The other student I met this past week was actually a graduate student in my Mobile Applications and Services (CS 4261) class. While our class only started out with 3 students, we had three more graduate students join (all which I’ll interview eventually!) and 3 more undergraduates. The student I spoke to was Boris, who is a French student that attended EPF, an engineering school near Paris. At his other school his studies focused in the IT field, specifically in information systems and management for companies.That being said, for graduate school he is more focused on the computer part of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) because he has less background on the electrical part, and he feels like that fits with the graduate program at Georgia Tech-Lorraine.
He described his studies at Georgia Tech-Lorraine as a dual-degree master in ECE which he explained saying, “some people do just one semester at GTL but for me it’s 2 semesters at GTL, then an internship to graduate from my engineering school, and then I go to Atlanta next spring.” His internship program sounded intriguing to me, and while he doesn’t know what the internship will be yet, he was able to go to a graduate seminar to see what the internship possibilities are. Boris even applied to a company and is interviewing next week.
When I asked about his future and what his interests are, he said he is focused more on development and problem solving than research. He likes cryptography, and is also really interested in the network security class with Dr. Paul Voss. “I am more focused on having a job-related view about these fields. I don’t want to work in robotics, so it’s helpful to have classes that are more related to what I want to work in.” He said it’s kind of a “blur” regarding where he wants to work and while he doesn’t want to do research he wants to work somewhere he can do a project, work on something from end to end, and wants to experiment with new technologies to help companies improve their processes. (I couldn’t help thinking that this was similar to what I had talked about with Elizabeth!)
The story of how Boris ended up going to Georgia Tech is a little different from most. While he is from Paris, he chose to go to Georgia Tech when his previous school offered it since he had actually been living in Atlanta for his previous internship. He saw the campus and thought it was amazing, and even his roommate back in Atlanta was a student at Tech. He mentioned that the main difference between his last school and GT is the quality of the assignments and faculty. “People have a really deep knowledge in their fields, so you can ask good questions and improve as a student.”
Since Boris is from France, he doesn’t stay in Metz over the weekend because he spends that time visiting family in Paris. When he is in Metz however, he spends his time at events hosted in the ALOES dorm and rock climbing with other graduate students.
I’m really glad I have the opportunity to meet all the graduate students, especially since I am taking classes with some of them – and their stories are really interesting!