Interview with a college student

I interviewed a 22 age male college student who is studying to become an engineer. I asked him questions about technology, gaming and social interactions. 

When did you start playing games?
When I was 4, I learned how to read and play chess.  I have played chess most of my life. I have played Pokemon video games since I was 8. Other games include Neopets, Pokemon and now plays Magic the Gathering, a card game, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Skyrim and other games. 
Magic the Gathering is a game that I started playing when I was 9. It is a complicated game with many cards which feature fantasy art work. These cards are grouped in different catagories. The company that created the game releases new cards several times a year so the components of the game change constantly.

How many Magic cards do you know? 
5000-8000 

Does that help you with your memory? 
Wizards of the Coast, the company that created the game Magic the Gathering, create a new set of cards every few months. They release the cards and publish images of the new cards on the internet the day before you can buy them. The day that the cards are released there is a huge card playing tournament called a Pre Release Draft. At these drafts, you are able to pick a card from the packs that the other players buy. In order to pick a good card, you have to know what the cards can do. I memorize about 180 cards the day before they come out so that I am able to play. When drafting, you have about 20 seconds to look at the cards from the pack that other players buy. You have to make a decision about which cards will benefit your deck and pick one card out of a 15 card pack.   

When you moved to upstate from New York City, you told me that other kids in your school bullied you and created a hostile environment. You arranged for a speaker to come and talk to the school about this situation. How did you feel about the speaker coming to your school? 
In 6th or 7th grade, about 7 students  were involved with organizing a speaker to come and talk about bullying in school. Paul Fallia is a retired police officer who spoke on character education and human diversity. He addressed bullying, discrimination, intimidation, harassment. He also spoke on ethical awareness. I felt it was uplifting and encouraging.

In school, did you have many group projects? How did you feel about working in a group? 
Depends on the group. When everyone participates, it's a good experience. Usually there is one person who lets everyone else do the work.

In college, you organized study groups and did a lot of research for these groups-do you feel that people are competitive in these groups? 
I would learn the topic by research and then tutor the group. We went to teacher's office hours with different people. Everyone generally enjoys studying together.

How do you use technology?
Technology has been an integral part of my life.  I've had a cell phone for 5 years. I text most of my friends and prefer it to making phone calls. I am the IT person at home and I've built several computers. Recently I built a computer for a friend. I ordered the parts and the case. The computer ended up being worth about 3 times the cost of the parts. Right now, I'm building a computer for my car. This is a very complicated project involving much research. It involves electrical knowledge, wiring knowledge and researching many of the electrical and computer components.
Sometimes people use technology to cheat on tests. People used their cell phones to look stuff up during tests.  You can also photoshop soft drink labels to put test answers on a bottle and take the drink into the test. However I have not done these things. In classes where the instructor grades on a curve, cheaters make the grading situation bad for those who don't cheat and make the instructors think they are doing a better job teaching than they actually are.

You've used lectures from Berkley and the Khan Academy to study from. How do you feel the lectures differ from the classroom lectures? 
Some lectures explain the material better and in other cases, you can replay the lecture.

Right now you are in calculus ll and you have been tutoring your friend in math.  Do you think that tutoring has helped you retain the material from the classes that you have taken? 
Many things help. By resorting the information and retelling it, I am able to find ways to reteach myself the material in the process.

How do you teach yourself about building computers and your car? 
I go online and teach myself, working from my knowledge base. I've read Bosch computer management and a 400 page electronics manual for my BMW. I also go on different car forums which are on-line chat rooms. When I had a Beretta, I went on the Beretta forum. Now that I have a BMW, I communicate to other car owners through the Bimmer forum. Most people on this forum are doctors and people with more money. They have a higher expectations of projects and are more snobbish than on the Beretta Forum. If they don't like a project, I just ignore it. I just think they would not do projects that I do because they have more money and would pay someone if they wanted anything done to their car.
Other areas that I have looked into are ways people have modified their cars which include styles called Tuner, VIP, Bosokou to name a few. Bosoku is a style of car modification in Japan. 
Other forums I have been on include electrical forums, CNC forums. Most of time I look at projects and find out how the people who post did something.

When was the last time you read a book? 
I have been reading textbooks and informational book in college. I am too busy to read for fun in college. The textbooks I read for college classes include reading about things like Vesper Theory in Chemistry. Vesper Theory describes properties of molecules. In high school, I did my senior project on the way carbon fiber is used in the engineering field as a material. This research was done primarily on-line.