Student Preview was last weekend and when you actually sit down and think about it, this past year seems so unreal. I cannot believe that exactly one year ago myself along with the freshman class were in the same boat as these seniors in high school who were touring our campus. Keeping busy all year with school, flight, work, and extracurricular activities I didn’t realize how fast time was flying until these last couple weeks when everybody began planning out their summers.  Classes end in a week and one day, leaving us left with finals week. After finals week school is out for summer and everybody is going to be having the time of their life . I will be staying here working almost full time on the Embry Riddle Jet Dragster. I will also be taking summer classes and finishing up my instrument rating. I am not too worried about staying here because it seems like there will be plenty of people staying, also we will have a house by then so not living on campus will be nice. Well anyways study hard and good luck to everybody with finals, hang in there and do not let those grades drop this last week!

Preview Day is Saturday and I am excited! I remember coming to Preview day when I got accepted to Embry-Riddle. I woke early and drove the one and a half hour drive from Phoenix to Prescott with my mom, feeling anxious and excited the entire drive. The day was busy, but tons of fun. I went to many presentations about my major, ate lunch with current students, and even took a picture with Ernie the Eagle. The fact that ERAU is a small school that is very focused within every degree program sold me. Though sometimes I wish Embry-Riddle was bigger, I think it is cool that I can recognize everyone I pass by and that my professors know me by name. I especially love how much my professors care about each student. I transferred from community college and I never felt so inspired to do my best like I do at Embry-Riddle. I know it sound cheesy and that I am exaggerating when I talk about how much I love my school, but I truly do. I was nervous when I first arrived at Riddle, but the friendly and approachable staff and students made me feel at home right away and I knew I had made the right choice with Embry-Riddle. I truly hope many of you who visit the 16th will feel the same way.

P.S.

I was lucky enough to be alble to attend ERAU’ s Army ROTC Military Ball last weekend and had a blast. Here are a couple pictures.

Can’t forget the snowstorm! Here is a picture of the upperclassmen dorms covered in snow by my talented friend David Bretón.

Spring 2010 Graduation on Lower Field - not a cloud in the sky.

Engineering Students prepare to walk across the stage during the Spring 2010 Graduation Ceremony

Several of my friends from different clubs and organizations on campus graduated within the last year and I stayed on campus for three ceremonies.

All students graduate from the university in the same ceremony, including master’s students, and students who come to the Prescott Campus to celebrate their graduation from the World-Wide campus.  This is something that I really like about the Embry-Riddle graduation, because I’ve heard from friends at different universities who went to separate graduation ceremonies by college, and didn’t get to see their friends in other degree programs walk.

The graduates are called up by college.  The only difference in the undergraduate’s graduation garb, other than the different awards that graduates wear, is the color of the tassel.  The robes are all black, and the engineering tassel is orange.

I went to a high school with 2,500 students, and my graduation ceremony was huge.  I’ve met students on campus who graduated with over 2,000 students just in their class.  The Embry-Riddle graduating class is rather small because students can graduate in either the spring or the fall and the number of students at the school is relatively small.  In my opinion, this results in a much more enjoyable graduation experience for the audience member.

The two semester ceremonies are fairly different. So far Embry-Riddle’s Prescott Campus has not limited the number of guests you can bring to graduation.   Since the number of people who graduate in the Fall is significantly smaller than the number who graduate in the Spring, that Fall graduation ceremony is held in the Activity Center on campus.  The Spring semester is held on the sports fields. 

Both graduation ceremony locations have advantages.  During the fall commencement ceremony, your view from the top of the bleachers is looking down at the graduates, which is great for taking pictures from wherever you are sitting. It is also indoors, so you don’t have to worry about the weather, bugs, wind, or wearing sun block.

On the other hand the outdoor graduation is beautiful.  There are very few days during the year that Prescott isn’t sunny.  One of the other advantages of an outdoor graduation is the opportunity for former Embry-Riddle students to perform flyovers. There are plenty of places for your family to congregate afterwards for pictures, and there are several places where you can move up to take pictures of people as they walk across the stage.

It was bittersweet to see some of my friends graduate.  On the one hand I was excited for them to start their new jobs in new places with good paychecks and huge opportunities before them.  On the other hand, it was kind of an end of an era of hanging out with those friends.  Going to graduation gave me a good idea of what to expect for my own graduation, and I truly can’t wait. Another good group of friends will be graduating with me and I expect that my own graduation will be really fun. May 7, 2011, here I come!

So I had the great chance of flying the full motion A320 sim at U.S. airways this past weekend! I got home at 5:30am on Monday morning so I am still really tired and I have a flight here pretty soon. Still am safe enough to fly so no worries about that. Anyways, the sim was stressful! Fun but really stressful. We had to deal with emergencies, approaches, and hand flying that really big sim all while trying to be a team. It was really hard and at one point I though I was going to fail. I ended up getting a 90% on the sim so I must have done something right. I cannot wait to fly the real jetliners with a real airline. I’m putting up a video. It’s not the best but enjoy! Anyways, time for a flight so TTYL!

A320 Sim

Military Ball:

Last night on the 8th the Eagle Company of Army ROTC here at ERAU held its Military Ball at some Prescott casino. We had been hearing about this Ball coming up for awhile so our Company Commander Cadet Welch had to get lots of information out to us and pretty much had to organize the whole thing so that it would be a success, which it was. I asked my friends Lindsey and Rachel from ASU to come up and accompany me and my roommate Joshua to the ball and we all went together. The girls came here and we all got dressed up ready to go (I had previously had a minor crisis in finding a proper black jacket to go with my getup and thanks to my friend Jake I managed to find one and not appear like a fool) and we drove there in Joshua’s truck. The first few minutes were strange because I had never seen so many girls in the same place in Prescott (they were all dressed up too so it made it easier to identify them as girls). We got in line and mingled a bit and it was fun introducing Rachel and Lindsey to all my Army friends here. They even got to meet some of the cadre and I’ll admit that was a bit strange because I never imagined friends from back home crossing paths with someone as influential as the cadre.

By some act of God the four of us got seated together with possible the best table there and the ceremony started. Dinner eventually came along and the entire time I was just talking to two of the most favored MS-IVs and joking around with everyone as we ate our steak and salmon. Salmon was delicious, I ate fish because it was a Friday during Lent and it was not some cheap salmon that casinos serve, it was actually very good. The raspberry tart thing they gave us for dessert was amazing, here’s a picture of it, all the desserts were amazing as they were possibly the most important part of the evening! Dinner concluded and then dancing started for everyone because after all it was a ball. I’m not the best dancer and of course didn’t spend too much time on the dance floor. We went back after that and some of my roommates wanted to watch some movie. I figured that was too boring so I decided to take the girls over to our other friends’ room where we had a few exciting expeditions during the night. We played indoor Capture the Flag, went on an ice cream run, watched Night and Day and had some more mini-adventures while it snowed outside.

SNOW

Great, now we have a PT test on Monday and it is going to be freezing!! The girls left this morning and I went out to buy a bunch of stuff in preparation for Mark’s wedding in a month. There is still snow everywhere and the JFTX is coming up but at least we’ll be in Fort Huachuca this time instead of the frozen tundra known as Fort Navajo in Flagstaff.

Some pictures from the Military Ball:

Spring Break happened awhile ago but I forgot to write about it! So much has happened lately and it seems as if every class demands some sort of group project. Ok, group projects….this blog is no such place for me to rant and rave about how group projects are the ironic failures of society because it is material deemed inappropriate. But in a nutshell, I am usually that one person who does all the work for the group while the majority of the others are stupid and do not contribute or lack any initiative to become part of the group, especially when it is too late.  I am working on two group projects right now and am frustrated to the point that I will play Chess against the computer. I used to be so good but now I lose all the time!

Anyway, Spring Break was a much needed vacation from here because I really needed to get away from all the homework and Army stuff, even there is never getting away from the Army! I went back to Tucson and immediately saw my friend Brandon that first night. I cannot remember every detail of break because I was lazy in blogging but I was able to see my friends Bobby and Therese on one of the mornings, went to dinner with Julie and Emily, lunch with Julia, caving with Michael, Brandon and Megan and a whole bunch of activities with people whose names none of you know. It was a lot of fun and a really good way to relax before coming back up here to study and work for the rest of the year. I love spending time with my family and being home just beats any vacation that I could wish for. I found out that my brother Michael is going to France to spend his Rotary Youth Exchange year abroad and I am so proud of him! I went to Germany with the same program four years ago and cannot wait for him to come back speaking fluent French. I just hope that he gets a good host family this time.

Parent’s Day was last Friday/Saturday in which Embry-Riddle invites all parents of ERAU students to come and visit here. My Mom and brother James came up on Saturday to see me although we didn’t partake in any Parents Day activities like we were supposed to. I showed them where I lived, my future roommates for next year and then took them out to lunch with my roommate Joshua. We went to Zeke’s and for those who know it, was delicious beyond their dreams and we were stuffed for the rest of the day. Afterwards they checked out the bookstore and went shopping for food and such before I had to say goodbye and they went home. My Mom loves going to outlets on the ride home so the usual 3 1/2 hour drive back to Tucson was some 6 hours because of Mom’s shopping! Poor James! I like it when she does that though because I know I’ll always remember it when I am not at ERAU anymore.

Embry-Riddle has been bustling with activity since I got back from Spring Break, which will have its own blog soon, and I have never been this busy! Analysis reports, personality profiles of spies and social psychological case studies have me running all over the place trying to complete all this work before the Army commitments take me over. On that note, The Army has been demanding a lot of the cadets lately in preparation for the Spring 2011 JTFX (Joint Field Training Exercise). For those that don’t know, every school in Arizona sends its ROTC units to work together during this JFTX which lasts a few days at some base of military operations. This year it is taking place at Ft. Hauchuca in Cochise Country near Tucson! Last years JFTX was at Ft. Navajo and we all froze the entire time! The unit here can only take a few MSII’s, sophomore cadets, due to lack of space. I fortunately was one of the ones that is assigned to go in my class although this means that a lot of work and commitment is required even of us sophomores in order to make this learning experience worth our time and worth the Army’s time.

Some more good Army news is that I was fortunate enough to get offered some Army school slots this upcoming summer. Only a fool would turn down any of these amazing opportunities and I got to pick between Airborne, Northern Warfare and an attempt at seizing a Combat Diver Scuba Slot. I picked the Northern Warfare slot but a lot of commitment and physical and mental training comes as a prerequisite in order to pass the school. It happens this summer in Alaska from July 31th – August 18th and it is going to be freezing up there even in the summer! I will probably turn into either an ice cube or lose my permanent Hispanic tan by the time I get back. I am excited but if I said I wasn’t nervous then I would be lying because I most definitely am! I know that I can do it but I have to prove myself now through physical conditioning so that I can be prepared instead of some cornfused cadet with the “deer in the headlights” approach to everything I will be presented with.

The Army’s Military Ball is happening this Friday and I am excited because I invited my friends Rachel and Lindsey to come up from ASU to be my dates to the ball! It is going to be fun and my friends Joshua and Emily had to get all dressed up today for inspections so that nothing we wear is entirely inappropriate. I mean, please, this is a professional environment. I am really looking forward to living with these two next year because they are great friends and I know that we will get along great.

Joshua, Emily, Steven

Professor Helbling places the ring of the Order of the Engineer on Joshua Martinez's, a Spring 2010 Aerospace Engineering graduate, pinky finger while Dr. Madler, Dean of the College of Engineering watches during the Spring 2010 Order of the Engineer Ceremony at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Prescott Campus.

Engineering students have the opportunity to take the Oath of the Order of the Engineer just before graduation.  The Order of the Engineer is essentially a group that values ethical engineering practices by vowing to always do what’s right even if it means that you might lose your job.  I just signed up to participate in this year’s ceremony.

There are several instances of major engineering failures over the past few decades that could have been prevented if engineers had voiced their concerns rather than allowed themselves to be pressured by deadlines and company profits.   During your EGR 101 class’s engineering ethics unit, you will learn much more detail about these events through case studies.

I like to see the Order of the Engineer as a group of people who have taken an oath to use their powers for good rather than evil. After I learned about the group, I began to notice that several of my professors wore the ring of the Order.

Every semester before graduation, an Order of the Engineer ceremony is held for all graduating students interested in joining the order.  I went last spring to support one of my close friends.  

The ceremony takes place in the executive conference room on the top floor of the Academic Building. The room has large windows lining each of the walls with breathtaking views of Granite Mountain, Willow Lake, and the Granite Dells.

During the ceremony the history of the Order of the Engineer is shared with the graduates and their families and friends before the graduates say their oaths. The tradition originally started in Canada and has since expanded into the United States. In the U.S. those who choose to take the oath of the Order of the Engineer receive stainless steel rings that they wear on the pinky finger of their dominant hand.  The purpose for this tradition is that every time an engineer goes to sign a document, they will hear the clink of their ring on the table, which will remind them of their ethical responsibility and the oath that they took.

The entire group of new inductees says the oath together, and then each person walks up to the front of the room individually, places their hand through a large ring, has their ring placed on their pinky finger by one of our professors. Finally, the new member signs their Order of the Engineer certificate, hearing the clink of their ring for the first time.

The students I knew taking the oath last spring took their responsibility very seriously and were very proud to walk out of the ceremony with their rings, tapping it on every surface they can for the next few days.

The ceremony was beautiful and the tradition is one that I am excited to become a part of when I graduate this spring.