One of my best friends since middle school, Jake, is one of the top senior mechanical engineering students on campus. To learn more about the Engineering and IT cluster, I decided to interview him about the resources he used, why he chose to be an engineer, and his plans for the future. Below is an interview with (in my opinion), the ideal student on campus:
Q: Why did you choose this area of engineering? Why did you want to be an engineer?
A: “Oh ok, well I always loved math and physics. Engineering is just applied math and physics. I came in first as a biomedical engineer because I wanted to help people, but chemistry was not right for me. I switched to mechanical because I realized helping people is a vague umbrella, everything is engineered, cars buildings, etc. Everything around us is helping our lives, and I can go so many different directions in my field from government to space, to just building fun things.”
Q: What organizations have helped you the most on campus?
A: “Definitely the engineering design division, I UCA for them. In order to fully understand material you have to be able to teach it. I’ve always been passionate about teaching, but engineering is more suited for me. To be able to help freshmen coming into college and give advice that I didn’t necessarily have during Binghamton in 2020 is a rewarding experience. There wasn’t much conversation between upperclassmen and clubs were not looking for freshmen, so it was difficult to get involved back then. I want to encourage people to get out of their shells like I did by joining these clubs. UCA stands for undergraduate course assistant by the way, and I get paid in credits (3) because I am doing a project on top of the UCA work. I am a part of the Mars rover team, (the drive subteam), currently working on redesigning the Rocker Bogie Suspension system. I am a part of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering- a club on campus where I was the team lead in the battle RC car competition last year, and ended up winning. I am also in the Tau Beta Pi honor society, a group of the top 12% cross-discipline engineers.”
Q: What was the most challenging analytic project you’ve ever faced?
A: “Probably my junior design project, but it wasn’t the engineering that was the hard part. It was choosing what to analyze. We needed to pick something that we could perform some sort of analysis on, and the requirements were difficult. I had to be responsible for my own time management throughout the whole semester without any hard deadlines, and the paper ended up being 53 pages. Still got an A though!”
Q: What classes have been your favorite at Binghamton and why?
A: “There’s an engineering class called Vibrations with an awesome professor and great material to learn about. In regard to nonengineering courses, I loved Race, Crime, Fiction, and Film, it was nice to read for a class instead of for leisure since my courses are mainly focused on math and physics.”
Q: Favorite Study spot on campus?
A: “The Knoll-Macdonald Engineer Commons is definitely where I am the most. That or the top floor of Bartle.”
Q: Midterms are coming up. What is the best way to prepare for an engineering exam?
A: “Probably just redoing practice problems and studying in a group setting because like I said you have to be able to teach something to be able to do it. Spend plenty of time before the exam looking over the material. You need a network of people and I have a great one, sometimes some people know how to do something and I don’t; it is useful to study with others and learn their approaches”.
For those interested in engineering, you should have the mindset of Jake. He is dedicated, has made great connections, achieved internship positions, and still has had great semesters. You can find further resources to benefit your engineering career at the Fleishman Center’s career cluster page!
