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The univerisity I go to, Kettering , is based on the idea of co-op education. Every one has to have a co-op, usually for all five years that you are there.

And I know many college students who have the same problem you do. I know I did at my co-op when I first started. They had me doing mostly paper work for new job contracts and it was driving me nuts(especially because there wasn't much of it because of y2k upgrades).

I don't fault them for doing this, they didn't know what I could do. It would be much worse for the company, and the student, if they expect you to already be able to do the same job that the engineer's that have degrees are doing. It takes a balancing act to figure out where each individual's skills fall in.

As I was saying they had me doing paper work, and not much of it, maybe 8 hours worth a week. So I spent my free time productivly. The company did database programming in a language called PICK, so I spent all my free time at work teaching myself PICK. After a while my mangers walked by and noticed what I was doing. They were shocked that I already knew how to program, and took the initiative to learn the language that they used. The next day I came in and had a stack of modifications that they wanted me to make to different parts of the code.

So put forth some initiative and show them that you are capable, and want to do more, and you just might be suprised.

Even if not, be happy you're actually doing something. I know plenty of co-ops that sit at their desk all day and just twiddle their thumbs.

Mine's pretty boring, but I'll post it anyways. Basically around 9 years ago I got a modem (2400!) and I logged onto a BBS that required the use of a nick name. So, I sat and looked around to see if anything around me would spark a nickname. Then I saw a pack of Mr. Sketch markers (you know, the scented ones :) ), and I've been using it ever since. In college, my friends shorted it to just 'Sketch' and called me by that instead of my real name, in fact I think one of my friends hasn't call me by my real name in well over two years. But on informal boards and online, I still like to go by Mr. Sketch.

So that's the history behind my name, if anyone cares. One of the drawbacks of it is that people assume that I can draw which is sooooo far from the truth: I can't even draw a stick figure well.

I used Nachos at GMI. It was ok, but the prof murdered the class unbeleivably....

C++, btw, made the class usefull. I, being a CE, and thankfully not a CS student, actually knew C/C++ from my other classes, and didn't have to come up to speed on it they way all the poor CS students did from their hellish experiences with Modula-2.

I took java, and that was painfull, not the language so much as that I was coding in 4 hours, start/finish what they would spend 2 weeks on... The CS people were pretty pitiful. But then, the CS program was even worse.

End of story: We used nachos, it was kinda cool, but if you're going into CS, go elsewhere. If you're going into CE, then it's a decent place.

These cars are open-wheeled electric race cars. At up to 140MPH (as Ohio State's car recently hit), these cars certainly arn't wimpy or slow.

One of the problems with pure electric cars is that of range and recharge time. Our car, for example, runs for only 10-20min on a set of batteries. Since it take so long to recharge them, we simply swap out all 56 sealed-lead acid batteries during a pit stop (1200+ lbs). One interesting note: electric motors develop peak torque at low RPM's giving good accelleration and great burn-outs. :)