Hi everyone! The semester is finally in full swing, with midterm season looming in the (not-so-far) distance! On the bright side, with the semester in full force, this means that all the student organizations are also hard at work!
One of my favorite student organizations at USC is definitely SC Racing! Last year as a freshman, I began hearing about different design teams around campus. Through Freshmen Academy (a course all new Viterbi freshmen take in their first semester), I was introduced to SC Racing. I dropped by shop hours and discovered that there are different teams that work on various areas such as powertrain, chassis, electronics, etc. Naturally, as an electrical engineering major, I was intrigued by the electronics team!
Going into joining SC Racing, I had minimal experience, but don’t let that stop you! Everything was so foreign to me, yet everyone there seemed to know exactly what was going on! It was definitely an intimidating experience, but everyone in shop was so friendly and willing to teach! I spent much of my time asking questions and listening to the more experienced team members explain how everything worked, including the current projects everyone was working on, the more technical side of building a racecar, and how to use the (very big, very clunky, very intimidating) machines in the shop.
Through SC Racing, I was also exposed to a lot of new material that I never would have been exposed to in my freshman engineering courses, such as programming in LabVIEW! Funnily enough, being introduced to LabVIEW in SC Racing turned out to be extremely beneficial for me! I ended up having to use LabVIEW for my internship at JPL (which you can read more about here), so my exposure to LabVIEW through SC Racing definitely gave me a leg up! One of the coolest aspects of SC Racing is that it is student-run, which is incredible once you look at everything the team has to do: manage a budget, design a racecar, and actually building it within a limited time. SC Racing is composed of a great group of intelligent and motivated students, and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know some of them!
There is such a huge variety of student organizations at USC that everyone can find an exciting team to join! If you’re interested in USC Racing, check them out on their website , Twitter, and Instagram! And of course, feel free to ask me any questions! Until next time, fight on!
