As the end of sophomore year approaches, I have taken useful technical classes included in my M.E. curriculum such as machining, welding, casting, and CADing. I've also been coding for one year and can use MATLAB to do useful things for me. Additionally, I've taken some conceptually demanding and important 300 level classes like fluid mechanics and 3D dynamics.
What I want to do this summer is apply what I have learned in these two years on a small, hands-on, one month project as a sort of experiment for testing what knowledge I have retained and if I know how to use my two years of college education in creating and solving a localized problem.
Upon completing this project, I will have gained some knowledge on the limits of myself and where my time investment of two years in college has taken me. I can use this project as an intermediate data point between senior year of high school and senior year of university to track my progress, and perhaps use it as some motivation for coming up with my own senior project.
However, what is so significant about this? By the end of senior year, will I have completed four years of strenuous education so that I could work on a senior project, get hired as an entry level engineer, and slowly climb my way up the corporate ladder? Will I settle down in my hometown and wait out a mundane life until I accrue enough capital to achieve the American dream and retire?
No, this is not why I pursued higher education.
As cliche as this may sound, I pursued higher education and put my parents in a financially disadvantageous situation so that I can change the world in a meaningful and memorable way. The skills I am taught in university will make me a better engineer. How I choose to apply these skills onto the world that I perceive will determine the intensity of the impact I leave on society.
What I have to start doing is not only to continue keeping up with current events and where technology is heading, but actually take a shot at influencing the system so that I can try to shift society in the direction I want it to head in.
I need to not only think about the current big picture, but start thinking about how I will help paint the next big picture.
Building my resume, maintaining and improving my GPA, and racking up internships for the sake of approval from my future employees is just the small picture dwarfed by the importance of building my vision and gathering momentum for throwing myself into the world that has existed long before I was born and will exist long after I die.
