Week 2: Civco's Concerns/Solutions

This week started out a little slow.  Initially, I was unable to work on my project, as I had no new times to input.  So, I played around with the data and tried to rearrange things a little more logically.  I can connect this experience to my classroom though.  Sometimes my students finish their work early and then become a distraction.  Well now I understand why.  They need something to do- to be mentally stimulated, and I need to provide that for them.  Students become distractions or act out because a need is not being met.

Tuesday was a much better day.  I was able to get into the clean room and actually assemble and wrap some of the products.  This gave me a better understanding of what it takes to put the products together, as well as putting images to the words I've been reading.  Leslie, my externship supervisor, stopped by and visited with me and my Civco supervisor, Mike.  In previous conversations with Mike, I knew that he was very excited for me to get into a business, but was also anxious about what exactly I would be doing.  He wants the experience to be beneficial to Civco but also to be a great learning experience for me.  At the meeting, that concern was still there.  He was afraid that Civco was letting me down and wasn't providing me enough opportunities.  He then brought up some great additional projects that I could work on while there was downtime on my current project.  Now we just had to put some of those in motion.

Later in the week I consulted with another engineer on my time study project and received more times to input.  This meant that I had a lot to work on with my project.  I am finally getting comfortable interpreting the engineer drawings, even though I still ask lots of questions.  I also was able to start designing test sheets for a second project that I will be working on.  For this project, we will be testing the burst strength of brachy balloons.  Before we do that, I need to write the test form and data sheets.  The rest of the week I continued to work on the two projects.  It is great to be making progress in my original project, and I am excited to be able to do some quality testing, too.  Despite Mike's concerns about me not learning anything- he need not worry!  I am learning lots and am finding connections to take back to my classroom.