Purdue students' summer
experiences provide new lessons, perspectives
By Sarah Szczepanski
Assistant Features Editor
Each year the first day of
classes collects Purdue students and brings them back to the University,
many times with different perspectives from their summer experiences.
A dream come true
To say that Tiffany Bliss,
a senior in the Schools of Engineering, simply enjoyed her summer internship
at NASA would be an understatement. Bliss has wanted to be an astronaut
since she was three years old.
Living in Florida, she remembers
feeling the ground rumble during the first rocket launch she witnessed
when she was five years old.
Even watching the Challenger
explosion on television during grade school did not change her thinking.
"It’s kind of strange, but it kind of re-affirmed my thinking;
if you love your work that much, then that would be the ultimate sacrifice,"
she said.
Bliss had NASA on her mind
as she continued through school. One day, last year, she came upon an
internship opportunity for the company when she was searching on the
Internet. She immediately prepared the materials for the application
and sent it in.
For months, she did not hear
anything from NASA. In March, just as she was about to make a decision
between her other internship options, she received news that she was
accepted for a 10-week position in the Cleveland research center of
NASA.
"I cried," she
said. "It suddenly made my decision very easy."
During Bliss’ internship,
she tested materials to see how and when they would break. She said
she came into work as often as she could. "It was the best time
in a job ever," Bliss said. "I suddenly became a workaholic.
I would put in 12-hour days when I didn't have to."
She says that one thing she
learned from her experience is that people need to try to set themselves
up for opportunities and not worry about failure. "If you really
want to work somewhere--look at me, I looked, I found and I got in.
Just apply and see what happens."
Now back on campus, Bliss
is in the process of trying to secure a permanent position with the
company.
"It’s NASA,"
she says. "It’s a nice brand name."
Home Sweet Home
Shannon Meagher spent the
summer working in her hometown of Nashua, N.H.
"I was just at home all summer,"
said Meagher, a junior in the School of Nursing. "I worked two jobs;
I was just working all the time."
One of the places Meagher
worked was a day camp for girls. As one of the camp counselors, Meagher
was responsible for the weeklong activities of her particular group
of girls. Much to the disbelief of some of the other camp counselors,
Meagher would sometimes plan activities for the children that involved
dirt and adventure.
"I took my group frog catching,
and we let the kids roll in the mud and get dirty. The other counselors
couldn’t believe it."
Even though the camp took
place only during the weekdays, when the weekend approached, Meagher
still could not look forward to a day off. On Saturdays and Sundays,
she worked at an Italian restaurant near her home.
Meagher, who worked until
the day she flew back to Indiana, says she really didn’t have a
lot of time for herself and her friends this summer. "I would come home
and just go to bed every day because I was so tired," she said.
Her experiences this summer
give her mixed feelings about returning to West Lafayette.
"I'm looking forward to seeing
people, but I'm not looking forward to starting classes," Meagher said.
She does think that her experiences
this summer will help her out this semester. "I manage time a lot better,"
Meagher said. "When you are watching six to nine year-olds it takes
20 minutes to walk nine feet. You have to plan."
A Lafayette Summer
Andrew Toth stayed in Lafayette
this summer. Toth, a junior in the School of Aviation Technology, wanted
to take summer school classes so he could graduate early.
To accomplish this, Toth
took classes during all three summer sessions.
"I just pretty much was at
school all summer," said Toth. " I took classes from 7:30 a.m. to 3
p.m. every day."
He said campus was different
in the summer because the Recreational Sports Center, the computer labs
and the libraries weren't open as long. In addition, the only people
he noticed walking on campus appeared to be incoming freshmen.
"There really wasn’t
much going on," he said. "Campus was pretty dead."
Last year, Toth, originally
from Hammond, Ind., was able to travel to Newport News, Va., for the
Fourth of July fireworks, but this year he had to watch them in Lafayette.
"They were just bad; they
were too spaced out," he said.
But Toth said there were
good experiences during the summer. He was able to take a trip to Dallas
to visit relatives, and he said his experiences this summer helped him
to appreciate the atmosphere of campus during the fall and spring semesters.
He does not regret staying in town during the summer.
"I'd do it again," he said.
"Just to get the classes done."
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