Carley Przystac

October 17, 2014

Engineering My Future: Perception vs. Reality

When I first got a call from a transportation engineering section asking me to come in for an interview, I wasn’t sure if I should take it.  While I was excited by the prospect of working for this particular firm, transportation engineering was something I had already done the previous summer and I was looking to expand my experience into other fields of civil engineering.  During my interview, I could picture myself joining the team that interviewed me.    By asking questions during my interview, I learned this position would afford me an opportunity to do more than what I had done the previous summer.  My internship forced me to go on a journey of self-discovery, during which I was able to explore niches of civil engineering I previously did not know existed.  It challenged my perceptions of the field, and changed what I want to do post-graduation.  I worked on a huge variety of projects, from turning movement counts to collision diagrams to early environmental coordination reports.   I will be presenting on my journey through the world of civil engineering, and where it has left me today.