An Update
September 2005 was the last time I posted before this morning -- at that point, I believe I was at the beginning of my senior year at VT and since then A LOT has happened. So let me recap --

Collegiate Life: I majored in Aerospace Engineering and was really active in the Marching Virginians (where I was a rank captain during my junior and senior year for the mellophone section). In addition, I was an officer in Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honors society, and Sigma Gamma Tau, the aerospace engineering honors society. I co-oped at GE Aircraft Engines in Cincinnati for 2 terms. During my senior year, I was on the International Design team -- a joint design project between VT and Loughborough University in England. During that project I served as the VT Team lead and also got a free trip to England out of that team. I graduated in May 2006 summa cum laude with a BS in Aerospace Engineering. I had a really great time in college -- learned a LOT, met a LOT of really great people, and had a TON of really great experiences.

Work Life after college: I accepted a job at NAVAIR Flight Dynamics in Patuxent River, MD (its on a little peninsula between the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay) where I started July 24th, 2006. The job description was everything I wanted in a job... I have been in a rotational development program since then. My first job rotation was in Flight Dynamics, where I worked on Small UAVs. Some of my job was cool, and a lot of it was boring and monotonous, however, the work I saw people in my group doing was pretty cool and I want the chance to experience that. My second rotation was with the Flight Controls group, where I worked mainly on the Firescout UAV which was a good experience but the workload fluctuated a good bit -- also during that rotation I got the chance to work on a really unique investigation of the A-7 rate gyros for the Greek Air Force. This rotation also gave me my first trip to California (San Diego). Now I just started a rotation in the Carrier Suitability Flight Test group which should be a really fun rotation and give me some unique experiences, most likely including a shipboard test (on the USS Reagan?).

Other Life after College: I'm pretty active in the ESDP (Engineer & Scientist Development Program) and am my competancy's council rep so I try to organize activities for ESDPs in my competancy and for all ESDPs so I can meet people and keep busy... its taken me a while to really start meeting people that I feel like I mesh with and can hang out with but finally in the last 5 months. In addition to that, I joined the Redskins Marching band last year and continue to do that which is pretty fun and gets me (and 2 guests) into all home games for free. This spring/summer I finally got my private pilot license, so now I fly all sorts of random places to expore or just grab a bite to eat.

Personal Life: While co-oping at GE, I met a boy whom I started dating in May 2004. He also was an aero engineer at VT, but started a year before me -- we ended up graduating at the same time. We liked to travel a lot and have been a lot of really great places together -- including England, France, Las Vegas, and multiple sporting events (Indy 500, Pepsi 400 at Daytona, VT football game at Miami, and NCAA playoff games in Columbus), and many other places inbetween. As of this May we had been dating for 3 years, but I started really thinking about things and wasn't sure that I saw myself marrying him -- after meeting a new ESDP up here who had been dating a girl for 3-4 years and was starting to think about the "M" word, and then realized that they weren't meant to be together... I decided that it probably wasn't fair to either of us to keep things going if I didn't see it going there.

So that's a brief recap....next time an update of the last few weeks since I became single again....