I should have figured that engineering is my destiny. When I was little, I hated getting out of bed to turn on/off the light. I was always designing contraptions that reached from right above my headboard along the wall to my light switch. They didn't always work, probably because I was 6 and had no access to money or Radio Shack.
People often ask me why I want to be an engineer. Why on earth would I want to go through 4+ years of math, science, physics and engineering courses? What is so great about knowing how long it will take a room at 50 degrees, Fahrenheit to reach 72 degrees; or the force it will take for a hammer to pound a nail into a board; or why an LED will blink rather than glow steadily when you add an IC 555 to a circuit?
The answer is simple: I want to change the world. No, you don't necessarily have to be an engineer to change the world, but think back in the past few hundred years to those inventions that we can't seem to live without today--the light bulb, cars, airplanes, computers, the iPhone. I could very well spend a couple of months walking in the dark across the country just to ask my mom for more money for school, if it weren't for engineers.
There is such a broad spectrum of engineering opportunities, too. Maybe I want to build the next space shuttle; maybe I want to program a robot that will make all of my meals for me; maybe I want to design turbines that rotate by means of ocean current and produce enough power for the whole country; maybe I want to develop a material that will sustain a trip down an active volcano. There are no boundaries when it comes to innovation and ingenuity, which is perfect since I am a color-outside-the-lines type of girl.
Random Fact: Australia was the first country to use postcards.
