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Romel Gomez ENEE408V Expecting an A Anonymous 12/22/2025	After a semester of every team seemingly making less progress than last year's teams, I can't speak very highly of this iteration of the course. It's a shame too, since the idea of this course is extremely interesting. The most fundamental issue of this course is its lack of focus. Our goals throughout the semester were not clearly defined, as the requirements of the various milestones kept changing in Dr. Gomez's mind. He wouldn't hold us to the milestones defined in writing at the beginning of the semester, nor would he hold us to their deadlines. Furthermore, there's a confusing distinction between "Milestone" (report) and "Technical Milestone" (technical goals) for whatever reason, instead of just having Milestones 1, 2, and 3 encompass both the report and technical goals. A consistent set of enforced expectations could go a long way for the next group. Lectures aren't really lectures more than they are just ramblings. They could barely even be classified as lectures because there would almost never be any prepared materials, and we weren't ever really taught anything. We got pretty much no mentorship for this project. Dr. Gomez pretty much compared us all unfavorably to the TA throughout the semester (that is until one of the groups demonstrated significant progress at least matching the TA, which is when everyone else started getting unfavorably compared to them as well), and the TA pretty much did his own thing (he was very chill). Presentations were atrocious. The first one simply required at least one member from each group to be in the lab at ECE Family Night on a Friday evening. This requirement was nowhere in the syllabus and announced the Tuesday that week. The second presentation was to Dr. Gomez in November, and he would consistently interrupt our presentations to make some remark or ask questions instead of waiting until the end. The final presentation was also to Dr. Gomez on the last day of the class, and he would do the same thing, except that time it also included a final demonstration. Most classes taken by ECE students don't have a technical presentation component, so it would have been nice if the first one at least had an outline of what's expected, especially regarding the quality of visuals and accuracy of information. All groups needed to characterize various parts of their submersible in sufficient detail this semester. Not all of it was necessary. For example, the motors' mechanical characteristics didn't matter much at all given the size of our vehicles, the drag experienced by the submersibles is negligible for the scenario presented in class. Given the limited time in a semester, I believe it would have been more useful to emphasize prototyping, and leaving rigorous characterization of the components for the sensors (garbage in garbage out; must ensure sensors are giving sensible readings), and otherwise when issues arise. Almost every assignment grade on ELMS wasn't posted until the end of the semester, so it was nearly impossible to gauge where we were in the class throughout. It would also help if the group feature on ELMS was used, as this would ensure assignments submitted on one person's behalf would be shown for all people in the group. This was used in ENES100 and made that slightly easier, and it gave better indicators of individual vs. group assignments. I wish I enjoyed this class. Unfortunately, the lack of focus really killed it for me. The lack of traditional structure wasn't necessarily a problem, but it became one because the expectations were poorly defined and hardly existed until the final report (I believe this was pretty much the make or break factor of most of our grades). Even with the final report, my grade didn't come with any explanation or comment. This was an easy capstone at least.