Hello everyone! Sorry I have been MIA lately; senior year has been overwhelming. I’m almost at the two month mark, and to be honest, I can’t believe it. The fact that I’ll be graduating in a few months is hard to digest, because I feel like it was only months ago that I was trying to navigate through the tunnel system or go around chasing groundhogs. But, like any other year, my senior year has started off with a blast and sure seems like an adventure. Here are some things that make senior year different from my last three years at Rochester:
1. I’m living in Riverview
If you have heard a bunch of upperclassmen rave about how amazing Brooks and Riverview are, trust me, they are not lying. Besides having my own room and bathroom, my suite-mates and I have a full-sized kitchen (with a dish washer, fridge, stove, and microwave). I’ve been doing real-people cooking lately (which means no Ramen or PB&Js), and I am super happy with that decision. Also, the dishwasher helps! If you’re like me and have always disliked washing dishes, pray to the Housing Lottery Gods and shoot for a dorm across the river…
The one and only con of Riverview (at least for me) is the distance. A lot of my classes tend to be on the Hajim Science and Engineering Quad, so it ends up being a 15- to 20-minute walk. Once again, if you’re like me and are great at blocking off your Linkin Park alarm clock, this may pose a slight problem. I feel like I’ve been late to class more so than past semesters, so now I’m trying to find some new heavy metal music to wake up to. If you have any suggestions, let me know.
But, don’t be put off by the distance—the looping bus makes it easy for anyone to get to campus without having to wait for too long. It’s especially convenient when it starts snowing, which from my expert prediction, will be very soon (#RochesterWeather).
2. Mission research is a go
This past summer, I had the wonderful opportunity to work on project involving both biomechanics and ultrasound imaging as part of the Xerox Research Fellowship, and I cannot begin to describe how grateful I am! Ultrasound imaging is what I’ve always aspired to pursue, and I can’t believe that I finally have a project that allows me to follow my passion.
For my research, I perform shear wave elastography or SWE (an ultrasound technique that gives us information about soft tissue mechanics) on pig tendons to figure out the effect of bone on shear wave speeds and noise. Now, that was a lot of big words put together. The main idea behind my project is to figure out how shear waves travel differently in tendons with and without underlying bone. This is important since most tendon injuries or diseases occur at the insertion, which is the place where the tendon connects to bone, and this area cannot be imaged using ultrasound at all.
Anyhoo, to conclude my scientific ramblings, I really like my project. And if you have had a chance to bump into me since July, you know that, too (because I’ve most likely talked your ear off).
3. Senior year = Senior Design Project
As part of the senior engineering curriculum, all students have to complete a design project over two semesters that requires us to teach us real-world engineering skills, where we get to develop a solution to a major-related problem. Multiple industry and academia collaborators come to class and present their projects, and that’s how we get to know our options for that year. For the BME Major, we apply to multiple projects based on our interests (kind of like an actual job application) and then get assigned one that best matches our skills and interests. If you’re wondering which project I picked, I’ll give you three guesses!
.
..
…
If you guessed something related to ultrasound, good for you—you got it right!
If you guessed something not related to ultrasound, boooo—friendship over!!!!! (I’m kidding, we can still be friends.)
Clearly, I am very into ultrasound imaging, so I decided to apply for a project by an industrial collaborator, Sonavex, where we work towards developing an ultrasound probe stabilizer for handheld scanners. It sounds really cool, and I can’t wait to start working on it with my teammates.
4. Friendship!
Given that we are way too busy this semester, my friends and I have surprisingly found a lot of time to hang out with each other and relax. It might be due to senior year scares, but I’m not complaining. Some of the fun things we did this year included watching a lot of movies, having multiple pasta nights, doing randomly planned photo shoots (pictures included below), and in general, stay in the nearby… I think I’m already too emotional thinking about graduation when I won’t get to see my friends every day, so I’ve decided to delay thinking till at least winter break. So, watch out for another blog about my emotional ups and downs through senior spring in a few months.
All in all, I am busy this semester (like every other person on this campus)! Between classes, work, research, graduate school applications, and human things, I am like an atom bouncing around constantly. But, I thrive when I’m busy so here’s to a fun senior year!