Why I chose Civil Engineering as a career

Definition:
Civil engineering is a disciple that handles design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally created environment for projects like roads, dams, bridges, canals, etc.

Childhood:
As a child I always liked building and creating. I loved my legos as a child I even tried to build a tree house out of old pieces of wood and used cardboard in my parents backyard. I always had a passion for finding new ways to improve on the things around me.

School Days:
Coming up in grade school to high school I never really excelled in academics because I was never interested or focused in school coming up as a teenager. I was more interested in playing around with friends and sports, instead of just reading and doing homework all day. Although math was always my favorite, because of the concept of problem solving, and using equations, formulas, and logic to get specified answer. So since problem solving was the most interesting concept for me coming out of high school I decided to further my education in engineering. I choice civil engineering because I wanted to use my skills and knowledge that I acquire in college to affect the environment around me. I was always concerned about the quality and safety of the environment and how it affects us as a people.

Future:
As I come to my final year in college, and as I plan on doing more hands on activites dealing with my profession. I will always strive to improve within myself, and within my profession. I don't want to just be a civil engineer who just comes to work to shake hands and sign paper, I actually want to affect the whole concept of civil engineering, I will be creative and dynamic, and I know if I work hard enough I can.

Legos can start influencing children at a early stage in life to start building, and being creative. The sooner we encourage our future youth that thinking outside of the box and be creative. This could lead to more engineers and more advancement in the future.

 In labs, from my Civil Engineering Materials class we preformed slump test to determine workability and strength of a concrete mix. The slump test we performed on a batch of concrete mix taught me consistency of a mix and how the wetness of a mix can determine the strength.

 In my civil engineering computer practice class I used a build and design software called Revit to construct a model of The White House. The class and entire project gave me knowledge about the actual time and specific detail it takes to design a project before construction start. Great learning experience and it gave me good practice conceptual design.

The ASCE concrete canoe competition helped me utilize skills such as teamwork, communication, and leadship. Time management was the hardest thing for me, I was over the mix design team, and finding good meeting times and brainstorming through everyones ideas. But I loved the whole aspect on this competition for civil engineers, great way to apply knowledge from the classroom into hands on project.