IRES Post #1

Before I begin, I would like to thank the National Science Foundation, The University of Texas at Arlington, and the Polytechnic University of Valencia for this project I am taking part of. It truly is an awesome thing to be able to live abroad and have these research opportunities at this stage in my life.

Next, I will tell you what you are signing up for if you do decide to read this blog:

1. This blog will be about my time in Valencia, and some of the things that have led me down this path I'm on. 

2. I will write a blog weekly, and more times than that if I take some cool pics of cool Europe things.

3. I will try to keep this somewhat informal, because the experiences here are some that I am thoroughly enjoying, and as such, I'd like to relate them as close as possible to how I lived them.

4. I'm terrible at picture captions, so sorry for that in advance.

Civil Engineering

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood...

I still remember the conversation my friend, his dad and I had about Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken".  What is the right path to take? If one looks better than the other does initially, does that mean that is the way that will make you the happiest? Do you go through life thinking about the what-ifs, and how your life might be so different now if you had taken the other path ? I know this poem has been talked about a million times, but still it is what I find myself thinking about when I think about why I chose Civil Engineering. 

The Road Not Taken

I can always look back on school as one of the deciding factors of why I chose Civil Engineering. Growing up, as others dreaded learning new things in math class, I always welcomed the challenge. I was happy solving problems, and this led me to take an elective called Engineering Math in my senior year of high school, which turned out to be the best class I took there. I got to use EasyC programming (turned me away from Computer Software Engineering), used that to program robots we got to put together, and do other things of that sort. However, towards the end of the class, we got to play around with bridge designs, and simulated the forces a truck would exert on the bridge and see how this load would affect the structure. As well as choosing the type of bridge you wanted to make, you could change the material it was made from to change the overall cost of the project. I was fascinated. 

My grandfather was also a Civil Engineer, and I can definitely say that he is another reason I chose CE. Seeing him work on fixing a problem as we waited to go have ice cream with him or go to the movies always made me think he was doing something worthwhile. He must have been doing a great job, because he got recognized for it in Costa Rica, and I'm not the only one to see this in the family. My oldest cousin and my brother (who surely is not reading this blog to compare to his own) are also in the same field. Maybe that's why I wanted to explore more about his profession in college.

A couple of years down the line, I still haven't figured everything out,  but I do know that this path I have chosen for myself is definitely not one I will regret later. I have enjoyed every minute of my Civil Engineering classes, and I believe that the knowledge I am acquiring there will help me in life in one way or another. This IRES research project is an extension of that. This feels like the right place to be at the moment, and having the opportunity to see people so advanced in their fields as involved in what they do as the people I have worked with this past week makes me feel like I am heading the right way. I feel that someday I can be as passionate for one of my projects as they are for theirs. I want to contribute knowledge to my field as they have, and allow people's futures to be improved even if what I do is something that they wouldn't notice on a day to day basis.

Opening reinforced concrete samples to check for corrosion

Looking forward is different. Though I'm not sure of what lies ahead of me, I am sure that I want to continue down this path and eventually be able to create something that will improve the lives of others, and will also carry my name. In the end, I just want to do something along the lines of what my grandfather did, which is take care of the people in his family and I think I can achieve that with Civil Engineering.

Fam time