General Atomics, as one might expect, is a large company with a very large facility. The DIII-D facility is only a small part of the massive piece of real estate occupied by the GA headquarters. Even that small part, though, is large enough to get lost within. Fortunately, I managed to not get myself lost on my first day, since I spent most of yesterday shadowing Mr. Nagy and getting myself oriented with the work environment. My first test came when I had to retrieve a folder from the design lab. Fortunately, I was able to remember where that was in relation to Mr. Nagy's office. I'm learning my way around fairly quickly; it'll be a long time before I'm able to locate the offices of anyone who I don't interact with multiple times per day.
I now realize that my nervousness about being able to help is more or less moot. I've already been able to help one of my colleagues - Randy, an SDSU graduate - with some fairly straightforward CAD work, and I've also been working with him to brainstorm improvements to a dispensing mechanism for small (less than 1mm) lithium granules. Just before writing this post, I came up with an idea that may be able to improve on the existing design (an explanation would require background on the existing design, which is a bit complicated for this blog post, but I may have cause to explain it in a future post). I plan to present it tomorrow; it may or may not be practical, but it will certainly give me a good feel for what is practical, and will help me to come up with better designs in the future. Tomorrow and Thursday, I will be helping yet another colleague complete the wiring for a project, so I'm looking forward to getting experience in a wide variety of engineering and physics fields over the course of my internship. Either way, I'm confident going forwards that I will be able to find ways to make myself useful.
I now realize that my nervousness about being able to help is more or less moot. I've already been able to help one of my colleagues - Randy, an SDSU graduate - with some fairly straightforward CAD work, and I've also been working with him to brainstorm improvements to a dispensing mechanism for small (less than 1mm) lithium granules. Just before writing this post, I came up with an idea that may be able to improve on the existing design (an explanation would require background on the existing design, which is a bit complicated for this blog post, but I may have cause to explain it in a future post). I plan to present it tomorrow; it may or may not be practical, but it will certainly give me a good feel for what is practical, and will help me to come up with better designs in the future. Tomorrow and Thursday, I will be helping yet another colleague complete the wiring for a project, so I'm looking forward to getting experience in a wide variety of engineering and physics fields over the course of my internship. Either way, I'm confident going forwards that I will be able to find ways to make myself useful.