• ¿Por que Ingenieria Civil?

Despite what the title might suggest, my Spanish es muy mal. Yet somehow I find myself walking the streets of Valencia, stopping in at un cafeteria to order a café solo before going to la playa, and later meeting up con mis amigos for a cerveza and tapas. Like I said, terrible Spanish. This experience, which is truly an honor to be a part of, is analogous to how I have felt more than a few times since beginning my civil engineering degree program, a little lost but very excited about what’s happening.

(artistically designed airport in Madrid)

Civil engineering is a profession that spans back thousands of years. It’s a stable market, it pays well, the job outlook is good, and there is plenty of visual payoff (you get to drive down the road and point out giant structures you had a hand in). Obviously these are all reasons why I want to get my degree in civil engineering, even that last one (everyone has some level of ego, right?). Although these reasons, and a knack for math and science, might cause just about anyone to get interested in civil engineering, there is something that draws me to this profession more so than the “career day reasons.” I want to be useful in this life; I want to help create things that help people, that large amounts of people use on a day to day basis without a second thought. Of all the paths I’ve considered going down over the years, this seems to best lead that way. My parents always taught utility as a virtue, my sister mastered several positions in softball in order to be anywhere she was needed on the field, my brother seamlessly switches between baritone and trombone in his high school marching band to better their sound and help in competitions. In whatever I do, I try to emulate my family by being there when needed and just being plain useful. On a more pragmatic note, I want to live out in the country with a few acres of land, and civil engineering as a profession would allow me to achieve this goal. Definitely my second biggest reason for wanting to be an engineer…

(lake near my parent's ranch, this was a CANYON a few weeks ago!)

Never would I have thought upon starting my degree program that there are so many subjects within civil engineering that we know so little about. In just a few days here at Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, I’ve learned a lot about corrosion of steel bars within reinforced concrete, but more importantly what we don’t know about it. Even the standards used to detect corrosion set by ASTM are in some ways a set of loose guidelines. Syed, another student on this trip who works in the same lab as me, said it best in regards to a detection method one PhD student here is looking to get patented, “you would’ve thought they’d of had this already.” Between this amazing first week at the university, and my concurrent participation as an undergraduate research assistant back at UTA, I’m hooked. I like being out here on the edge of what we know, and finding solutions that have never been found before. I had already been planning on getting my master’s after graduating, but now I know for sure that I’ll be pursuing a PhD somewhere down the line as well. Obtaining brand new knowledge and using it to create something completely new would without a doubt be a wonderful highlight to my future professional career.

                   (cafe solo to help with studying)                     (a street in Old Valencia)

As of this summer it has been exactly two years since I decided to major in civil engineering, again. That’s right this is my second attempt at obtaining a BSCE. In high school I was an okay student, took AP classes, made A’s and B’s but never really tried hard (ie I was a slaaaacker). I went straight from high school to a good university, my family was proud and everything seemed to be on track for me. Unfortunately things don’t always work out the way we plan. I was completely unprepared for the rigors of a college level engineering class, I quickly fell behind in my classes and rather than reaching for help, I drew in upon myself. By the middle of that fall I had given up completely. I was not going to class and beginning to spiral down into depression, staying in the dorm room watching General Hospital and trying not to think about what my parents would say. The only thing that managed to get me out of bed (besides pizza) was the student filmmaking club I was a part of. As terrible as I was at being an engineering student, making films came second nature to me and was a heck of a lot more fun than failing calculus. So after another terrible stretch of school in the spring, I decided to focus on the film and television industry. “I decided to focus on the film and television industry” is exactly how I tell my story to most people who ask, however the reality is that I failed at engineering and went with something easier. That is the thought that stuck with me over the next few years even though my time in TV and film was fairly successful, if short-lived. From 2010 to 2012 I worked 60 hour weeks at a talent agency doing film production for major auditions, and at the end of 2012 began to take some film classes and basics at the local community college. This time of my life gave me an incredible work ethic, and got me used to working in a stressful high-stakes environment (it certainly was not the “easy” option I had thought going in.) Finally in the spring of 2013, two things happened that got me to give civil engineering one more try. The first was taking a liberal arts math course, it renewed some of the passion for math and science I had thought long burned out. And the second was a Navy recruiter sitting next to me as I sipped my coffee at Starbucks one day. Let me just say, those guys are REALLY good at their jobs. Never once had I considered a career in the military, but this guy in blue camo patiently sat and listened as I spilled my guts on secretly wanting to be an engineer, that film was great but completely unfulfilling. Before I knew it I had taken the ASVAB (the “military SAT”), scored in the top 1%, and was days away from raising my hand and taking the oath of enlistment. For various reasons I eventually came back to the idea that yes, I did want to be a civil engineer and I would be a civil engineer, so I didn’t join the navy but I did sign up for pre-cal and calculus I in the summer. Since then I’ve put everything into being a great student, completely separate from that mopey 18 year old that crashed and burned his first go around. Now I am a mere three semesters from graduating, at the top of my class, and ready to pursue a master’s upon graduation. The road since high school has had quite a few twists and turns, but it’s led to this path where I may feel a little lost at times, but am always excited about the journey ahead.