Hey everyone its Jessica Constant from the Digital Living Consortium (DLC)! I am a junior Civil Engineering major at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) and I would like to share with you my experience coming into the UNH-IOL as a Civil Engineering major. Most of the gentlemen in the DLC have majors that relate to computer sciences, such as Information Technology (IT) and Electrical Engineering (EE). Luckily, they are very patient and take the time to teach certain technical details, such as counting in binary. Coming into the lab was intimidating for me, knowing almost all of my coworkers had a computer science background.
At first the UNH-IOL was overwhelming to say the least. I was hired in a group called Digital Home Networking (DHN), recently re-branded to DLC, and before that point I had never heard of it. I had no idea what to expect, I just knew it was a type of testing. The first day I was hit with so many new terms, it was like speaking a new language! I had to understand the different types of testing and how to perform each one. The amount of knowledge that I have attained in the last month or so is vast. It is different than what I am familiar with in Civil Engineering, as I am used to math problem solving and here it is more technical problem solving. I am experienced with solving for forces or torques and here I am solving problems that regard to technical difficulties or why a product we test is not working correctly. Altogether, working here is helping make my problem solving skills to become well rounded and diverse, in DLC we are told to check every option. If something is not working correctly we have to figure out if it is the device or another aspect of testing causing the problem.
Thus far, it has been a great experience for me and I have learned about so many different aspects of the testing that we do and why we do it. I look forward to gaining more knowledge about DLC and some of the other consortiums around the lab!
Jessica Constant, Research and Development