An Introduction to AERSP 204H

What on earth is AERSP 204H? Well, now that I’ve gotten you all nice and confused by the title, I can give you a look into one of my engineering classes: Flight Vehicle Design and Fabrication I, also known as Sailplane. As a basic introduction, Sailplane is essentially a class that an Aerospace Engineering major can take from their first through eighth semesters of college. Specifically, the goal of the class is to give engineering students an idea of what being in a career in the field is really like. Students get both hands-on and background knowledge of the field by designing and building- you guessed it- a sailplane. Throughout my passion posts I will give you, as my readers, a weekly look into the class and my views on other aspects of aerospace engineering.

To start off, it helps if you know a bit about me and where I was coming from when I chose Aerospace Engineering as a major. First of all, I am a Freshman (yay) in the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State University Park. I decided to major in engineering after my junior year in high school, when I took my first Calculus class and loved it (shout out to my awesome AP Calc teacher). Why Aerospace? Because my grandfather was a pilot and sparked the interest in me to learn all about aviation and aircraft. I will admit that engineering is a difficult field (in fact, just the other day I told someone I was in engineering and they said, “oh my goodness I am so sorry.”), but I feel that it will be worth it in the end.  Enough about me though, lets get into the meat of what Sailplane is and what perspectives I will be offering you for the next few weeks.

Much like in high school, a lot of the classes we are forced against our will- I mean “choose”- to take seem relevant, but not entirely transferrable to our futures. Even classes that I enjoy, such as Calculus, are classes that do not directly link to the workplace. In other words, I will most likely not be deriving complex functions for eight hours a day as an engineer. I will use it, of course, but the key is that it will be applied. That’s what’s great about a class like Sailplane, you take everything you know as a student (which, granted, as a Freshman, isn’t much) and translate it to make it into something applicable to the problem at hand. Many engineers go into the workplace without having a clue about how to work in groups, apply their skills, and think on their own. Of course, doing an internship at the undergraduate level does help the situation, but another great thing about Sailplane is that you are thrown right into “real life engineering” from the minute you step foot on campus your freshman year until the minute you graduate senior year. So as future engineers, I ask you to challenge yourself and take a class like Sailplane in your own field. Even if you’re  not an engineer, I encourage you to find a class that will give you a good idea of what you hope to do in the future.

If you’d like more information about Sailplane, you can click here to go to the class webpage (it’s a bit out of date, but still interesting).