WOW my last post was back when everything was feeling awkward and the only thing I could eat and not feel sick afterwards (thank you nerves!), was dry toast.
Now, I am sitting here alone in my apartment, silently celebrating my strength of making it through my hardest week of work this whole summer: the first week. All the firsts of meeting people, saying good bye to my parents, learning my way around, and just trying to break the ice on everything.
This week turned out to be a pleasant challenge, and something totally fun. I LOVE this job, it brings me something new every day and I am always on my feet, buzzing around. I don't nod off in this job.
I have just taken a huge dive right into the automotive world, and I have such a craving to pop the hood of every vehicle I see. I just can't get enough of it, I am so glad I got into this. The job changed a LOT since I got down here. It's totally different from what I was telling everyone back home before I left (sorry about that) - the needs of Nissan change all the time, so they ended up placing me in the testing lab where we investigate vehicles that are brand new but still not working right. I learn a lot about cars this way, mainly because I am quickly, rapidly getting a feel for the vast array of all things that can go wrong in a vehicle. Through this I am mentally taking notes on how a vehicle fits together, so I expect to be quite the mechanic by the time I return to Wisconsin. Anyway, I do still get to test drive vehicles -- just after we repair them back to full health. :)
Already, I've gotten to drive the Nissan Armada (twice), Nissan Altima (twice, but who's counting?!), and the Nissan Quest. Nissan has their own cars to use to get around the B-I-G plant, they call them fleet vehicles. Nissan also lets employees check the fleet vehicles out for the weekend, to use for road trips (family-based trips or business trips, how cool.) I guess that explains why these vehicles, despite being brand-spanking new, have 28,704 miles on them already (that's what one of the Armadas reads). Anyway, they are these fleet vehicles that I have been able to drive around. Although, it's quite comical to see me, little tiny-framed Ashley, driving a Nissan Armada that is easily 2.5 times the size of the Beetle!!! I can barely see out of that thing, and right-hand turns are hard since the far right corner of the hood is hard to see from my driver's seat. But I'm learning, and I haven't crashed anything yet. :) *Reaches to knock on wood*
The very first time I got to drive a vehicle was the Nissan Armada. It came to me as a total surprise, and I only moved it straight forward from one parking stall to another. I am such a nerd, feeling special from just doing that. The next day, I had to help the testing engineers move a fleet of Altimas, so we all drove out to a far corner of the yard outside, picked up the Altimas, and drove them all the way back into our garage. The Altima is my favorite to drive so far. :)
In the same day as driving the Altima, my coworker and I were working on a Quest minivan. It was having some malfunctions with its sliding door. After disassembling the door, finding the problem, and fixing it, my coworker put it back together and let me go drive it out on our outdoor test track. (!!!!) You see, it's Nissan's policy that virtually every single vehicle that gets manufactured, must be driven on the test track to detect 'squeaks and rattles,' or loose parts on the vehicle that would make noise and create a nuisance to the driver. If the vehicle fails the test, it gets brought to us testing engineers to fix. After fixing it, we take it out on the track again, with the motto that fixing one problem could always cause the rise of another.
Enter: the need for Ashley to drive a minivan out on the test track to listen for a possible second round of squeaks and rattles. :) :) Despite it being one of the more nerdy vehicles to get excited about, I still got to go!!! On the TEST TRACK, yessss!
On the third day, I quite extensively got to drive another Armada, back and forth all day long, to patrol the yard outside. We were running an experiment on vehicles parked outside all day long in the sunlight, and how hot it gets inside the vehicle to the point that the heat would cause certain electronic parts to blow. I had to patrol vehicles we had planted thermometers in. :)
I don't want to make this post too long -- so read the post above it! It also pertains to my first week of work here and how it turned out.
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