The Passion Project
Engineering with Brandi Manna
>> Hey everyone, welcome to The Passion Project. Our first guest is a very good friend of mine. I met her freshman year of college and she's been stuck with me ever since. She's a current undergraduate student at the University of Connecticut studying mechanical engineering and she's here with us today to discuss her passion for engineering. Please welcome Brandy Manna. >> Thanks for having me on the podcast. I'm excited to be here. >> So first, we're going to just jump right into it. So obviously your passion is engineering. Could you tell us a little bit about it? >> Well, I'm going to be honest, when I first started engineering, I didn't really know what it was and I'm still a little confused, but starting to get the hang of it, it's kind of a roll with the punches type of thing, but basically I am still trying to figure out exactly where I want to go with it, but I haven't narrowed down to my two choices. I started, I've been taking classes in entertainment engineering and this past summer I had an internship with civil engineering company even though I'm a mechanical engineer, but basically mechanical engineering is you're just kind of working with machinery and just trying to figure out how to advance in society. >> Wait, so tell, explain the civil engineering internship because I remember seeing some updates and it looked a little crazy. >> It was definitely a little scary and going into any engineering, I'm not that intimidated and I don't think other people should be intimidated by it, but it is a male dominated field. So especially this past summer at my internship, there was only one other and woman engineer who was there, so that was kind of crazy to experience, but she was my mentor and she really helped me along the way and I know that you and everyone else that I sent some funny pictures to you I was wearing a construction hat and a bright yellow vest, yeah, so that was with civil engineering that is more doing road work and bridges and buildings and things like that and it also has to do a little bit with environmental engineering and kind of testing out the chemicals in the water and making sure that when we're building something, runoff doesn't go into the water and pollute it, but a lot of what I was doing when I was out on job sites is road work and that was as the engineers we would work in AutoCAD which is a very high tech program that I got to work with which was very scary starting off, but as I mentioned I had a great mentor Matty who showed me the ropes of everything and with that we would design the whole entire roadway for whatever grant we got in the streets that needed to be fixed, so if there are roads that have a lot of potholes or if there's flooding on that road that was one of the projects that we did is we had to totally reinvent and lift up a road by 18 inches multiple roads because it was flooding and it was right by the water, so it was it was crazy to work with and with that it was a very ritzy area so you kind of have to make sure you're talking to everyone who lives there and if they complain you got to deal with that and figure everything out which was something that I also got to experience for the first time it was definitely something that will help me in the future I will say trying to deal with all of that making sure everyone is happy and also doing the best work that we can and with that we basically have to dig up and all the big machinery that you usually see on the side of highways and everything that's like the company that we were dealing with and we they dug up the whole entire road and all the curb and everything whatever was in the plans that we made so it's very rewarding I would say the work that I did this past summer because I got to start a project from scratch I basically would look up on Google Maps my boss would tell me the roads that I had to look on and I would either drive to those roads or walk them on Google Maps and see what I was dealing with basically and see where we needed some more work on the roads if again I was saying there are potholes or alligator cracking is the technical term that we would use yes it is which doesn't sound real but it is and I drew up that's kind of what my purpose was this summer is drawing up the plans and then once those plans were drawn out and these projects take some of them one of the projects I was working on has been in the go around for two years already and some of them they started the same time I started my internship and I got to see them all the way through and it only took a couple months to do so like I said it was very rewarding because I got to see some of my jobs from start to finish and my names were on the job plans which is the first time that that's ever happened I'm not even a graduate student yet I don't even have my degree and I was able to put my name on these site plans for the whole town the mayor to see and everything like that I got to meet one of the because the internship was in my town in my hometown it was five minutes from my house and we are working with surrounding towns as well and I got to meet the mayors of multiple different towns which was very exciting for me and it was just a great community where I was working to everyone was very friendly and supportive yeah wow that's crazy I didn't even know all about the like little details but that's so that's civil engineering but you're studying mechanical engineering I am studying mechanical engineering and I don't want to disappoint you but I feel like I could talk more about civil than mechanical just because I had my internship so now that I know the inner workings of everything I can go on and talk about that I was there for three or four months but with mechanical originally what I am planning on doing with mechanical is I want to get into aerospace which yes in my in my degree as a junior you originally your first two years freshman and sophomore year in college you get an advisor who is just an advisor knows nothing about engineering but they went to school to be an advisor or counselor of some sort and that's who I had and she has no knowledge of engineering whatsoever so she just kind of helps me pick my classes and if I need to rant to her I love my advisor shout out to Ashley Rose she was amazing but I'm sad now because I just got a new advisor who is actually a professor in the school of engineering because he's going to help me I have to pick a concentration this year so my concentration is going to be aerospace engineering and that will thank you thank you yes it is very intense we'll see we'll run with the punches what are the options of concentrations like if aerospace you can do aerospace I know one something that I'm interested in which one of my professors who last semester I didn't love him but I did love him because he was kind of a tough love professor and it was one of the hardest classes that I'm going to take and I went to his office hours and when he would actually explain things to me it would really help but his class was so hard but it did get me interested in doing which I didn't even know mechanical did this is working with your AC unit in your house and you're heating and you're air conditioning in your house and that could kind of be a concentration you know how people in high school do VOTEC or they do a concentrated school for a trade school oh a trade school yeah that's one of the things that you can do with mechanical engineering is one of the things that you can concentrate in is a trade like that and that would be the heating and air conditioning in your house and that was one of the first things that I was thinking to myself oh I'm finally learning what mechanical engineering is and this is kind of cool because now I could go on and tell you how you use the evaporator and the condenser and everything all of that that you wouldn't think about that all the underground and everything in your house and how you get heat and air into your house that's what I learned about one of the things I learned about last semester and that was really cool to think about yes one of the things that I'm looking to go into with aerospace is one of my friends back home she's also a mechanical engineer at TC at J and she was the college of New Jersey oh ok but everyone's from New Jersey I'm sorry I'm sorry even though New Jersey people just think so the New Jersey and I know I think that everyone knows what I'm talking about but they don't I'll my bad I'll explain more but she had an internship with the government and a lot of that is working with weaponry and missiles oh my god which is very cool to think about working for the government and dealing with all of that and a lot of mechanical too also has to do there there's a lot of equilibrium equations which should I explain no okay sorry about your passion not about okay the equation working with equilibrium in equilibrium equations have to do with a lot of fluids and making sure that everything is draining correctly is something that you can concentrate in basically and and we're working a lot with pistons and cylinders and gas and air and how that works those functions and you chose aerospace deserve reason yes so because we I still want to know and everyone wants to know about why you chose mechanical engineering we have to get we have to get into that we haven't even started so so tell me about aerospace and then I want to hear the backstory okay so aerospace engineering I'm basically basically going to be working to put it in short with rocket ships and that's so cool yes one of you have you watched the movie hidden figures yes yes I know that is one of your top movies yes that is a very good movie I also love the Martian with Matt Damon oh when he eats potato yes and he makes it all on Mars and everything very cool but basically with aerospace I will be helping make advanced technology and make advancements in how we travel to outer space and how we send other machinery and systems to try and find other life forms you know how there's always we know there's rovers on Mars and everywhere else that's in satellites up in space that's basically I will be creating those machines and figuring out how to advance them and make them better and maybe more cost efficient or material efficient basically so would you have to I don't really know if they're I'm sure there are but like would you work for NASA yes yes and that's what you want to do yes there is NASA everyone knows in Florida but there is also Texas there's also in DC oh around that areas that's I think where I'm going to try to end up but there are also naval bases if I'm not necessarily working for NASA there are other naval bases and government ran institutions that are underneath NASA that's still cooperate with them yeah yeah no I know it yes yeah so it's all intertwined yes that's the end game my oh wait what's this relation to me he's like my mom's cousin so I don't really know what that is to me but he great cousin yeah yeah my great he's an aerospace engineer at NASA and I think that NASA in Colorado hook me up I was in my resume I'll after this yeah I'll let you know okay so obviously this is called the passion project yes and clearly you're passionate about it but I remember for those that don't know that I listening the reason Brandy is my first guest is actually because she kind of gave me this idea unknowingly like freshman year when I would ask people like you know what they're majoring in and why and a lot of people were just like oh psycho like I don't know whatever engineering yeah but I didn't really talk to cop I'm calm just so you're aware but yeah but never mind that I actually really talk to people that were calm you didn't weird business yeah but the point is that everybody had their reasoning just was like to make money or like yeah it was like stupid reasoning and when I talked to Brandy when we first kind of met I kind of remember where it was to on campus but I don't know why but you had us this like story for why you chose to major in engineering and go into that and it that's when I was like oh wow like people actually have interesting reasons or stories or like inspiring kind of stories of as to why they're majoring in what they are or like they want to pursue this career and that's how I got the idea for maybe one day having a podcast I don't even think I thought that much how far we've come yeah literally like two years later which is crazy that it's already been two years but yeah so pretty much you have a good story so tell us tell everyone listening why you chose the viewers are waiting engineering in that whole story what a story we're really hyping it up it's we are looking at it's not that big of a story basically it's touching it is I'm a very family oriented person which many people who know me within the first ten minutes of knowing me I feel like you can figure that out and basically yes yes yes very loving family and I have three brothers dad mom step mom cousins all my cousins are boys I'm basically the only girl other than my aunts and grandparents and everything and basically growing up I loved my dad but I was always super busy with sports and everything and I would always take the weekends as alright this is what I'm gonna relax if I if it's an off season for a sport and I'll get to sleep in if I didn't have a game that weekend this will be great and I would hate my father especially in middle school when you're waking up at six in the morning to try and get ready on the weekends I was like alright yes Saturday morning I'm sleeping in I know what I'm doing wrong father comes into my room screaming brandy we're gonna do some yard work get out in the bag and I was like oh my gosh this man no and I would never get out of bed and then he would get mad at me and he's at 30 minutes later come back in I told you to get out you 30 minutes ago what are you doing whatever so that's how I spent my weekends with my father is doing yard work and my dad is he's a project manager for a company in New York based in New York he works in New Jersey and he does a lot of construction he's not the general contractor who is the person that installs everything but he's in charge of everything he sees site plans which is it was so funny during my internship this summer I would be sending him pictures of what I was doing and I was like isn't this so cool these are site plans he's like I see this every day it's not that cool but yeah so that's cute though he got me really excited with his job I was very once he started teaching me about what he did I started thinking to myself wow this is actually really interesting and really cool looking at these site plans and looking at the blueprints for buildings and he works a lot with schools and that's a lot with what you can do with civil engineering too and I just thought that this was so interesting that he would always have us some when we were old enough he would have us like we built the shed in our backyard and we built the deck and we built the porch in our house my dad is a very handyman so my older brother Marco and I would always on the weekends be building with him and we would learn what a level is how to use an electric drill and all of the inner workings of how to make all that and I thought that it was very great how my dad was able to didn't have to hire anyone it was just him and my grandfather because they have the same job and they would just build whatever we wanted to build and as I was getting older getting into high school too he my dad was very not he was supportive but he very much wanted me to have a plan and my brother to have a plan and wanted things to get figured out for us because he wants us to have a good life you know very much a planner yes very much a planner and he was like all right what what do you like and I was like honestly as much as I hated when you would wake me up I loved building I love building things I was such a Lego nerd I love doing all of that I loved puzzles and things like that just figuring things out you know and that is when I always I want to do something that I'm going to love and looking back at it also be growing up in a more male dominated family yeah I was comfortable in that sort of environment as well and I grew up a tomboy too so that whole kind of springed into it and yeah as a kid growing up too I also would ask for books on gravity and Newton's laws in middle school which is so weird as a middle schooler to do and I would just be reading these dumb it down elementary like middle school level books so you can teach kids because I my brain wasn't developed and knew what was going on yet but I was so interested in it and I remember in elementary school I got this huge space book and I always loved we had a planetarium by our house as well so I would always love going to the planetarium and I was always so interested in stars in an outer space basically and those were the books that I was getting I was getting books on gravity and I would always be asking my dad because he majored in something in business however he was always interested in science so he's very much a science guy and history guy and so he would just tell me about all the history of stars and why things worked the way that they did and so that helped push me into what I want my future career to be and also I don't want to forget yes my dad did push me a lot and I remember one of the summer jobs that I was working I worked at a deli it was my first job freshman freshman year of high school and it was my friends deli and when it wasn't busy I would just start building little gadgets out of I built a little shooter kind of like archery bow out of a pen and some sticky notes and a few a few pens and rubber bands and one of my co-workers was like what are you doing and I said I'm building I don't know I'm building something to like shoot rubber bands with I don't know yeah and she goes why and I was like I just love to build things and I think it's really cool to figure out how things work and she asked she's like is that what you want to go into and I was a freshman in high school at this point and I go honestly yeah I think so like with how my family is and how I grew up and the environment that I grew up in and I was like it makes sense and this is something that I love to do and I have at the time they weren't great but looking back at it I'm so grateful that my dad did wake us up that early to help him build the shed to build our deck in the back of our house and I can't give him all the credit because my mom was also big supporter and while my dad did help spark the interest my mom also was very much like hey what do you want to do very much nicer than forcing me to figure everything out but what do you like you know like I know that you like building and everything like that but what do you want to do and I said honestly I don't know what I would love because I'm always I was always super busy growing up and I hate I don't relax my mom it's a trademark in my family they call me the busy bee because of my name because I never sit down I hate just sitting down and not doing anything and she said well what about engineering how cool would it be that you would be an engineer and I would be the first my mom loves to bring this up she's like you need to graduate with an engineering degree because her younger brother and her cousin my great cousin they all started off in engineering and they were they're both men and it was too hard for them so they went into a different major and she goes I got you have to prove them wrong you have to show that someone in our family can do it and that she said you're going to be that person she's like I know you're going to be that person to do it so that definitely helped motivate me I'm a very competitive person so I said all right I gotta show my uncle up and my cousin like how awesome would that be it was too hard for them yes yeah and you're like and I mean I don't I don't want to say like I'm pretty sure you have like always or I mean yeah I like to do well in school I think it's important assume but like I was fairly certain I was like wait should I not say yeah yeah I great GPA love hard worker yes and yeah she my mom is very a lot a lot of people my family are teachers and she said you're going to hate teaching number one don't be a teacher you're not gonna make any money and she would always say you're too smart to let an opportunity pass you by and not do something to reward yourself for how hard you always have worked in school and everything like that so she was well my dad helped start the passion I guess you would say my mom was the one who suggested I go into engineering yeah and I didn't know any kinds of engineering I did there's biomedical civil mechanical a bunch of electrical and I just heard I was like I think mechanical is a type of engineering I was like let me do that and it nothing really sparked but when I looked up the basic definition online mechanical is yeah figuring out how systems work basically like the basic yes and I I'm the type of person in school too if a teacher just tells me okay do this it won't click in my head I need to know why something works or else it's I'm not going to understand it at all and that's kind of how I live my life too is that I'm a very logical thinker I need to know why something works I'm a very logical thinker that's what sometimes yes yes and yes I'm not I'm not an emotional thinker at all yeah this is the logical thing to do because I'm how my mind works is I'm just a very systematic person yeah so it makes sense yeah how how getting into and everything but yes I do have my parents to thank for helping start this and why I grew up in all my opportunities yeah I also I remember freshman year because this I also always think about it you probably like why do you remember I remember such random things but I remember like in the spring and there's an assignment because somebody else like also had to do it where you have to build a catapult yes that's your freshman year project yeah yes you had to build this catapult and I remember hearing like from other people's experiences they were just like miserable they're like I don't want to build a stupid thing like you know some people are just students and yes because in engineering you can't be an engineer if you don't love it because it is so much work and is not the kind of job where it's usually a nine to five but you're probably going to be there from nine to ten p.m. most nights you're not just going to pack up at five and leave if you have something you have a deadline you need to figure something out it's going to take you a long time and a lot of people in engineering think that they are very smart and I'm sure that they are very smart don't get me wrong you have to be smart you have to be hard working yes however it gets in the way a lot and to a lot of people you're freshman and I feel like with the catapult project you're split up into either you've never used any tool other than a handheld screwdriver in your life or you were building robots in your room in high school I feel like that's how you split up engineers and thankfully because of my dad's job I know machinery and I know how tools how to use them and how things like that work and the catapult is yes it is a very simple starting project but it's not if you don't know what you're doing and I agree a lot of people were nervous about it because they either didn't know what they were doing or they thought that it was stupid because they thought it was the easiest thing in the world but I was so excited and I am so sad because I let one of my other teammates take home the catapult but I took a million pictures and was sending them to my family and I thought it was the coolest thing I was like look what I just made how awesome is this and you got to test out to see how far it went and you had three distances that you had to hit and your grade was based off of changing your catapult lever basically and being able to hit those three distances and finding the accuracy of it and I was so nervous that day because I was like alright this is the first thing that I've built that I'm getting graded on and tested on and you don't realize and that's one of the I have another story after this to get into why I'm passionate about engineering but you don't realize how much not the catapult but later on what you do with engineering you are you have people's lives you have people's lives on the line basically you need to know what you're doing and your team needs to know what you're doing or else people could die and that was one of your classes right yes so as I oh wait I just wanted to say go ahead because the whole reason I brought this up which you can obviously tell based on how you talk about it but the reason I brought it up was because I remember going hang out with you and you're like I have to go build something for the catapult project whatever and like you were so I think I asked something like oh like you like doing it or something like that because people were always like complaining and you were just like so excited to like go to the that room where you work yes engineering to yeah like you were just so excited and yeah it's just refreshing to like when someone actually likes what they're studying and stuff yeah no it's it's definitely cool to see how you're literally like even the mics that we're using I know that viewers can see but even the mics everything oh yes the listeners everything that you use and it's funny because our engineering yes our good friend Jaila actually last year we were walking around campus and she asked me a question and she asked me this jokingly but I responded very seriously and she said so I'm just curious when you walk around at buildings and you're looking at buildings are you thinking to yourself I wonder how that was made that's she asked it jokingly like haha you know but I was like honestly yes everything that you use you don't think about it but with engineering it flips a switch and now when you look at Gample our basketball arena even that a dome is one of the most secure shapes that you could build it is the most secure type of building that you can build and it's because everything kind of all goes to one point and you're centered around that one point and you don't have to worry about any other structural importance pivots basically yeah because everything is helping to support the one center point and because you have every rod I guess you could say is building up to that center point there is so much supporting beams and everything in that that just makes it makes it the strongest structural shape that you can build why are those not built as like frequently then convenience because when you think about a building what fits more rooms a dome or a wreck big rectangular building where you can have multiple floors and yeah the size of the ceiling the height of the ceiling will all be the same you can't do that in a dome because it starts a concave in and become round towards your ceiling and then it makes it smaller so just room sit basically but well that's cool yeah no and it was it was funny that she asked me that because I told her I was like honestly yeah everything around you is engineering yeah which is kind of crazy to think about you mentioned before about the people when you're doing the catapult and the people in their classes and they they're all smart but like you know whatever were was there ever like times or instances where because it's also like predominantly a lot of boys or yes yes so even just in your classes like in college are there instances where you have to like do a group project and you can tell they're not like taking you seriously almost every class that I've taken especially mechanical is I in my experience most of my friends are civil and electrical engineers and or chemical biomedical I mean I have friends everywhere but so cool yeah no no not really I don't actually have that many friends but I'm kidding yeah yeah alright let's just move on a lot of times mechanical is the most pre male dominant field civil engineering there are a lot more women in your classes bio medical and maybe not so much chemical I feel like but chemical has a decent amount of women and everything but yes because mechanical is a lot more hands-on and yeah I mean we're all nerdy you need to be you know but yes there are if we're going stereotypes very nerdy men a lot of the times and they will see that you're a woman I just had recently actually I get very nervous about the first day of school because I never know if I'm going to have anyone that I know in my classes and I'm like what am I gonna do if I don't know someone and I had a lab and it didn't start until the third week of school and you had to pick your lab partner when you got in and you're stuck with them for a rest of the semester good luck hope you have a good lab partner so I'm freaking out because I didn't know any of my friends who were in my lab section and there were maybe 15 people in my lab so not a very big class at all so I show up early to class before that day the first lab because I'm nervous and I sit down and there was another two other men who sat down and we all sat at different lab tables and I see people just coming in and from my understanding it seemed like nobody knew anyone in the class everyone was just randomly picking someone hey can I sit here and twice twice because how the lab tables are set up there's only two C's at a table but there's a bunch of monitors on the front end of the table kind of blocking who is sitting there so you won't know until you look past who is sitting there and twice I had two people walk by my table turn to sit into my seat they saw that it was me and they turned around like literally did a 180 to turn around and left and not to assume or anything but I'm pretty sure it's because I was a woman they turned around which I was thinking I was I started sweating I because it was the class started at 12 20 it was 12 my team and I still didn't have a partner and it didn't seem like anyone else was showing up and I was thinking to myself oh my goodness I'm not going to have a partner and it seems like in my opinion one of the main reasons I didn't have a partner is because I'm the only woman in the class by the way let me just let me just preface that yes and I was thinking to myself oh my goodness I think it's because I'm a woman which all right if I'm a man I'm probably going to choose to sit next to another male if I'm a woman walking into a class I'm probably going to sit to choose next to another woman I feel like you're just most of the time more comfortable with someone who is the same like sex as you you know yeah so I get it but it was kind of disheartening because I was freaking out and I was like guys you need to understand that if it's a comfort comfortness thing all right I get it but I'm just a smart smarter maybe you know as everyone else in the class so it's not that big of a deal if you're working with a woman but eventually someone moved their seat because they also didn't have a partner and his words to me were all right looks like no one else is showing up do you want to just work together I go I go yeah that would be great and I've tried I'm breaking the ice a little bit but I could just tell that he does not want to sit next me and that same class same first class I had the TA he came over and asked us we had to hand in a paper at the beginning of class to sign about safety or something and he came over and said can you write your table number on your papers my lap hunter goes that those are in ours and he wasn't understanding he's like no and he asked continue to ask three other times arguing with my lap partner these are your papers put your number on him he's like we already handed in our papers with our table number on them like those are in our papers we already handed ours in and he's like oh okay sorry finally leaves I said my partner I go oh that was weird that he asked that and he goes yeah it's because the name on the paper was a girl's name or something like that like it was it was another male in the class because I was the only girl but I guess it was a gender neutral name like Dylan or Sam or something like that and because I was a woman he thought that it was our papers and not that that was sexist or anything but I was kind of like my partner literally had to tell you three times that those weren't our papers because you thought it was a woman's name and you weren't understanding it was just thought that you messed up yeah and he thought that I messed up and it was just kind of annoying and yeah I have other stories where that's happened where like in a lab last year I had two male partners and they always want you to write because a girl's writing is usually nicer and I have awful handwriting my mom always says that I write like a man and I have awful handwriting and I tell them I won't I won't write anything if they say that to me I'll say I don't have good handwriting I'm not I'm not writing like yeah you know because that's your excuse you think I have better handwriting you because I'm a woman that's why you want me to write they probably just don't want to do the work yeah and multiple times with my two lab partners this was really sad because this was kind of the first time that I experienced it and full to the extreme I we're answering a lab question and I said oh I think this is how you do it and multiple times they would say well let's just ask the TA and then they would ask the TA about my answer and it would turn out to be right and in my head I was just like I bet you if that was the other guy saying that answer you would just think that it was correct but because I'm a woman yeah and I'm saying that this is the answer you don't want me to what like one up we're working we're supposed to be working as a team we're a group and it's not I think that a lot of the times their egos get in the way and they don't want it to seem like a woman knows more than them if that makes sense yeah yeah and so it's a little disheartening but I mean it's comes with the job basically I think it's interesting yeah I mean I guess that's the whole point of like STEM being male dominated because in my classes like calm classes or Spanish classes it's just like not like that I mean it is probably actually more women than men that I think about it but like I've just never maybe in high school I do remember that kind of happening in like science classes but still like in my classes now like nobody if anything they trust the girl more maybe because it's more like art or humanities like social science kind of maybe to and I also I think a big part of it is that everyone in my professors I've had multiple professors say this that no one in engineering wants to work with a group because they all think that they're so smart and they can just do it on their own which probably but in engineering you have to work with yes in the real world you are going to have a team that you are doing something with and you're going to have a superior and or no or it's like proven that girls are better at working in the team I think yeah if there is engineering calm class I'm not sure they should make us take their public speaking or something honestly there's group like my major has group communication classes small group communication which I don't want to take because I also don't really want to. They're probably insufferable they're probably so awful of a class but I feel like that's so important but if they create it for engineering students like they're Spanish for business yeah for engineering like they should create a calm class they should I think that would be very helpful yeah because a lot of people are people who are used to working by themselves and don't even know how to talk to someone at all like not even in a class setting even outside of a class setting some people are just don't have that experience and don't like talking to people yeah and don't know how to which is very hard to do in this major and every major I feel like yeah before we wrap up and everything um I did want to ask because we talked all about like your whole journey and the ups and downs but is there like a specific accomplishment that you are particularly proud of at least so far in your life it's only starting out but still you know I got it I got to think about it just off the top of my head this is very minor I mean obviously my internship this past summer I was very happy about getting that I thought that I was very proud of that and being able to do a lot of the things that I did there were on your own as many internships are it's kind of they told me that there's no training for this job you just got to figure it out and that was somewhat new to me and a learning curve that I had to figure out so I was very proud that I survived that however getting more specific I think one of the accomplishments that I'm very proud of is a class that I took freshman year you had to go to the workshop downtown and there's a whole it's a it's the building downtown the drama building they have a lab in there and it's a workshop and that's where they build everything for the production shows that are yes this is entertainment engineering all of the shows on campus that you see we build all the props and everything for it and so I would help with that and my final for that class was I had to build a toolbox out of wood which isn't that hard to do but it's totally on your own and there was a specific design that we had all had to do the same design and you're working with these tools that you somewhat have to be certified to use like we're using a table saw and a bunch of other things that are very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing and our professor was just standing there watching us and basically just monitoring to make sure that we don't cut off a finger but otherwise you're doing it on your own well that's what the whole class was leading up to is that we had used those machines before and everything however it wasn't on our own it was always with our professor with a friend and you we each made everyone in the class made your own toolbox and I was talking to my dad and my grandfather because that's their job basically has to do with a lot of using a lot of those tools and I told him I was like I'm really nervous and they're like don't be nervous you've used these tools even before you got to college because I would help them out with some of their jobs and I after I did it it took maybe three or four classes to actually be able to build it but at the end it was so silly because it was at this tiny little toolbox but I was so proud of it because I was like wow I did this on my own and I was really nervous to do it and it was kind of a big girl thing to do and I was so proud because even though my dad and my grandpa and my mom and everyone else in my family I probably are like oh it's a stupid little toolbox anyone can do that but and they've been using those machines and everything for years that was the first time I did that on my own and I was like wow like it kind of showed me and I was able to prove to myself okay even though this seemed really hard and I was scared to do it at first you did it you know and weight is off and there you go so that was that's something little that I'm proud of yeah I love that so lastly I just wanted to finish with like do you have any stuff laughing at it sorry but like seriously if anyone anyone that's thinking about going into engineering or a male dominated field or like they don't know okay they don't know what they're doing they don't know what they want to do or anything what do you have like any advice other than do it my advice is and I started it's funny I started getting into podcasts I'm usually not a podcast girl and I started listening to a thermodynamics podcast which don't ask me why I was listening to it yes yes and what it said in the podcast is basically if you're going to do something start off like let's say you're moving to a town a new town start off somewhere that is scary and you don't know anyone and maybe you can't even afford it because if you can figure out to do something while you're struggling then you can figure out how to do anything basically if you can survive and do something when you're struggling and you're at your lowest then you can do it when you're at your best and when you actually know what you're doing so if you're thinking to in to going into a field that you're like maybe I'm not that smart or maybe I I'm not I don't know if you're just nervous about anything like that and you don't think that you can do it you can you just have to put in the work and don't be afraid to struggle because you are going to struggle with everything however you if you really want to do it you're going to be able to figure it out and you're going to struggle through it but once you get past that then for the future you're going to know what to do and then it'll all start to click and come together and you're going to learn to love what you do because you were able to struggle through it and also doing something on your own is so rewarding that it's it's one of the best feelings honestly so I would just say if you're scared or you don't know what to do you can always start off you can always switch your major you can start off especially in mechanical and engineering you can start off as an undecided engineering major because a lot of your classes the first year are just big lectures that everyone is taking so if you don't know what kind of engineering you want to go into you can go in undecided or with anything if you don't know what to do I like this podcast what are you passionate about if anyone asked me if they're undecided or they don't know if they want to switch their major because they don't love what they're doing I'll tell them what do you love to do what's a hobby that you love what's something niche that you are so passionate about and that will help you figure out what you want to do in the future because you're going to be doing something that you love and something that feels rewarding to you even though it might not be the most interesting thing in the world to other people if you're passionate about it and you're interested in it in it then you're going to love the life that you build for yourself yeah oh my god that was amazing I was smiling the whole time well thank you so much for being my first guest of course thanks for having me and yeah um thanks for everyone that's listening and I can't wait for future episodes and maybe to have you back on yes I mean if I find another passion well we'll see I mean it sounds like you could talk about engineering for another hour you could probably have five more podcast episodes on me but this was fun thanks of course thanks for coming and thanks for listening to the passion project bye guys [laughter]