Meeting MITE

I was extremely lucky to spend part of my Tuesday in Morro Bay, CA with members of the MITE team. Loredana, another intern from Poly, and I carpooled up to meet with the team during a meeting, have some lunch and talk about technology and education (shocking!) and get to know each other.

As a high school student I had a few lame part time jobs, bottom of the food chain type positions where my superiors liked me but I was replaceable and we all knew it. MITE, however, welcomed their two students like we had been with them for years. It was an incredible feeling having several experienced professionals not only ask serious questions about what I've been working on but to then complement my work and discuss future potential. Top it off with a great lunch and delivery of a paycheck, it was a full afternoon.

One of our discussion topics after lunch turned to the question of how often am I using technology for things completely outside my education. And I realized...almost always! My major is fairly lab and computer intensive and so when I am at school I can be found working on a press, sitting behind a big Apple monitor, proofing sheets, etc. But once I leave it pretty much stops. I may have lab assignment to finish at home, work on a document in Photoshop or Illustrator, but that's it. I program things into my GPS unit, send my lovely girlfriend text messages on my phone, carry my laptop on campus to check email, design webpages at home for my ska band, post comments on Digg...notice anything? Though all of those things are pretty enjoyable, the entire reason I live in San Luis Obispo is to go to school but it seems like once I'm off campus that experience stops.