The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age
Ya'll use University wrong.The classes, etc. ... whatever!During my time at Uni, I:* designed a demonstrator car frame to show off a bunch of new manufacturing techniques, which was actually built in the end* was part of a team who tested a new type of fiber optical vibration sensor on a sounding rocket* worked with a PhD student on developing a sensor to measure water flow through a tank to validate his simulations* wrote code that is now orbiting earth on board of a CubeSat we built with a team of ~100 studentsWe had groups who built race cars, a group who won ~all of the Hyperloop challenges, a group which builds rockets (seriously they have a lab in the basement of the cantina - the only rocket powered cantina in the world), a group that designs, builds and flies their own soaring planes (no-one died ... yet) - and that's just the ones I considered cool.
All of this groups get access to top notch workshop and lab equipment and some of these groups are so present at their respective chairs that they end up driving a serious amount of the research happening there.University is a place where teachers and students who are interested in a field meet to learn and research together. Modern Uni has often forgotten that, but if the students treat it as such it works in this way. We have to tell students how they can get positive experiences out of the current system - by trying to do so, they will change the system from within.I honestly regret wasting my first couple of semesters before I learned about all of this stuff.