Day in the Life: Joy Gu

A Third Year Engineering Math/Stats Student

7:15 am

• A bright and early wake up call for a busy day! It’s mid-April and only a few weeks away from the end of classes, so getting up for an 8 am class requires some extra motivation. This particular day is packed with a variety of activities and events, so I get ready and head out to class!

8:10 am

• Feedback Controls Systems (ME134/EE128) is my first class of the morning! The class is considered both a mechanical and electrical engineering course, and teaches control theory that can be used in a lot of different applications: think autonomous cars, jumping robots, or biomedical devices! The lecture is primarily theory based, so my brain struggles to stay awake for the 80 minutes. However, knowing that I’ll need this information to complete the next lab keeps me focused. Our goal for the next couple of weeks is implementing a self-erecting and balancing pendulum system (a video from a few years ago is linked below).

Spring 2014 group with the final lab

Just a couple weeks ago we worked on magnetic levitation, and while it’s not perfect, I still learned a lot and have developed important teamwork skills that every engineer needs!

My group’s Mag Lev lab from March 2017

9:30 am

• I head to my next class, Math 170, an introduction to Optimization. One thing I’ve learned at UC Berkeley is that mathematics is truly the language of engineers, scientists, and the world. My professor summarized this quite elegantly: “Poetry is using different words to describe the same thing, mathematics is using the same word to describe different things.” It’s this simple structure that allows us to express and model so many various applications mathematically, and optimization is one of the many math techniques that is useful in any field! My brain is happy to digest this hour and a half of beautiful math.

11:00 am

• Morning classes are done and I head back to my apartment for a quick lunch!

12:00 pm

• One of the coolest jobs you can have while you’re at college is being a tour guide: you get to share everything you love about your school with visitors from around the world! Today, I’m giving an engineering tour, so I lead about 25 visitors from Memorial Stadium to the various buildings in the College of Chemistry and College of Engineering. It’s a great escape from the technical homework and projects I’m currently working on, and a unique way to practice communication skills.

Campus Ambassador group during my first Cal Day in 2015!

1:30 pm

• I get done with my tour, grab my stuff and head to the library to work on some homework in my free time!

3:00 pm

• I normally spend a few hours in the library in the afternoon, but this time I had a meeting to go to! At the Engineering Student Services office, there are peer advisers that provide advice and resources to current and prospective students that drop by, and I was interviewing to be a part of their team for next year. As I enter the building, my ESS adviser pulls me aside and introduces me to a father and daughter interested in the Engineering Math/Stats major! After a surprise ‘warm up’ of answering their questions and talking about my experiences in the program, I go into my interview with confidence and that great feeling that comes with helping others.

4:00 pm

• Once the interview is over, back to the library I go! I spend some time finishing up my work from earlier and finalizing plans for rest of the week.

6:00 pm

• This evening SWE is hosting a Town Hall follow up event where we can discuss some of the important topics in regards to women in engineering at Berkeley. Supporting and increasing the number of women in STEM is a passion that I didn’t fully realize I had until I got to Berkeley, and I’m grateful that I found a community in SWE that shares in this goal. I head to Wozniak Lounge for pizza delivery, set up with volunteers, and helping organize the event.

8:00 pm

• After cleaning up, I head to the EE lab in Cory hall for a lab training session. This past year I have been a Lab TA for EE16A, the intro class for electrical engineering. It’s been a great experience developing my teaching skills and deepening my knowledge in the course material. I really enjoyed taking the class myself, and now I get to help students learn about and build imaging systems and touchscreens in lab! Every week the lab TAs and assistants gather to complete the lab, check for bugs, and make suggestions before it is released to students the following week. The course staff has been another great community on campus, and I’ve definitely learned a lot from my peers!

9:30 pm

• Finally back to my apartment after an eventful day! I answer emails, check my answers in a pre-lab assignment with my team members, relax a bit with some YouTube videos, and catch up with my housemates about their day!

12:00 am

• Sleep tight, pupper! Tomorrow is a new day, and a new adventure!