Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Back from Spring Break

Now that we're back from spring break, it finally feels like spring here at MSU. On Monday the temperature was in the 60s, and right now it is sunny and cool. I spent by spring break home in Brighton and in East Lansing. I know people who went on vacations, alternative spring break (ASB), and the Spring Break Corporate Tour. I went on the International Corporate Tour this summer, which is similar except the spring break tour is only for about a week and visits companies in the Midwest. Since my spring break was not super exciting, I will get you caught up on what I did before spring break. 

On the Friday of E-Week (February 27th), I went to the Chemical Engineering and Materials Science (ChEMS) Symposium Day. The event was organized by students from AIChE and MSES, and two of the chairs were actually my roommates. Symposium Day took place in the Brody building was free for students who only had to pay a $10 refundable deposit. Chemical engineering classes were cancelled that day because it lasted all morning until mid-afternoon. We had breakfast at the Sparty's in Brody, listened to some industry speakers, ate lunch at the Brody cafeteria, and listened to a keynote speaker. The day concluded with a raffle for prizes.

That night we left for the North-Central Regional Conference for AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers). Our Chem-E car team went to compete in the regional car competition, and a couple other AIChE E-board members went to get some regional updates and support our Chem-E car team. The goal of the competition is to make a car powered by a chemical reaction that starts and stops moving on its own once the initial reaction is started. Last year, Michigan State hosted the conference, and this year it was hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The members of our group who were not part of Chem-E car played Chem-E Jeopardy, accompanied our president to the presidents' meeting, and watched the competition to support our team. During that time, the Chem-E car team presented their poster, went through safety inspections, prepared for the competition, and finally competed. Our team did a great job, and the competition was fun to watch.

After all of the chemical engineering festivities that weekend, I was ready for a relaxing spring break to start the following weekend.