So a lot has happened lately. I graduated from Walla Walla University, which is great, minus having to say goodbye to the friends I have made. It was nice of my parents, grandparents, uncle, aunt, cousins, and friends to come up and cheer me on! It was a typical graduation, not remembering much except for getting an empty diploma (the rest gets mailed after final grades are determined).
Graduation was last Sunday and within hours I had to be whisked away to show up in San Francisco for my summer internship paperwork and fingerprinting. Though the internship is close to home, it is through the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Hetch Hetchy Water and Power is the specific place I am doing my internship at, where the water from various reservoirs in the Sierra Nevadas are transported via pipe and tunnel to San Francisco for their drinking water, gleaning some hydropower along the way. Anyway, I had to catch a flight down to SF then take BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to where the city buildings were. There I was supposed to have a hotel waiting for me, but when I got there the place was all shut down, no buzzer or anything. So I finally find a place, turns out to be the most sketchy hotel I have ever been in (Europe included). I sleep in my clothes not sure what is in/on the bed. The next morning I get everything all squared away and then head home.
The internship has been good, having been there only a week. My supervisor left for a week-long vacation after I only being there for a couple days. I have already been assigned a few projects including as-built drawings for some different structures and a design project for a cantilevered platform for one of the gate towers in a nearby reservoir. I am sure I will learn a lot over this summer, I am hoping to get some good pictures of the stuff I will be working on. I’ll keep you posted.
After my 3-month stint at Hetch Hetchy I will be going up to UC Davis for my masters degree program in structural engineering. Lots of new experiences are being thrown my way, but it is kind of exciting…
