You can only blame covid if you can demonstrate what disadvantages unique to NU came with it.
Game changing campus? Weather? Game day experience? I would expect the recruiting limitations to have helped NU.
Rittenberg calls out Fitz re: JON
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Game changing campus? Weather? Game day experience? I would expect the recruiting limitations to have helped NU.
I don't remember having a capstone course. Hopefully I would have known about that. Back then Northwestern did not offer design courses at all - the mechanical engineering curriculum was nearly all math. I think I took 6 quarters of calculus and advanced mathematics. Then a bunch of stuff like Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, Mechanics of Materials, Stress Analysis, an Aerodynamics class, Fluid Dynamics. I took Introduction to Computer Programming. We used punch cards and wrote our programs in Fortran. Ever heard of it?
But, you know, I have posted many many times over the past 2 years and I haven't lied about anything yet, so use your deductive powers...
And a word of caution - it is perfectly fine to be proud of your accomplishments at Northwestern, but arrogance is a different story. Especially when you're just guessing.
That is kind of an ugly statement bro.
As far as I can tell, @stpaulcat is the only regular poster we have who served in Vietnam. StPaulCat has my eternal respect as a result. My dad never came close to Evanston and is suffering from a cancer likely caused from his service in Vietnam. But he is a man’s man, and would kick the shit out of most posters half his age on this or any message board.
Meanwhile a lot of our posters of that age used their money / privilege to avoid the draft. Maybe they were successful at being lawyers, but they sucked at life and their kids do too.
Basically the only poster of that generation who has served is my man @stpaulcat .
It sounds like @WaveJumper served as well! Semper Fi!
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I studied chemical engineering and I agree there was no capstone course when I went. I remember using those computer punch cards too at Vogelbach. If you make one mistake, you had to correct the card and resubmit the whole deck. I had to take a lot of same classes you mention as part of the engineering core curriculum, actually enjoyed a few of them.
Oh, me thinks there are a few more. Oohra!
No offense intended. Just using a historical indicator to indicate the age of many of our regulars, who are likely retired. Unlike you and I, gainfully employed but, mmm, still also finding time to waste here.
You may be surprised how few "privileged" people are here. I matriculated in 1980, so I was too young for Vietnam and too old for the Gulf War. My parents were divorced and I could only attend NU due to their generous aid package.. No real silver spoon. I had one friend whose family was really wealthy, and others were well-to-do, but a lot of working class types like my family as well.
Regardless, I am sorry to hear about your dad, and even sorrier for how poorly Vietnam vets were treated. I was listening to a podcast about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial the other day and found myself weeping about it.
I’ve edited my post - my thanks to @WaveJumper and others for their service.
Sorry it was a tough week as my dad’s been struggling with the return of his PSA levels. He’s a tough dude, hopefully he’ll be alright for a while.
There is always time to waste in the day! Especially given the beautiful new WFH era. How did we ever spend so much time commuting.
Dude - do you sleep. I’m in Bali - 13 hour difference. You have been posting all day!
On and off. If you had young kids, you’d know parenting requires odd hours.
I am one of those types that seems to function alright on minimal sleep. Now that i’m getting older, it’s time to get more regimented to ensure 7 hours of shuteye a night.
Well said phatty my boy. In my personal experience, which was probably the same time as you, the NU student body had a fairly diverse socio-economic demography in the early eighties when I attended. I had one roommate from a working class family, another who was the son of a successful surgeon, and a whole variety in between. I also knew several ROTC students who would've served in any war. To broadly paint the NU students as spoiled privileged kids who were all draft dodgers is simply false. Shame on you. @CatManFake
Of course, since the 80s, our tax structure and criminal justice system have been rigged to give fewer opportunities to the ‘lowborn’ (shoutout to House of the Dragon).
I was in school during Y2K, and I can say that I mostly remember CMT’s silver spoon types (myself included), and fewer from working class upbringings. One guy I coincidentally remembered from Michael Jordan Basketball Camp in the early 90s - he had flown in from LA for the four-day camp as an 11-year-old. I also had a friend from Chicago Public Schools who was way into doom metal.
I have no idea what the actual demographics look liked, now or then.
It’s interesting and incredibly sad how poorly treated Vietnam vets were. The U.S. has kept on losing — or at least, failing to succeed in the mission — but showing appreciation to our heroes is more American than baseball at this point (though we can’t be troubled to fund their their ongoing health).
My father just passed away last week, so I understand your feeling. It was a slow decline for him but fortunately no major suffering and he died peacefully, was alive one moment and just stopped breathing the next moment. I returned to Wilmette where he lived to help send him off, and have been taking many trips down memory lane after meeting family and friends I haven't seen in ages, looking at old pictures, reminiscing, talking about the good times. My dear mom who has been afflicted with Alzheimers understood what happened and has accepted it. It's been a bittersweet time, but life goes on. Funerals bring people together and I personally feel it's a time to celebrate the life of the deceased while mourning our loss at the same time. We shared a lot of laughter along with some tears that were shed.
You don't have to justify your existence to strangers. Like it or not you have an opinion on NU Football. Don't like it? Hit the ignore button like I do for Corbi.
I’m sorry for your loss, and hope your mom is well cared for. Alzheimer’s is a devastating diagnosis. My dad’s cancer returning and his struggle this time around has awakened a lot of emotions, especially as they’re a few states away and my mom is dependent on him (she basically lost her ability to walk or drive due to a back issue a few years ago). So if the worst case does happen… I may have to figure out an assisted living situation for her. Not sure how that talk will go.
He’s as tough as they come but since my brother passed away last year… it’s been strange to see him soften in old age.
It also makes me want to really get serious about my own health. I’ve been slacking this year in that regard, and my main goal in life is seeing my sons through to adulthood and being there for them. It’s something that most of us take for granted, but I’ve lost others who left behind very young children the last few years. At least we got to know our dads… they didn’t, really.
So coming on here and venting about the Cats is a nice release. It’s just a sport and something that ultimately doesn’t impact anything major, and is a blessed distraction. Even if we do go 1-11, the players who stay and graduate from NU will be well positioned to succeed in things that do matter in life.
In 1991, I took two quarters of chemical engineer design, which I consider to be a capstone course. DaCat, you didn't take something similar?
I was in BME back in the same time and don't remember any kind of capstone course. That said, BME was all over the place back then still trying to figure out what it even meant.
When I attended 1980-85 (five year plan with co-op), we had to do a senior project - I did mine on desalination using reverse osmosis - but no capstone course.
Fellow BME!
And same basic recollection on the courses from a few years later. There was a design course but it was one quarter and while I enjoyed it I wouldn’t call it a capstone.
I also benefited from NU’s generous aid package as my dad was out of work for a bit, and they made it very affordable.
And at points I’ve felt a bit guilty as I was a student while soldiers the same age as me were deployed to Iraq & Afghanistan. I was incredibly privileged to be in Evanston and didn’t fully appreciate it until years after.
But then again, my dad had it better than my maternal grandfather who had to drop out of high school to support his family during the Great Depression and went to WW2 at an older age anyway.
Hopefully my sons’ generation can avoid these awful wars. But global events have somewhat shattered my hope for that this year.
This is interesting. In ECE there was a clear capstone project in lieu of a thesis in the 2000s, and I assumed that applied to all of McCormick.
Dean Ottino is retiring soon and may have transformed it further with the “whole brain engineering” philosophy (which I’m a fan of).
I have no clue what a "capstone" course is. But back in the day, the 70's, there was a Senior Unit Operations required class which met all day Thursdays to do lab work, which I think intended to use stuff taught in lecture classes in practice. I remember doing cumene cracking, nylon 66 polymerization, and distillation, plus other stuff I can't remember. It was definitely not an easy course.
Here’s a nice brochure from the MechE program as one example of a request for some capstone sponsors. It’s similar to what we did in the basic engineering analysis courses (IIRC those courses correctly) where the professors solicited ideas from the community as freshmen teams to see what solutions we could come up with… but as seniors with all of McCormick’s learnings (the MechE ones are cooler than the ECE ones were). At least, what we did back in the day:
