When I first visited the university, I had applied to enter into the Honors College. This meant that I had to go through a special interview with a professor from my college (in this case, the College of Engineering) and if he/she deemed me worthy, I would become an Honors Student. Yeah, so I was a bit nervous, but as always I tried my best just to be myself. I had already been through so much during my time at the community college so I figured, eh, let's go for it.
When I walked in the room, the professor doing the interviewing immediately greeted me as if I was almost a celebrity. Turns out I was already famous and didn't even know it. As soon as my application crossed his desk he checked up on me with the community college and my vocational school. It is so rare to have an engineering student who not only has previous hands on experience but also is an ASE certified master mechanic....oh, yeah, and a woman ;) The interview continued not as if we were professor and nervous applicant but rather as if we were esteemed colleagues. It was so cool. After the interview (I assume I was the last person for that day) he invited me on a tour of the engineering college. This, as I found out later, wasn't customary. He took me around to all of the labs and introduced me to all the teams (for those of you who don't know, most engineering colleges have teams that compete in engineering related competitions: civil engineers have the Concrete Canoe, mechanicals have the Formula SAE, the SAE Supermileage Competition, etc - oh, and my university kicks butt in all of these competitions btw...). On top of that, all of the captains of the teams knew of me as well. It wasn't "Let me introduce you to one of our Honors College candidates," it was "Hey (insert name)! This is Sarah, the girl I was telling you about. The master mechanic." Again, so cool. (oh, yes, I was accepted into the Honors College)
I began as a sophomore, but I had to catch up with one or two freshman engineering classes. As an engineering student, you aren't officially admitted into the engineering college until your sophomore year and you must have at least a C average in all of your engineering related classes (if I got that wrong, I apologize, but it's something close to that if not). I also made a couple of friends who would become my lab and homework partners for the rest of my time there. As it turns out, I did not join any of the teams. I went to one of the meetings of the Formula team, but the guy in charge told me I should paint the roll cage during the time there. Maybe it was an initiation, maybe he didn't fully know my previous experience, but for me there was simply too much testosterone. I decided I'd best leave it to the boys since I wanted to save my strength for the class load to come rather than fight for equality all over again. Instead, I joined ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers). We had meetings on a regular basis where individuals from the industry were invited to give speeches and tell us all about "the real world". There was pizza and soda, so you know I'm there when there's free food. The topics were diverse, from how to brew your own beer to the fluid mechanics of arteries and veins to robotic prosthetics. We also took field trips, to the wind tunnel at NASA for example. I made friends with a group of seniors and some juniors who were officers in the club, and it was cool to have people to look up to. After they graduated, I ran for president of ASME, and I held that office for the last two years of school.
The Engineering College was awesome. The professors were fantastic. Everyone had almost the same schedule (there were different class times available for certain classes, but you followed a well structured plan) and we really became a family. We had cliques, but everyone worked together. There was the smartest guy and girl in the class (who dated each other toward the end, which was adorable) and the class clown and his group (who ended up making a Facebook group for us called ME-GB which either stood for Mechanical Engineers Give Back or Mechanical Engineers Gang Bang lol...I'm sure they prefer the first one but the second name got tossed around - we all have code names, mine being Harley Harlequin since I own a Harley Davidson, and they made t-shirts for us before graduation). In short, my time in the Engineering College was amazing.
In addition to engineering I decided to take the classes necessary for a bachelor's in Applied Mathematics. There were only about 3 classes needed to have a minor, and something like 6 classes to have the bachelor, so I thought why not. I didn't start the math courses until my junior year, and boy was that a mistake. I hadn't touched math (well, in the sense of 'pure math' if you will - we used math every day in my engineering classes, but the theoretical stuff...it had been a while) in over a year and I had forgotten a lot. During the first semester of my math studies, I took 4 math classes at once (insane) and they were very difficult, but I was fortunate to have some really amazing professors and I would make some wonderful friends. After class I would go to the tutoring lab and literally spend hours there working with my classmates to figure out problems (eating lunch, dinner, and usually leaving when the library closed at 11pm). At the end, I passed, but I honestly don't know how. If I were a professor I wouldn't have given me a math degree, but I earned it so what the heck. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but to all of my fellow mathematicians who really understand this stuff: my hat's off to ya.
When I walked in the room, the professor doing the interviewing immediately greeted me as if I was almost a celebrity. Turns out I was already famous and didn't even know it. As soon as my application crossed his desk he checked up on me with the community college and my vocational school. It is so rare to have an engineering student who not only has previous hands on experience but also is an ASE certified master mechanic....oh, yeah, and a woman ;) The interview continued not as if we were professor and nervous applicant but rather as if we were esteemed colleagues. It was so cool. After the interview (I assume I was the last person for that day) he invited me on a tour of the engineering college. This, as I found out later, wasn't customary. He took me around to all of the labs and introduced me to all the teams (for those of you who don't know, most engineering colleges have teams that compete in engineering related competitions: civil engineers have the Concrete Canoe, mechanicals have the Formula SAE, the SAE Supermileage Competition, etc - oh, and my university kicks butt in all of these competitions btw...). On top of that, all of the captains of the teams knew of me as well. It wasn't "Let me introduce you to one of our Honors College candidates," it was "Hey (insert name)! This is Sarah, the girl I was telling you about. The master mechanic." Again, so cool. (oh, yes, I was accepted into the Honors College)
I began as a sophomore, but I had to catch up with one or two freshman engineering classes. As an engineering student, you aren't officially admitted into the engineering college until your sophomore year and you must have at least a C average in all of your engineering related classes (if I got that wrong, I apologize, but it's something close to that if not). I also made a couple of friends who would become my lab and homework partners for the rest of my time there. As it turns out, I did not join any of the teams. I went to one of the meetings of the Formula team, but the guy in charge told me I should paint the roll cage during the time there. Maybe it was an initiation, maybe he didn't fully know my previous experience, but for me there was simply too much testosterone. I decided I'd best leave it to the boys since I wanted to save my strength for the class load to come rather than fight for equality all over again. Instead, I joined ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers). We had meetings on a regular basis where individuals from the industry were invited to give speeches and tell us all about "the real world". There was pizza and soda, so you know I'm there when there's free food. The topics were diverse, from how to brew your own beer to the fluid mechanics of arteries and veins to robotic prosthetics. We also took field trips, to the wind tunnel at NASA for example. I made friends with a group of seniors and some juniors who were officers in the club, and it was cool to have people to look up to. After they graduated, I ran for president of ASME, and I held that office for the last two years of school.
The Engineering College was awesome. The professors were fantastic. Everyone had almost the same schedule (there were different class times available for certain classes, but you followed a well structured plan) and we really became a family. We had cliques, but everyone worked together. There was the smartest guy and girl in the class (who dated each other toward the end, which was adorable) and the class clown and his group (who ended up making a Facebook group for us called ME-GB which either stood for Mechanical Engineers Give Back or Mechanical Engineers Gang Bang lol...I'm sure they prefer the first one but the second name got tossed around - we all have code names, mine being Harley Harlequin since I own a Harley Davidson, and they made t-shirts for us before graduation). In short, my time in the Engineering College was amazing.
In addition to engineering I decided to take the classes necessary for a bachelor's in Applied Mathematics. There were only about 3 classes needed to have a minor, and something like 6 classes to have the bachelor, so I thought why not. I didn't start the math courses until my junior year, and boy was that a mistake. I hadn't touched math (well, in the sense of 'pure math' if you will - we used math every day in my engineering classes, but the theoretical stuff...it had been a while) in over a year and I had forgotten a lot. During the first semester of my math studies, I took 4 math classes at once (insane) and they were very difficult, but I was fortunate to have some really amazing professors and I would make some wonderful friends. After class I would go to the tutoring lab and literally spend hours there working with my classmates to figure out problems (eating lunch, dinner, and usually leaving when the library closed at 11pm). At the end, I passed, but I honestly don't know how. If I were a professor I wouldn't have given me a math degree, but I earned it so what the heck. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but to all of my fellow mathematicians who really understand this stuff: my hat's off to ya.
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