Geez, at the end of the summer why does it always feel like August came right after May? However fast the summer flew by, the experiences I had were, to me, nothing short of spectacular. Here are a couple of my highlights:

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Professional setup at competition. Fight On!

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Spec sheet on Nikki in the FSAE Booklet from competition.

This year was my first year at USC Racing’s competition in Lincoln, NE. We had a 27-hour car journey coupled with a blown out tire on the way there. What a ride, pun intended. As bad as that sounds the competition was one of my best experiences at USC thus far. We blazed through tech inspection and had a lot of fun working through the rest of the events. What I most appreciated was the critique of our design presentation. The judges’ insights were thorough and gave us some direction for approaching the design of next year’s car. It was a learning experience like no other!

For summer school I took Writing 340. What a class, what a class. I never thought I would really enjoy a writing class, but WRIT 340 got me. The class is a general education course that everyone eventually takes at USC. There are several different options to choose from – Business, Communications, Social Sciences, Engineering and more- I think you can guess which one I picked. The great thing about the class was that the assignments were geared towards your field of interest. For example, I wrote one of my papers on the topic of wingsuiting! That’s honestly something I never would’ve expected to be an acceptable topic, but it worked out fantastically!

I decided to take advantage of the LA outdoor movie screenings this summer. Across LA County many parks held screenings of old and new movies. Dazed and Confused, Pulp Fiction, Despicable Me, and The Wolf of Wall Street are just a few of the awesome films shown. The movies are often on the weekend evenings, but I see there’s one tomorrow even, so they don’t conflict with school or work. The summer isn’t over, not really, so if you want to catch one of the last ones take a look here. There are a few scheduled in Exposition Park, just south of campus!

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Quick rooftop picture with Joe from Smallpools.

In addition to movies Molly and I took the chance to see Smallpools, a rising band from LA. You may have heard their song Dreaming on the radio perchance. It happened to be a rooftop concert at the Peterson Automotive Museum! We took advantage of the location and explored the exhibits there before watching the concert. It was also a BMW sponsored event so we had the opportunity to see and drive the BMW i3 It was a learning experience for me, if you just keep a sharp eye out there are a lot of really inexpensive ways to have a really good time!

 

I did what I could to make this summer my best so far, and I’m approaching the year the same way. Half of college has flown by, but I’m looking forward to these next two years and all of memories down the road!

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Ian-2016

Ian-2016

Mechanical Engineering, Class of 2016, Learn more on his profile here!