Year by Year Updates: Career, Educational and Personal

After graduating in December 2014, life was all of a sudden not a series of assignments, midterms, finals and breaks anymore. Here is a recap of 2015 and 2016.

2015

My first year as a full-time civil engineer in the Fort Worth, Texas industry. It felt as though I spent A LOT of time learning how to use Civil 3D, learning how to write effective plan notes, and learning about contract documents. My first experience of building a project design from top to bottom, from feasibility, research to city review, to pre-construction meeting was a parks rehabilitation project. Not at all what I expected when I set out to become a civil engineer but an incredible starting point. Why? Because I learned that even the tedious little details require discipline and a commitment to excellence. The other major component of my experience this year, and it should not be understated because it was the foundation for the majority of the work I do today, is flood studies. I spent a great deal of my work year learning the ins and outs of HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS and producing reports of inundation studies. Overall, this year was the foundation of my experience in analyis, design, planning and deadlines. 

2016 

I decided to take a different route with my career and work for a small engineering company where I could get more project management experience. After receiving an offer from Barron, Stark and Swift Consulting Engineers, I met with the owner Chuck Stark and a hydrology engineer who would be training me if I took the offer. The only deterring detail was that the job was in Benbrook, Texas which was significantly far from my home. Despite the distance, I decided it was a great opportunity to learn about management first hand. I have been working at Barron-Stark since February 2016 until the present date. This first year I was able to learn about grading on commercial warehouse sites, assisted living sites, and medical office sites. This experience was very different from my previous project experiences which was more city parks and a bit of residential lot projects.

Silver Lining Reflection, 4 years later

A little under 4 years ago, I was scrolling through my emails and stumbled upon an opportunity of a life time. It was the IRES Summer Internship program directed by Dr. Yazdani at UT Arlington. At that time in my life, I was struggling to stay focused on the end goal of graduating with a Bachelors of Science in Civil Engineering at the end of 2014. It was a time of sorrow as my family was going through the unexpected loss of one of our own. The email that was soliciting applications to travel to Spain that summer as an intern was a silver lining that day. I quickly shared the opportunity with my sister and she encouraged me to apply. I have to admit I was plagued with negative thoughts that made me feel that I had very little chances of being selected as a participant. I felt I did not have the right experience level or that I was not the adequate candidate. However, there must have been a little glimmer of hope that pushed me to submit the application regardless.
A few weeks later I received the invitation to interview with Dr. Yazdani and that's when it all became like a very real possibility.
Fast forward to July 4, 2014 and my parents were dropping me off at the airport to set out to Valencia, Spain with the other UT Arlington participants Kavitha and Kelsey.
The next six weeks, as you can read about in my previous blog posts, were an experience I will never forget.  From learning about Spanish infrastructure and experimenting with cutting edge repair technology, to meeting mentors like Jose Vicente and Ana that shared a piece of their daily life with us, to the beaches, the food, the beautiful cities, it was all a rich and beautiful learning experience.
Upon my return to the US I felt a new energy. It was a feeling of appreciation for my home, my country and the opportunity that I had been given. It was also a resolve to move forward toward my goals and live a life I would be proud to live. As well as the new hope to one day continue traveling the world. That snippet of time in Valencia inspired me to continue taking advantage of opportunities no matter how unlikely they may seem. In addition, it sparked a desire to travel the world and keep an open mind to the different ideas people have as they engineer their cities and thus, the life around them.

After School Fun! (Written in 2015)

It has been over a year since I was last in Valencia, Spain with the IRES group and our mentors. Life seems to have taken a complete turn since then.
Once I got back to the metroplex, summer seemed to end very abruptly and school picked up with just as much speed. It was my last semester before graduation and the workload was substantial. However, with graduation being the light at the end of the tunnel, time flew by! The exception being a few hours leading up to the many final exams, presentations, and project deadlines that seemed to drag on in a tortuous state of lack of sleep and sometimes lack of preparation. But finally, Graduation!