My spring break was this past week and I spent it working and studying for the PSATS. My school sucks SO BAD!!! After telling us THIS WHOLE YEAR we won’t be taking it, they told us THE DAY BEFORE BREAK THAT WE ARE TAKING IT THE MONDAY WE GET BACK!!! :((
@nyuhopeful44 Ugh that’s horrible!
You guys are really diligent wow. Our spring break is around 2 weeks ish long and I haven’t even touched my books LOL. My motto is “Slack off now so you can study later”
@averagebean Two weeks?!?! We only get one! Yeah I’ve been slacking off too. I was going to study for the AP test for Physics but that didn’t happen 
@averagebean mine is also two weeks. I spent mine studying tho
@averagebean So lucky! All I get is one week…
@nyuhopeful44 But it’s the PSAT? I didn’t really think you had to study for that. More of a barometer of your raw performance
I would’ve had pictures to show you guys, but they had to take my phone, and everyone else’s, to protect there top secret projects lol. Because of this, I’ll try to describe everything I can by memory.
So basically, I went to school and then to the main office. After that, we went on a 20 minute bus ride to Lockheed Martin. Once we got there, we had to give our phones to the staff, which were all put in a box and stored somewhere. I was then given a badge for the day. It said “Escort Required” meaning I was not allowed to go anywhere without a Lockheed Martin employee. It also said my name and school, I then clipped it to the chest pocket of the buttoned-down shirt I was wearing. From there, we went through the cafeteria (which looked really nice) and into there meeting room.
7:30am - 9:30am Registration/Breakfast
Once I went into the meeting room, I was told to look behind my badge to find “E1” written on the back and was told that the first letter “E” was the letter of the table I was supposed to sit at. At my table, I sat with one other person who I would later find out was named Adolfo and was a freshman. While we waited for our other tablemates to arrive, we were watching a series of YouTube videos about Lockheed Martin and what their employees do and why they like it here. You could check out there videos at this link:https://www.youtube.com/user/LockheedMartinVideos After the videos we were given breakfast. Then, at around 8:15pm, the welcome speaker came onto the stage and welcomed us.
9:30 am - 9:55am Welcome Speaker
The Welcome Speaker welcomed us all and noted that he was glad that all of us attended so early in the morning. He also noted that in front of us was a packet and mini-booklet that said “Lockheed Martin Minorities in Engineering Day” on it. Inside the packet was information about the different types of Engineering and what we were going to do today. The Welcome Speaker then introduced him. I forgot his name, but he said that he was a Jamaican immigrant and lived in the same neighborhood as L.L. Cool J. They and a couple of their friends would go to each of their houses to celebrate how they made it out of their neighborhood and to America. Back in their neighborhood, many people weren’t as successful. He then talked about how at our age, he wanted to be a truck driver, and not an engineer. He said he wanted to travel the world. One day, he was suggested to go into Engineering as he would still be able to travel the world while helping people in need, like those from his old neighborhood. After he finished his speech, he asked us if we had any questions prior to starting the day. I had asked a question, into the mic, about if Lockheed Martin had a department for Robotics and if that department was working on anything that would have the robot go somewhere where a person wouldn’t be able to go into, like a burning building or a place with high radiation. He said yes and that they were also working on something that looked like a maple leaf and when put into a building would fly through the rooms and be able to detect and record footage of what was inside and if it was safe for people to go in. After he finished answering questions, he said to e-mail him if they have anymore and then two employees went up to the stage to present a PowerPoint about the different types of engineers (mechanical, ocean, environmental, etc.) Both of the employees were recent college graduates from Virginia Tech, one graduated in 2010, the other graduated in 2013. During their presentation, they demonstrated projects Lockheed Martin was doing that incorporated the different types of engineering (there was one project where Lockheed Martin built a wind turbine in the middle of the ocean just off the coast of Ireland and they’re leaving it there for 7 years to see how much energy it can create on its own). The rest of the presentation was about the engineering project we were about to create called a Rube Goldberg Machine, which is a complicated device that is used do a simple task. For those who do not know what a Rube Goldberg Machine looks like, here’s a link to a music video that incorporates a Rube Goldberg Machine, we watched it to see what it looked like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w .
9:55am - 10:30am Engineering Project (One of my favorite parts of the day!)
By now, all of the tablemates had arrived. The rest of their names were Justin and Ruth. They were all freshmen with me being the only sophomore at our table. After seeing the video, we were told to get in groups with the table next to us and we naturally got in our groups. For the project, we were grouped with Table N. From then on, until the engineering project was finished, we were known as Team EN! As we got into our groups, the timer started giving us only 35 minutes to create and test our Rube Goldberg Machine. Usually, Rube Goldberg Machines complete a very simple task. Our task was to create the machine so that it would get a yellow ball into a basket without us touching it. We got to work and in no time the project started to come together. Our team’s chemistry was phenomenal. My natural-born leading instincts were definitely shining that day. I was trying to incorporate ideas left and right to have everyone be included. Soon, our project was completed. I’ll try to describe what our machine looked like. So we had cut a black Styrofoam tube, that was about 3 feet long, into thirds. We used one-third of it to make a ramp using two chairs stacked in a way you wouldn’t normally think (they were stacked so that one chair was on the ground and the back of the seat of the other chair was on top of the first chair’s back support). So basically the second chair was 45 degrees to the right of the chair while stacked). From there, we cut one of the sides of the tube to have an opening and taped the other side of the tube to a paper towel roll (that obviously had no paper towels on it). The whole point of the tube and paper towel roll was to have marbles go through them. The marbles would then hit a golf ball that was on the top of a clipboard (where the clip is) which was supported, at an angle, by a stretched-out stapler. The stapler and clipboard were held together by rubber bands. Once hit by the marbles, the golf ball would roll down the clipboard. To make sure it went exactly where it needed to go, we used mechanical pencils and taped them to the clipboard and table to create a track. Once the golf ball was on the track, we figured it would roll into the other golf ball we had placed at the very end of the table. From there, the two golf balls would roll into a drop we had taped to the end of the table. The drop was just a red SOLO plastic cup we had connected to the second-third of the Styrofoam tube. The yellow ball was inside the tube and luckily fit perfectly so that it wouldn’t roll down the tube without the golf balls falling on it. Once the golf balls fell onto the yellow ball, it would provide enough force for the yellow ball to come out of the tube roll down a ramp that we made with the last-third of the tube. A water bottle taped to another empty paper towel roll was the stand that was taped to the ramp. The ramp would then have the yellow ball roll into the basket. I know it sounds complicated, but the project was actually kind of small compared to others. So once we finished our project, just two minutes before time was up, we tested it twice. The first time it hadn’t worked and so, like an engineer would, we tweaked it a little by adding chairs on both sides of the drop tube to make sure the yellow ball fell onto the ramp and it worked. Our group congratulated each other and awaited judging once time was up. Once time was up, we were told to put our hands up and sit down, but we didn’t have that many chairs left lol. One person had to stand up. Our machines were then going to be judged by two judges. I forgot the criteria for points given other than that each simple machine we used in our machine was worth 5 points each and creativity was worth 15 points. We were given a set of criteria before the project started which was that we must use at least 3 simple machines and have 3 energy changes. We were the first project to present while the whole meeting room was looking. One of our group members explained our project, the simple machines used (mainly incline planes) and energy changes. We were then told to present our project. Everything went fine, until it came to the golf balls. The first golf ball barely had enough momentum to roll down the track and once it hit the second golf ball, it stopped. The mass of both golf balls was needed to get the yellow ball out of the tube. We were given one minute to reset and try to get everything to work and to try it a second time. Once we tried it the second time, it didn’t work again. This time the marbles didn’t even hit the golf ball, it didn’t even touch the clipboard :(( . We were so disappointed! The judges had to move on to the next group. If I could change one thing, it would be to have made a stand for the yellow ball to be put on instead of having it in the tube to rely on the golf balls to get it out of the tube. After our team presented, other teams presented their amazing projects. There were teams named IQ and LM for Lockheed Martin. In the end, Team ST won the most points and had their picture taken. Once that was done, we were told to start cleaning up and throwing away anything that couldn’t be reused. Then we separated our team back into tables and moved onto the next event, Speed Mentoring.
Sorry I haven’t been writing earlier, I’ve been really busy today. I’ll try to type out the rest of my adventure at Lockheed Martin later today. If you have any questions about my adventure :)) , just reply. I promise my story gets somewhat funnier and might just included a little bit of magic. I’ll give you a hint: Chick-Fil-a Goddess
@ak2018 Wow that is awesome!
Hope y’all are ready for S.N.H.C cause Ima be on till 4am
I’ll try to pull an allnighter as well.
I’m not motivated to take IB/AP Classes anymore
Old Schedule: ( Diploma)
IB English HL
IB Environmental Systems (Group 6)
AP Calc AB
AP U.S History
AP Spanish Lit
Physiology
- and was planning to take AP Physics 1 or regular if my schedule didnt have problems
New Schedule:
AP English
IB Environmental Systems
AP Calc AB
U.S History
Physics
- possibly an after-school pharmacy class where I can get certified to become a pharmacy tech and work part-time during college?
Any feedback or thoughts , this spring break I went out with my friends and it felt great. I really enjoyed going out so I feel like I should have a lenient schedule so that I can have time for myself and hang out with my friends. I haven’t gone with my guidance tech to go change my IB Schedule but I do have until June to go fix it.
My Current Schedule:
AP Spanish Lang
AP World History
Honors Precalc
Pre-IB Chem
Honors English
Business Elective
10:30am - 11:15am Speed Mentoring (Wasn’t my favorite part.)
I don’t really remember that much from this event so I won’t really go into much detail. Basically, the whole event was having the Lockheed Martin mentors come around to each table and answer questions about engineering that we had. I didn’t have that many as well as my tablemates. Ruth, who had already told the group that she was pretty immature, just played with our table’s letter stand (it just marked our letters, which were white with a purple background). She just wacked it around and played with one of the marbles we didn’t know wasn’t put away. The marble ended up falling off the table and rolling away. Believe me, Ruth was pretty funny and I, luckily, could handle her level of immaturity. Back to the event, the way it worked was that each mentor was given 5 minutes to answer our questions and once the cowbell (yes it was a cowbell!) rang, the mentor switched to another table. They did this for about 45 minutes. If we didn’t have any questions, they simply asked us to get the ball rolling by picking a question out of their question box. I remember some of the people that came over was someone who worked in security systems, who made sure no one was trying to do anything bad with at Lockheed Martin. Signs that would tell her if anyone was doing anything bad was if they started to work later hours and a few days later bought an expensive car. I believe she said that has happened once. She then left the table. Then this one Asian guy, who was interested in the same field I was in, Robotics, came to our table. I asked questions about what he wished would’ve done in high school, which was to take more AP classes to get more of the college introductory classes out of the way. I don’t really that much, expect there was this one black guy who came to our table and I asked if I should take high school classes now for interest or take more APs for Virginia Tech. He said to go for the interest, and I couldn’t agree more.
11:15am - 12:00pm Lunch (Funniest Part :)) )
After the Speed Mentoring, we had lunch. For lunch, I had two really weird-looking cheese pizzas (you would think a multi-millionaire dollar company would at least be able to afford Dominoes or something :)) ) , some cookies (including the kind that you would find at Shopper’s which are literally the best, yes I mean the cookies with frosting and sprinkles and the whole cookie is made out of really soft cookie dough). These are what they look like: http://www.amittenfullofsavings.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screenshot-2014-10-29-23.42.56.png
I also had a Fanta soda. Once we all sat down for lunch, some of Adolfo’s friends showed up. Then I started to talk about how I’ve never been to Chik-Fil-a and everyone literally looked at me as if I just killed someone :)) (I will never understand the west side of my county’s obsession with Chik-Fil-a.) Then I was like, " I don’t really understand what’s so special about it". “Isn’t is basically another McDonald’s?” :)) Once I said that, Ruth literally grabbed my clavicle (my shoulder bone) and squeezed it until I said I would try it. :)) Then, we talked about how the school that Ruth goes to (which was the same school I was supposed to go to) has a really high teen pregnancy rate. I might have forgot to mention, but schools from all over the county actually got to attend the Minorities in Engineering Day. Anyways, she also talked about the rumors about the Daycare the school has. The kids at the daycare, or the most part, aren’t the kids of the teens, but of the teachers. Then Ruth told us about how she has seen 8 pregnant girls at her school, while one of her other friends who goes to the same school has only seen one. I asked which one and I actually knew her name. She got pregnant in middle school and went to the same middle school I attended. Ever since I left middle school, that place hasn’t been the same. Now those students are getting in trouble for having sex on the bus, hiding weed in their lockers, and sending nudes to each other. I’m not saying this happens at every school, but it did at mine. That school started to go downhill way before I got there :)) A teacher was arrested for being a sex offender one year prior to me going there. I should’ve really expected that kind of behavior from my school.
Anyways, Justin then proceeded to tell us about how he almost missed the trip. His teacher told him the day before the trip not to bring his backpack and so he didn’t! Bad idea. He left his permission slip in his backpack and had to call his step-father to come and bring it. His father parked in the football field parking lot of his school and he had to run a good quarter of a mile to get back to the bus loop.
Here’s the funniest part: After our discussion about Chik-Fil-a, Justin said he wanted Chik-Fil-a. So Ruth literally pulled Chik-Fila-a out of her bag 
. We were all stunned and called her the Chik-Fil-a Goddess. #allhailthechikfilagoddess ^:)^ .
@apple1893 Yup. I have an essay, homework for AP Econ, reading, FRQs, studying for AP exams, and studying for my chemistry test. I’m already sleep deprived, so this should be fun.
@neptuna I am doing a DNA double helix model for biology, history research paper, and english reading! Been working since 10, life is good. I got math and photography out of the way, which is good!
@ak2018 CHICK FIL A IS CERTAINLY NOT JUST “another McDonalds”!!!
Seriously though, you need to try it!
@ak2018 We have a lot of them in Texas and I have to admit their food is amazing. I personally started boycotting Chick-Fil-A after I found out they weren’t LGBT friendly. Chick-Fil-A has donated a lot of money to various hate groups that claim their goal is to “preserve” family values. Why pay to have someone talk trash about me when I can change the channel to Fox News? :))
@ak2018 I haven’t had Chick-Fil-A either! The nearest one is 45 minutes away for me. I’d love to try it someday to see what all the hype is about.
Speaking of fast food, I had Five Guys for the first time last month. It was so…average. I wonder who’s going to fight me for this lol
@Madeline25 Lol. In all honesty, I haven’t eaten McDonald’s, or any fast food for that matter, in three years. Maybe I’ll give them a try.
@Hamlon It’s kind of like when Starbucks said they didn’t support our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the Marines. A lot of people didn’t like that and many signed a petition and boycotted it. I feel like whenever big franchises state their overall opinions on a real-world issue, it always starts controversy. In all honesty, I feel like I wouldn’t care what their opinion on most things were, I’m just there to get my coffee. I’m more of a Dunkin’ Donuts kind of guy anyway. The last I had Starbucks, my taste buds felt like they burned off. I couldn’t taste anything for a few hours.
@neptuna I used to live near a Five Guys and it was pretty bad. Their fries were sometimes burnt. The nearest for me is Chik-Fil-A is about 5 minutes away.