Rose-Hulman

Late Wednesday afternoon, my boss came to me and said he had a favor to ask. He was supposed to travel to Terre Haute, Indiana the next day to judge a design contest and meet the president of the university but his kids had strep throat and he was feeling sick too. So, I agreed to go in his place. I was a little bummed because Joseph, Grant, and Hans all had their last soccer game the next night, which I would have to miss, but I decided to go anyway.

Digilent, where I work, sells circuit boards that are used in electrical engineering classes to help students learn their material. Digilent sponsors several design contests a year, where students use Digilent products to design and build projects. This contest was at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. They are the number one ranked undergrad engineering school in the county.

So, I woke up Thur. morning at 3:30am, drove to Spokane and flew to Indianapolis. I rented a car and drove an hour to Terre Haute Indiana. I met with the main contact, Mihaela, a native Romanian. She took me on a short tour of the campus, then took me to dinner at a nice Indian place. I had Lamb curry, and she had some type of salmon, and we ended up trading because we each liked the others' dish better. It was fun to talk to her, especially since I'll be going to Romania in two weeks. (One of the things I'll be doing there is being a judge for a design contest they are having at a local university). Friday, I woke up at 6am their time, 3am my time, to be at the school for the contest. There were seven groups with projects ranging from digital organs, a guitar chord recognizer, color analyzer, oscilloscope, logic analyzer, to name a few. I was asked numerous times for tips and advice, but each time I had to tell the inquirer that I was just the corporate counsel that was sent in the place of the president and was there to hand out the prizes. Believe me, this was very hard to say because I hate admitting I know nothing about the products we sell.

After the contest, I ate lunch in the cafeteria, then met with the president of the university. I didn't really know what to say to this guy, but we ended up having a real nice chat. He had worked at Loyola Marymount, which is in the same conference as Gonzaga, and said he had been to Gonzaga many times. After this, I then went and handed out the prizes, gave literally a 5 second speech and got back in my car, drove to the airport, and got back to Spokane at 10:30pm, and home in bed just after midnight. It was a fun trip and look forward to going back next year.