As I woke up on the last day of my internship at NB Power, a feeling similar to the one I felt at the end of Shad Valley hit me once again. I realized that an amazing learning opportunity and truly rewarding experience was about to end. When I arrived at NB Power’s head office, I was greeted by the security personnel and wished a good day. I took the elevator to the fourth floor and proceeded to my cubicle where my supervisor was waiting to thank me for all my hard work. During my month long work term with NB Power, I was responsible for collecting data concerning various plants’ high pressure feed water heaters. I travelled around the province, taking readings and monitoring the heating systems. After gathering a sufficient amount of data, I conducted heat balances to determine whether the overall performance of the heaters had changed over the past few months.

My first task on my last day was finalizing all of the work I had completed; I reviewed my findings by making sure that my spreadsheets had the correct information and my summary reports accurately described the data’s relationship to both past statistics and the design specifications. When I finished going through my results, I converted the summaries to PDFs, scanned my calculations and sent them to my supervisor and other NB Power employees who would benefit from my work.

The time I spent at NB Power was genuinely unforgettable and it allowed me to learn more than I ever imagined about the engineering world. Shad Valley and this internship gave me the tools to recognize all of my strengths with which I was and will be able to succeed in all my endeavors. For this and many other things, I am very grateful.

Alex Pupek
Hometown: Fredericton, NB

Today was my second last day at Christie Digital Systems, a company that builds projectors. I do not have a specific job description per say, but rather I am assigned to help anywhere needed. What I liked most was how much freedom I was allowed. My supervisor would say: “Here is the problem...” and give me a brief description on a real, serious problem that the company is facing and then I would research, design, implement and write a short report on the solution/test I had prepared to solve this problem.

I was never limited to time, budget or other constraints and could do whatever I wanted as long as it was justifiable. I have worked with gigantic thermal chambers for a battery cold test I had designed, to evaluating and solving thermal and airflow issues on $1 500 printed circuit boards, down to solving how to make $1.50 temperature sensors more robust.

I have worked with almost every aspect of engineering and this job has showed me what each has to offer. Christie has allowed me to expand on my creativity and problem solving skills in a real world setting and gave me significant hands-on experience.

Filip Rangelov
Hometown: Waterloo, ON

My internship is at Sierra Wireless, an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) of wireless networking modules. I started the day by working on a project document with a fellow Shad intern, Zamyla. After a brief research period, we began appending the information to the comprehensive project document that encompassed the work we had done so far. Our project goal was to plan the development of a new testing procedure.

Shortly afterward, my colleague and I were invited to sit in on a conference call between Sierra Wireless and one of its clients. We observed as our project manager handled the various product issue concerns the client was experiencing. The experience allowed us to observe the different stages of work that contribute to the release of a single module into the market. It seems that every time we are exposed to a new experience, we see the project in a new light, allowing us to further refine our project documentation.

While work on the project document was challenging at times, I’ve learned a lot about product development workflows and the strong need for extensive planning in any project. I’m extremely grateful for the kindness and friendliness of everyone during my internship.

Jared Ng
Hometown: Port Moody, BC

Ring! Ring! Ring! Boom! My alarm wakes me for a fantastic day at work. Off I go to Fredericton downtown, feeling grown up and very businesslike when I walk into that big shiny building with "NB Power" on the outside.

NB Power, my employer for my internship, provides electrical power to most of New Brunswick. My co-workers are cool designer guys who stand out in a workplace environment. Instead of a quiet office where all you hear is complete silence, with keyboard tapping, our office has a different feel, and we always have music, use balance balls as chairs, and we joke around while ensuring we complete all our design projects on time. I am loving this job and am hoping I will be able to work here again in the future as a Shad alumni. I've learned so much about design tools on a Mac, and indeed I am a much better Photoshop designer than I used to be. I’m proud of the Photoshop designs I have created, the poster layouts that I have done, and the other work I have completed.

Although the team is professional, dedicated and productive, they know how to have fun. At lunch we often do crazy and different things, because as the saying goes "try something new every day". Today was "Skateboardin' Day" for the crew. After a hard morning’s work, we had a skateboard photo shoot at lunch break - we headed to a skate park and got loads of wicked pictures. When we got back we edited a few and made the best skate photo out of all our wipe outs.

This was a very memorable work experience, because of the fantastic and talented people I work with. I learned many things from these great people in a span of only four weeks, which is incredible. I hate saying goodbye to my job and my co-workers on Friday, and I’m a bit dismayed that I have to leave and go back to another long school year. I hope to have a chance to work with them again in the future.

Jeffrey Wo
Hometown: Hanwell, NB