My last project for my writing class is due in the morning. All I have to do after this is my reflective portfolio and then I'm done with all of the requirements outside of my major. The next two years I get to take classes specific to my major or minor exclusively.

My Microwave Circuits and Networks class is my first technical elective and I really like it because it's much more focused and applied to real world things than school has been most of the time up until now. Plus, with a technical elective instead of a required course the professor is almost always teaching something that aligns directly with his/her research. This professor is so much of an expert that instead of answering a question that was slightly off topic in class one day, he told us that we could look it up in the library, by searching his name. He's also really concerned with making sure we understand the material so offered us a choice of one of three take home finals for extra credit. We still have to take the final at the scheduled time, but he'll count these more if we do well on them. Because we can use a computer to do the calculations, a take home exam can be much more realistic than an in class exam.

One of the options was to evaluate the power distribution from an antenna that was designed to be placed on a building, specifically how much power would be transmitted into the building. We are actually able to make the problem fairly realistic now, taking into consideration the construction of the building and how much that would sheild the residents and determine if the antenna would be safe for the people living in the building.

The second exam is a three layer coating designed to absorb transmitted power and we have to determine the frequency range for which it is most effective. This type of coating has been used to coat planes for stealth operations to make them not appear on radar systems.
The third exam is to read a journal paper and validate and confirm some of the results. This is someone's state of the art, new work, and it's exciting to be able to actually understand and reproduce their same results.

After finals next week, I'm moving home for the rest of the summer and I start my coop in two weeks!