Angela Newton
Civil Engineering and Me Essay
As Fall semester draws to a close, I think that I want to be a Civil Engineer. This decision is based on a variety of personal experiences before I came to the University and a number of experiences that I have had over the course of this semester.
I decided to enroll in Civil Engineering due to a number of factors. First, my father has worked at the state Department of Transportation my entire life. Although he is not technically an engineer, it seems that he does engineering work. On family vacations and other road trips, he would always point out various safety (or unsafe) aspects of various road elements, traffic signs, roadside obstacles, etc. Although I never really thought about it before, this is all an important part of Civil Engineering. It is also interesting to find safer and faster ways to get people from here to there.
Another aspect that led to my interest in Engineering was my overall interest in math and science. In high school I excelled at math, chemistry, and biology. I was lucky enough to get a summer job in a research lab at Iowa State University after my junior year. I worked in an environmental lab studying carbon in drinking water. I really enjoyed working in the lab, and after learning a bunch of skills I continued to work there during my senior year. This is probably the most influential factor that led to my enrolling in Civil Engineering. I continue to work in the lab during the school year, and I really love it. I work with a number of different graduate students, and each is working on an important aspect of environmental treatment.
Although I didn’t like all of my classes this semester, I still plan to be a Civil Engineer. I found calculus rather boring. Chemistry was interesting. I didn’t really like computer programming in Fortran very much. Based on some of the guest speakers in this class, I don’t find all aspects of civil engineering really exciting. However, there are enough interesting areas that I think I will like it. I definitely like problem solving, and civil engineering problems sound the most interesting of the various disciplines. Talking with friends in the dorm who are in computer or electrical engineering, I am definitely not interested in those areas. Mechanical and chemical engineering sound okay, but I still think that Civil Engineering will be best overall. It has the greatest diversity so I can do many different things. Based on the courses that are required for the degree, the majority of them sound at least somewhat interesting. I look forward to selecting technical and humanities electives.
Looking to the future, I think that my favorite aspects of engineering will be research and design. I don’t really like public speaking, so that part scares me a bit. I do like writing, and was surprised to hear that so much writing is required for Civil Engineers. I think that writing up various reports will be easy and fun. The business and political sides are not very appealing to me, so I’d like to be more of a technical specialist. From the Three Gorges project, I was amazed at how complicated it can be to determine all of the ramifications of a large project that impacts so many different areas. Luckily, most projects are not so big or complicated. However, even something as seemingly simple as the TREX project is really very complex. It seems impossible for Civil Engineers to ever fully satisfy everyone. There must be compromises. This gray area is somewhat unsettling, any maybe I can minimize that stuff by focusing on becoming a technical expert in a limited area. The long hours don’t bother me. I would love to travel as part of my job. Getting out from behind a desk would be great. It would be so rewarding to be able to drive by a water treatment plant or something and know that I was part of the team responsible for getting it built. I think that will give me a great sense of pride to be helping people. So far I am most interested in the Environmental side of civil engineering, but water resources, geotechnical, and transportation also sound good.
In summary, I look forward to becoming a Civil Engineer. I don’t think that I will change my mind over the next hour years of college. There will certainly be some classes that I don’t like and others that I love, but by remembering that I will have a fun job when I get done I am sure that I can persevere.