Some Interviews and a Lot of Original Work

Throughout these two weeks I have been focusing almost exclusively on my original work. Since the deadline is fast approaching, I find myself scrambling to find research and bring together my final product. For my original work, I am designing and creating a saddle pad. When proposing and starting this project I thought to myself that this would be something that could be easily achieved when looking at the large amount of time stretching before me. Due to some procrastination and the volume of work that ultimately needs to go into this project, I find myself a little stressed about completing it all on time and turning out a good product.

To combat these stressful and negative thoughts I made myself a list late last week of all of the steps necessary to complete the project. I found myself slightly overwhelmed and slightly relieved to see this list in its entirety. There are so many things that need to be done but having them all laid out in a well organized and detailed list really set my mind at ease. I definitely feel like this is something that, with many hours of work, can be completed by the deadline. Overall, I am very excited to see how my original work plays out. I think the final product will be very interesting and quite different from many of my peers. I love that I was able to combine my love for horses and my interest in chemical engineering together to, hopefully, create a product that will have a significant impact on not only myself but also the equestrian community.

In the latter part of these two weeks, I conducted two interviews with professionals around the chemical engineering field. While neither of these professionals held the exact title of “chemical engineer” they both had experience in and around the field. What really intrigued me when talking to these professionals was the ways in which their jobs had developed over time. Both of them began in a menial research position, doing the boring work of writing up lab reports. Over time they were promoted and their jobs evolved from research to managing research to even managing the business side of this research. When looking at chemical engineering, there is not a specific job title or description that goes with this field, so learning about the different ways in which these two professionals work, in and around the field, was very important. These two interviews are likely my last interviews regarding the research interview process. I have a professional that I am looking to reach out to, who will hopefully agree to be my mentor.

This has been a very busy couple of weeks and I am hoping that after putting in some dedicated hours for the next couple of weeks I will be able to get to Christmas break with the long, somewhat exhaustive, list mostly crossed off.