A Little Bit of Interviewing and a Little Bit of Research

The majority of this week was spent working on my research for my original work to prepare for my upcoming speech and conducting a very exciting and informative interview. To start with, my interview was early this week and was with Jessica Olstad, a chemical engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. I had received her contact from one of my previous interviews and was looking forward to talking with her based on her credentials and career. There are so many different career options available to a professional with a degree in chemical engineering and I wanted to broaden my knowledge by looking into the area of research.

While talking with Ms. Olstad, I began to form the idea that this is possibly an avenue that I would be interested in pursuing for my career. When Ms. Olstad explained her daily tasks, she described them as the closest thing to playing with chemicals and processes that one could do for a living. She explained how she can work days to weeks on a specific project trying to find the best way to break apart a certain substance to be used for some other process later. This was absolutely fascinating to me. I had never thought that research could be conducted outside of the academic world and for a living. This area is definitely something I would like to pursue and I think it is an area that I will likely stick to when trying to find my mentor. As I have conducted these research interviews I have been, in the back of my mind, thinking about a possible mentor from one of these people. While I do not know if Ms. Olstad is a possible mentor, I know that I will want to stick to the research side of the chemical engineering profession when looking for said mentor.

The latter part of my week was spent working on continuing research for my original work and preparing my presentation for a research speech I will give and record next week. I have been doing quite a bit of research regarding my original work and I believe that I am almost to the point where I have enough information to start designing my actual product. My plan is to use a modeling software to create a model of the dimensions and materials needed to give me a better understanding of how to construct the finished product.

Additionally, I have begun preparing for my research presentation that will occur this upcoming week. I started the presentation portion in order to get an idea of what exactly I wanted to talk about. By far the biggest problem that I have run into is the overall theme and colors of the presentation. I am desperately trying to stick with the color scheme that I have chosen for my portfolio and many of my other assignments but I find myself constrained by having to stick to neutral tones such as grey and black. I wonder if I can branch out into pastel colors while still keeping true to my brand? This is definitely something that I will need to ponder in the upcoming days and cement a theme for my presentation. Overall, this has been a productive week and I am looking forward to these next few days where I can really make some progress on a couple of key assignments.