Guess what!
I am right on the edge of a whole lot of change. I graduate from college with a physics degree in just THREE DAYS! I am so unbelievably excited and ready for it. Stetson has been such an experience for me in the last four years. I can't believe how much the school has changed while I was here and how much the school has changed me. It was a love hate relationship for a while but I truly value the amazing education that I got while here.
I found Stetson while I was a junior in high school at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville. While studying Creative Writing in high school I became passionate about math and became driven to become a high school math teacher. Stetson has a very well known education program that is supposed to be amazing. I found Stetson to get the education I needed as a math teacher. That is not what I ended up coming to Stetson for at all. I began as a Digital Arts major with a Computer Science focus. My focus then became my major. I learned a lot about computers from programming in Java, C++, and some Assembly. I even got to build my own CPU from logic gates after much study into binary. Gotta love working with Karnaugh maps!
While pursing the classes that I was required to take for Computer Science I took physics and fell in love with it. Physics became my heart and soul. It was what I was looking for in college. I ate up all of the information that they would give me, yet did poorly in my classes. I was a great student yet terrible when it came to homework which did a lot of damage to my grades. This did the most damage when it came to Quantum Mechanics. That class befuddled me enough without me screwing myself over when it came to homework.
I have to thank my professors for all of the help that they have given me these last three years in physics. Dr. Glander taught me how wonderful physics was and when I started to doubt it as other teachers made my faith in the science waiver he brought me right back for my last year in the department. I am so glad to have all of the help that Dr. Glander has given me in his classes. Dr. Riggs and Dr. Morel were also invaluable mentors to me. Dr. Riggs has helped me so much with my Senior research (which I'll talk about later) and Dr. Morel has done so much for me to get prepared to go out into the working world. I can't forget Dr. Glander's wife, Laura! Laura works as the secretary for the physics department and is the adviser for the work-study students that work for the department as TA's and tutors. Laura has really helped me to settle into myself as a Physicist getting ready to move onto bigger and better things after Stetson.
If not for my support system in the Physics department at Stetson and beyond my department I would not have ended up with the great job that I got. I start as a Lab Specialist for the Fundamentals of Physics course at Full Sail University on Monday. I am ecstatic about my new job teaching, like I had dreamed of before. Eventually, as I settle into work I will start pursuing a grad school education in physics to continue my teaching career and take it further. Who knows how long I will stay teaching? I certainly do not. What I do know is that I want to end up in research. I would love to be working in some sort of lab finding out all sorts of new things in the future. My goal is to specialize in Optical Physics eventually.
This leads me to my senior research! No where else would give me an expensive variable intensity constant current laser infrared laser to work with as an undergraduate student. My research was titled "A Study in the Conversion Efficiency of the Nonlinear Optical Crystal KTP." Basically what I did was shine a invisible infrared laser into a crystal about the size of a grain of rice and get out green light. I was studying the technology behind how handheld green laser pointers are made and how much green light comes out depending on how much infrared light is sent into the crystal.
Well, I've said enough about my schooling for now. More reflection on all of the change going on and already having happened to come soon.
I found Stetson while I was a junior in high school at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville. While studying Creative Writing in high school I became passionate about math and became driven to become a high school math teacher. Stetson has a very well known education program that is supposed to be amazing. I found Stetson to get the education I needed as a math teacher. That is not what I ended up coming to Stetson for at all. I began as a Digital Arts major with a Computer Science focus. My focus then became my major. I learned a lot about computers from programming in Java, C++, and some Assembly. I even got to build my own CPU from logic gates after much study into binary. Gotta love working with Karnaugh maps!
While pursing the classes that I was required to take for Computer Science I took physics and fell in love with it. Physics became my heart and soul. It was what I was looking for in college. I ate up all of the information that they would give me, yet did poorly in my classes. I was a great student yet terrible when it came to homework which did a lot of damage to my grades. This did the most damage when it came to Quantum Mechanics. That class befuddled me enough without me screwing myself over when it came to homework.
I have to thank my professors for all of the help that they have given me these last three years in physics. Dr. Glander taught me how wonderful physics was and when I started to doubt it as other teachers made my faith in the science waiver he brought me right back for my last year in the department. I am so glad to have all of the help that Dr. Glander has given me in his classes. Dr. Riggs and Dr. Morel were also invaluable mentors to me. Dr. Riggs has helped me so much with my Senior research (which I'll talk about later) and Dr. Morel has done so much for me to get prepared to go out into the working world. I can't forget Dr. Glander's wife, Laura! Laura works as the secretary for the physics department and is the adviser for the work-study students that work for the department as TA's and tutors. Laura has really helped me to settle into myself as a Physicist getting ready to move onto bigger and better things after Stetson.
If not for my support system in the Physics department at Stetson and beyond my department I would not have ended up with the great job that I got. I start as a Lab Specialist for the Fundamentals of Physics course at Full Sail University on Monday. I am ecstatic about my new job teaching, like I had dreamed of before. Eventually, as I settle into work I will start pursuing a grad school education in physics to continue my teaching career and take it further. Who knows how long I will stay teaching? I certainly do not. What I do know is that I want to end up in research. I would love to be working in some sort of lab finding out all sorts of new things in the future. My goal is to specialize in Optical Physics eventually.
This leads me to my senior research! No where else would give me an expensive variable intensity constant current laser infrared laser to work with as an undergraduate student. My research was titled "A Study in the Conversion Efficiency of the Nonlinear Optical Crystal KTP." Basically what I did was shine a invisible infrared laser into a crystal about the size of a grain of rice and get out green light. I was studying the technology behind how handheld green laser pointers are made and how much green light comes out depending on how much infrared light is sent into the crystal.
Well, I've said enough about my schooling for now. More reflection on all of the change going on and already having happened to come soon.