as early as I possibly can! This upcoming week, I will write another Research Assessment and Interview Assessment and brainstorm possible ideas for my Original Work.