Ben's Blog

I just finished writing my last exam! I’m free! I’m very confident I passed all my courses, so it looks like have now finished my undergrad degree! Now I just have the Formula Hybrid project to finish (competition is the first week of May) and convocation in May and I’ll be done all my university obligations! Right now that still seems a bit crazy, but I’m looking forward to the “real world.”

Despite the fact that I have apparently been posting on average about once a week for the past little while, I feel like I have been ignoring this blog a bit. As I am approaching graduation, things have been getting a bit crazy and so that influx of activity is likely the culprit. Here is a quick run down of what has been going on.

Over the past month I was doing some serious job hunting. After sending out a bunch of applications to a bunch of places and nervously waiting for responses, I ended up having 6 job interviews and 7 job offers (two offers came from people I asked to be professional references). I have taken a job at Iders Incorporated and look forward to starting full time in mid April. (A side note to those doing job hunting: NETWORK! I always thought it was load of garbage, but all my interviews except for one came from friends or networking events I went to. The one interviewer I went to where there was no network connection was the only place that turned me down.)

Having acquired a job outside the city, I sadly decided I needed to buy a car (I was hoping to stick with biking and busing, but this job just was too interesting to pass up) and ended up getting an ’04 Civic, manual transmission. I picked it up tonight and started learning the ropes. It isn’t too bad once you know what you are doing wrong. 😛

Speaking of cars, the UMSAE Formula Hybrid competition is quickly coming up in the first week of May and so lots of work needs to go into that project. There have been a number of changes made to the CAN controller design due to changing requirements, but the hardware modifications should be minimal. I was starting to add a bunch of software implementations of the Arduino’s hardware features (ie serial, PWM) which was taking up timers and not performing spectacularly, so I am switching over to a spare Seeeduino Mega we had sitting around which has plenty of hardware to spare.

And with school comes graduation. I already mentioned the Iron Ring ceremony, but I also have my grad dinner tomorrow and just one more week of classes followed by one week of final exams before I start working full time.

This additional income is now proving a necessity as Amara and I have started looking for a place to live once we get married this summer. Going to banks and open houses and comparing renting and buying is just another item on the table right now.

Marriage, graduation, car ownership (and relearning how to drive), full time employment, competitions. So many big life things all at once. It’s crazy, but I’m hanging on and doing my best to enjoy all of it.