Stop take some time to think, figure out what's important to you!

So I found a new band the other day called Against Me. And one of there songs has constantly been in my head called Stop! And with that, the words of the chorus have also been in my head
http://www.myspace.com/againstme

Stop! Take some time to think, figure out what’s important to you.
Stop! Take some time to think, figure out what’s important to you.
Stop! Take some time to think, figure out what’s important to you.
You’ve got to make a serious decision.

All the decisions I've made so far have been easy..because they have been short term decisions. Work exchange in Denmark? Why not, it'd be cool to experience Europe for 6 months. Take a job in Olympia? Sure, it'll be great experience for when I go to grad school. Move to France for another year of school? Of course, give me a chance to learn French, experience French culture, specialize in Aeronautics.

But now, looking ahead to this summer and fall...I've got some really big decisions to make...and I'm completely lost. Where am I going to work?

Stay in Europe? Go to America? Go back to Canada? I just don't know. All have their advantages and disadvantages. On one hand the money in America is better. But on the other hand the 'perks' such as vacation are much better here in Europe. For instance here in France, at Airbus you gather holidays at a rate of between 2-3 days per month!! That's around 30 vacation days per year!! In America...maybe you get 4-5 days after working there one year. If you work at a company for 3-4 years, perhaps you get 2 weeks.

Average salary here in Europe for a new grad in Aeronautics is in the 30,000 - 35,000 Euro range. Whereas in America or Canada I should be able to get $48,000 - 55,000. (Keep in mind this is not the OIL business...for all my friends who are already making much more then that).

I don't even know the type of company I want to go to. Big company, small company, large transport aircraft, small private aircraft, business jets, airliners, manufacturing, design, management....ahhhhhh. I've worked for the small company in Soloy and I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed being able to work a little bit on everything, the close atmosphere, being in the engineering office, then walking down the stairs and actually working ON the plane. Going in the air for flight tests, then coming back to the office to analyze it. But i'm sure big companies have their advantages also. My internship will be for Airbus, which is a big as they get, so hopefully this work experience will give me some comparison to make up my mind.

But then also comes the location. There are some small airplane companies that I think would be fun to work for, but their locations...although I shouldn't prejudge, aren't exactly high profile locations. Such as Cirrus in Duluth Minnesota, or Cessna in Wichita Kansas, or Diamond Aircraft in London Ontario..and many more. It seems small manufacturers in order to manage costs often set up shop in smaller cities. Not that I think there is anything wrong with these cities, it's just that at this point in my life i.e. single 25yr old, I imagine myself in a big city. A city with sports teams, theater, night life, restaurants, clubs and organizations, travel options....etc....And as I found out when I was in Olympia you need both parts of your life to be 'good' to be really happy. Because in Olympia the job was great, I loved it, but the after work time was boring as I simply couldn't find anything to really get into in Olympia.

However, I also really like Europe. Everything is so close, and yet you take a 2hr plane ride and you can be in a completely new culture. New food, new people, new language, new architecture. It's incredible. If I have a 3 day weekend I can hop on a flight and in 3hrs be in London, Berlin, Madrid, Paris, Stockholm, Budapest, Rome. It's incredible to have so many places so close. And then back to work Monday morning!

And Toulouse is a really great city that is big enough to have everything, but small enough you can go anywhere in the city in 30minutes with metro/bus/car. And the location is great, 2hrs from the Atlantic Coast, 2 hrs from the Mediterranean coast, 3hrs to Barcelona, 5hrs by train to Paris, 1.5 hrs to the Pyranese Mountains, 5hrs from the Alps. And the weather is nice, not extremely hot in the summer (+26C avg) and not cold in the winter (-2C is as low as it got, although I still would love to have some snow in the winter).

But then going back to the other hand. There's a lot of things I miss about Canadian and American culture. And it would be really nice to be a 2hr plane ride from Edmonton rather then a 17hr plane ride (with 3 airplane changes and 6 times the price). I would love to live in Vancouver or Seattle or Montreal. All cities with a lot of Aerospace options, but closer to home and with all great things Canadian i.e. Hockey, Football and Pancakes.

And I could go on and on, putting pro's and con's either way. So you can see my dilemma. And I can't help but think of it....

I guess the only thing I can do, is just start applying to anywhere and everywhere in the summer. Big companies, small companies, big planes, small planes, big cities, small cities, North American cities, European cities. And then wait and see what comes back. Then put them all on a dartboard and throw a dart :P Just kidding about that last part, I'd rather make my own fate :D

But if anyone has any advice I'd be more then happy to hear it.

Cheers all

Logan

P.S. of course there could always been some other influences...such as if I meet a really great girl between now and when decision time comes :)

Meet the Masters

Well this post should have been done a long time ago...I've only been here 5 months...and I spend 83% of my non-sleeping time with all or some of these 8 people.

In our Masters course there are 8 of us, of various nationalities. We have two Canadians (myself being one of them), one Mexican, one Portuguese, one Catalan from Barcelona(not Spanish), one Indian, one Chinese and one French.

Since there is only 8 of us..we spend quite a bit of time together. We have many group projects and lab reports that are done in either groups of 2 or groups of 4. So of course there is only so many combinations of groups of four you can make with 8 people.

Surprisingly everyone has gotten along fairly well. I say surprisingly just because you take 8 people of various nationalities and genders and have them spend 40hrs + per week together there are bound to be conflicts. But we've managed pretty well.

So first off are the four guys that I spend the most time with

Bruno Barreira
Bruno was the first guy I met here. He's from Lisbon, Portugal but spent the first 13yrs of his life growing up in Paris, then came back here for the last year of his degree. Thus he speaks fluent french and has been my dictionary/teacher/helper. Bruno is probably the most helpful guy I've ever met, he will go out of his way, in any way to help you. It doesn't matter.

Bruno also lives here in the residence with me, one floor down. So we have lunch and dinner together all the time. He's our resident CATIA expert (the 3D drawing program we use) and is also absolutely full of knowledge on ever thing. Music artists from 40 yrs ago singing some song I've never heard of...Bruno knows it. He follows every sport there is I think, Football, NHL, Basketball, Formula 1. Whenever we play our soccer video game (Pro Evolution Soccer) he knows who plays for what team, what team they used to play for, who they are married to.

Bruno's main interest here is to get into Formula 1. And this week he got his big news!! He was accepted for his internship at Toyata Formula 1 in Cologne, Germany. His absolute dream position!

Manual Calleja
Our resident Mexican man. What can I say about this guy. He's just awesome, charismatic, friendly, often dressed to impress. Definitely the hardest worker among all us. We did a team work personality test, and before the results were finished we all knew that Manuel would be the Shaper. In that he shapes the work to be done by pushing every one else to meet deadlines and get work done.

But don't be fooled . He's also a wild guy. Back in Mexico his father owns a skydiving company and Manuel is an accomplished skydiver doing tandem jumps, videography, flying the plane. In University he developed a special attachment glove for skydiving with the camera for taking video back at yourself (like when you try and take those self photos by outstretching your arm).

He's also our resident girl watcher. Whenever a pretty girl enters the room, walks by the car, passes a hallway, you can be sure that Manuel will have seen her and will inform us of the beautiful girl that just walked by. But he's also got himself a French girlfriend living in Paris whom he met in Florida while going to University there. He plans to continue on with a Doctorate degree and he got his internship at the Research Lab ONERA doing studies for increasing the lift on wings. Definitely a smart guy!

Vladimir Coca
No he's not Russian. He's a 100% Catalan citizen (for those of you who don't know, Catalan is the region of Spain around Barcelona that used to be it's own country and then was taken by Spain. Thus many people of Catalonia do not consider themselves Spanish).

He's one of the older among us at age 28. But I think he's the youngest at heart. Out of all my pictures, you will never find a picture of Vladi not making a face, a smile, his tongue out, a kissy face...he's such a fun guy. And he's definitely typical Iberian in that he loves to have his Siesta during the day and then at night he can party far long then all of us. If you go to Barcelona and you go to a nightclub at 10pm...11pm...12pm..you'll be one of the only ones there. 1am they start filling up, 2am a little more and then don't really get going until 3am. And then they party on until 5 am, 6am 7am...or if it's a big party 8am, 9am....It's unreal. I don't know how they do it.

Vladi has also been so helpful to me. For my flights I've often been flying out of Barcelona or one of the near Airports since it is so much cheaper. So when he goes home for the weekend I go along with him, I stay with him and his girlfriend and he drives me to the airport and then picks me up on the way back. Honestly I don't know what i'd do without this guy. I got to celebrate Kings day which is the celebration of the three kings on January 5th. This is when presents are given in Spain as a symbol of the Three Kings giving presents. So I celebrated it with him and his family in Barcelona and ate a fantastic meal. It was really great.

For some reason, all the Masters have been having problems finding internships. As of one week ago only two/eight of us had our internships. This week two more got them, but there is still four that have not. So Vladi has been really looking for his internship. He's really interested in Flight Test Engineering, but the number of companies that do that are small and the ones that do, often don't hire interns for that purpose. I'm hoping Vladi get his internship here in Toulouse as he's definitely one of the guys I enjoy hanging out with most. And it would be a fun summer with him around.

Ashish Sharma

Oh what to say about Ashish. Ashish is from India. This guy is crazy haha. You always know where Ashish is..because he's always singing. I can coming down the stairs and you can hear Ashish singing down the hallways of the dorm. Or he's playing imaginary drums on the table or the door. Or he's strumming away on his Air Guitar. As you might imagine he's a music guy and plays bass and drums and sings.

His room is also the most cluttered out of all of us. This is due to the fact that he's a) a vegetarian and b)prefers Indian cooking over the restarants. The dorms here have no kitchens, as a results Ashish has made a makeshift kitchen in his room. So he's got the fridge and the hot plate and then tables and drawers full of different spices, foods, etc.... all in our little 10meter squared rooms :)

Ashish's background was more automotive/propulsion engineering. And he had a job in airplane maintenance for a while. He's also one of the youngest among us at 21. I think the change in culture for him coming to France was a bit more then the rest of us experienced. As I'm sure the culture in India is much different and you can definitely tell he misses India. But it's great experience for him. He plans to work for a year after this and then go and do an MBA (Business) afterwards. He's definitely a fun guy to go out with and his drink of choice is most definitely whiskey.
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The last three students we don't spend as much time with out of school. We organize an event here and there, like a dinner or bowling. But that hasn't been often, 2-3 times since September.

Shaoshan Sun
Our Chinese friend and the oldest among us at 32. In the beginning it was difficult with Shao as his English level was fairly low. So he mostly just kept to himself. He goes back to his other residence for lunch to prepare Chinese food with his Chinese friends. I think it was definitely difficult for him.

However his English has improved a ton! And we can now communicate quite easily and laugh and makes jokes with him. Just the other night we all went over to his house where he and his visiting wife from China prepared a fantastic meal for us! It was a spicy boiling broth and into this broth we dropped everything from beef, bamboo, seaweed, mushrooms, clams, even shark! And then it would cook for about 5 mins and we would fish it out. It was delicious!!!

Shaoshan is here in an interesting way. There is much more collaboration with the growing giant that is China. And the school Supaero has also been working with them and is working on giving some Masters courses in China and offering a Supaero degree there. So I'm not sure how it all works but Supaero had an agreement with the company Shao worked for to have one student come and do the Masters here in France. So Shao is here studying at Supaero for free as part of this agreement.

Shao is a really good worker though and he definitely knows a lot. I've worked with him for the majority of the laboratory projects and he's been a good team member.
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And lastly the two girls Hind and Emmanuelle. In class they spend all of their time with each other. I'm not really sure why, but it's definitely two separate groups. The other 6 of us work together to finish lab reports, workshops, homework. And the two of them just go off on their own.....anyways....

Emmanuelle Beaujard
She's the only French student in our Masters. She studied before in Paris, but afterwards it's still hard to get a job in the Aeronautics industry. So you need to have studied at 'the best' and that is Supaero in the aeronautics world. So she came here to do her Masters.

She's also a pilot and has recently gotten into sail planes.

At the start of the year everything was really friendly, as I posted back in October, four of us went on a hike to the Pyranese and it was really nice. We had our bowling night as well. But she mostly just keeps to herself. And despite the fact that one of the reasons she chose this program was to improve her english, she speaks as little as possible to all of us. And 98% of the time just speaks French to anyone that can reply back in French to her.

Hind El Hannach
Last but not least is Hind. She's a really nice girl. She's from Montreal and is definitely smart!! She finished the Engineering degree there in three years by going full time through the summers. And she has had two internship jobs, one at Pratt and Whitney and one at Bombardier. Thus she's the youngest of all of us when she turned 21 in November.

I've worked with her on a couple of the projects and she's definitely a good worker. And she's more then willing to stand up for herself to make her point.

She also keeps to herself mostly. She has an apartment outside of the school so after school is over we never see her. We haven't taken any trips or such with her. Although she's come out for the bowling night and the dinner at Shaoshan's house.

I also think her family has a bit of money. For all three of our breaks she will have gone home to Montreal. Which is not really the cheapest of flights. And the rumor is that she got to fly first class for the ride home at Christmas...although I don't really know.