Howdy all,
My name is Ethan Stoddard (He, Him), and I am a senior in Mechanical Engineering here at NC State. I am born and raised in Cary, North Carolina, just 20 minutes away from my current address here in Wolf Ridge apartments.
Outside of class, I have been on the NC State solar vehicle team, SolarPack, for 2 years and 9 months as a Chassis and Structural Engineer. Our team’s goal is to produce a solar-assisted electric vehicle, not for the purpose of cutting from the grid, but rather to prove that active solar charging will pay for itself as an eco-friendly convenience.
Beyond SolarPack, I am also a Transmission Engineering Co-Op at Duke Energy, where I work in extremely high voltage applications (69kV-525kV). My past two rotations have been with the Line Engineering and Production Standards workgroups. In the former I most notably worked on a project to add 100MW of solar generation to North Carolina’s electric grid, whereas in the latter I tested and reworked engineering standards for insulation and structural foundations that will be utilized for decades to come.
Going into college decisions in 2016, I chose to attend NC State for Biomedical Engineering over our holier-than-thou sibling in Chapel Hill. From there, I lived in Metcalf with the engineering village and through Engineering 101 and a handful of company visits, I realized that my interests lay in the realms of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. As a Freshman, I was a lead trumpet in the NC State Marching Band and Pep Band, the latter of which I remained in for my Sophomore year.
As a rising Sophomore, I joined the SolarPack team, and continued on doing what students do – study. Junior year, I received my offer from Duke Energy and met my girlfriend, Emma. We will be moving in together this summer, when I will also be in the midst of my third Co-Op rotation at Duke Energy. I will be graduating this Fall, 2020, and hope to stay in the RTP area.
My favorite piece of media is hard to pin down – variety is the spice of life after all. When I’m looking for easy entertainment while working on homework, or if I just want to relax and do something mindless, I usually turn on Twitch.tv and watch my favorite streamer personalities play games, chat with their communities, and watch videos.
In terms of TV shows, my favorite at the moment is Westworld, a science fiction western in which the story follows a technologically advanced theme park consisting of semi-sentient android ‘hosts’ and their human overlords, both staff and guests. The hosts are prevented by their programming to harm humans, but rather play a ‘fulfilling’ part in a handful of narratives in the sprawling wild-west at the will of the guests. The show brings into question the ethics of AI and what it means to be sentient, as well as the morality of playing God. Naturally, playing God with something that isn’t fully understood can have catastrophic consequences as the hosts evolve.
Twitch.tv-daph39
HBO’s “Westworld”
I chose to share a BitMoji I created for social media. As a whole, I chose to make my BitMoji the most accurate representation of myself as possible. The shape of my glasses, the black Boring Company hat worn backwards, the black sweater over a maroon t-shirt, black jeans, and black sneakers fit one of my favorite outfits. With bitmoji, I could choose one of 56 hairstyles to find one that matched my own, choose from 24 eye shapes, 18 eye colors, 40 human skin tones, and even more in terms of head, ear, mouth, and nose shapes. As a whole, I was extremely satisfied with the available options. I generally like to represent my own self image in a majority of my avatars and characters across media. If I make a character who I can relate to the most, I can better communicate my own personality, rather than making up a new and unfamiliar personality and code of ethics.