Overview of what I am going to talk about. Background = Who is USACE? What do they do? What did I do for them? The good = What I liked, The Bad = What I didn’t like. Discussion = I have some questions I want to ask, or whatever else comes out of the presentation. Interrupt at any time!
2 main missions of the army corps. Build military bases, military related projects (Restoration in Iraq) GWOT=Global War on Terror. Mission 2 is to maintain navigable waterways.
I worked for Detroit, which is a huge district. Jurisdiction over the entire great lakes and channels, excluding most of lake erie and all of lake ontario.
I didn’t work in hydrology, so I am not that clear on what they did, but it was a lot of water level forecasting.
Bookkeeping = going though data and making notes, making it accessable.
Entire coast of Lake Michigan, from Michigan City Indiana, to Manistee. Other trip was to south Haven and a few miles north on the lake. Never been to the lake other than traverse city, didn’t know how beautiful it is!
House on lake south of St Joe
South of Ludington, Best view on the Lake!! 300 ft above water.
On same spot
Sunset over harbor
Ag- Had classes in agriculture, worked in Ag research at state. I found myself wanting to study it in my spare time, it was really weird. I wanted to talk to the people I was working for, the public. What did they think? Besides the trips (7 days total) , all I did was work on the computer 40 hours a week. I wanted to die of boredom at the end of it.
Tell story of why all work is on Lake Michigan. Senators forcing permits, etc.
House from earlier, this is the pool, ON THE LAKE. It is on a dune, which means that it will be covered in sand after a few years.
Seawall, to protect the lake from eroding the bluff. Whoops!!!
Chastised because I went to MSU. Every mistake I made was because I went to MSU. MSU lost, MSU sucks, I don’t get it because I went to MSU. Tell story about my bike activism (is that an activist website?) how they ripped on people at work who were involved in politics. Story about LBGT friends. Tell lunch stories (Eric’s story about why he hires girls, taking pictures of girls on the beach, checking them out, made me feel out of place) Ripped on if you acted feminine. CE lab partner – “girls shouldn’t be engineers”
My mom kept telling me that every place I work will be like this. Boys will be Boys. I need to get over it. Is she right? Am I never ever going to find a place to work where people respect me, and don’t treat me different because I am a girl? I really couldn’t stand it, there fore, I am never going to stand any job. This overwhelming sense of fear haunted me. We’ll see when I work for the USDA