Engineering - a study of stress, fatigue and failure?

A prominent ancient Greek philosopher once philosophized that a person is ‘defined by the choices they make’. I guess this would be an appropriate way for me to introduce myself to the one reader that happened to stumble across this page (so, a spammer).

I would love to be the perfect little engineering role model, but the sad truth is that I am far from being the girl with the best grades, or the one with the charismatic dreams, or even type of person who always makes the correct choices. Luckily, the happy truth is that I truly and honestly love being an engineer despite the 'I-want-to-kill-my-coursework!' thoughts. And through this blog I hope to show you exactly what our ever-changing and cool world is like. They say that enthusiasm and fun is infectious; hopefully this rule holds through the interwebs too :)

As a plump child who pretended she had a spaceship and alien friends, I began forming a dream. I wanted to be an adventurer! An explorer who pioneered beyond the unknown and fought off bad guys. Slowly this goal would evolve beyond recognition (I mean, I’m a nuclear engineer right now), but you have to have a starting point.

But as I progressed through my Mechanical Engineering degree, it began to dawn on me that I could be more useful if I remained closer to Earth. All my readers will be familiar with ideas such as 'global warming' and 'fuel conservation' (yes, even that spammerbot). Reading articles in the press made me think about nuclear energy as our main energy source in the future. But our current nuclear power plants (in the UK) were old and mouldy and totally outdated (kind of like the cheese in my fridge). I wanted to be a part of the nuclear renaissance, designing cool technologies such as Generation IV reactors and Fusion power plants. It was around this time last year that I moved from Imperial College London to UC Berkeley.

So I guess that’s where I am now. I know I’m on my way to fulfilling my dream, even though I’m not fighting baddies (unless you call CO2 a villain?). But I certainly feel like I’m exploring new territory with groundbreaking technology. I’m only an insignificant miniscule in the nuclear power engineering world, but I like to think that my grad school work will eventually contribute in some convoluted way.

I guess the main point I wanted to get across this jumble of words is that: Don’t be scared to dream big. And don’t be scared if your goals and desires change along the way. In fact, I recommend having more than one dream. I mean, the worst that can happen is that you can't remember what answer you put down to your password security question 'What's your dream job?' As long as you are still passionate and driven about what you want to do, you will change the world. Even if it’s just one math problem at a time.