Germination

A few weeks ago, I was brainstorming ideas for how to make the CMU Engineers Without Borders website more useful to our members. It occurred to me that it might be helpful to compile a running list of resources for students who are not interested in working for an engineering firm during the summer, or after graduation, and instead want to work for a non-profit organization, or for a start-up company – for a cause that means something to them. This list would include (but would not be limited to) organizations similar to EWB (non-profits, start-ups, etc.) that focus on sustainable international development; Carnegie Mellon faculty and alumni who are doing this kind of work; relevant books, websites, TED talks (I’m addicted), Nicholas Kristof columns (I heart him); and fellowship/scholarship opportunities for service-oriented engineers.

In discussing this idea with some friends, it dawned on me that this list might be a valuable resource for many students, and not just members of EWB. Perhaps there is a real need for an alternative career center (at Carnegie Mellon, and at other universities) that would provide a supportive environment for students who seek an unconventional career path, or want to try something different before settling into more stable employment. Well this was kind of a crazy thought, but it stuck with me, so I decided to engage the Career Center at CMU to see if there was a mutual interest in exploring this idea further.

Turns out, there was! Farouk, the Director of the Career Center, immediately took to the idea. He understood that for such a cutting-edge and interdisciplinary university, we could do more to help students reflect on their priorities and come up with out-of-the-box opportunities for employment. The initiative is still very free form right now, but the point is that times are changing. The idea of a career is quickly becoming outdated: less people are working for the same company for 40 years, and more are hopping around from one opportunity to the next as their own interests and needs evolve. Now, with the Internet and globalization, there is literally a world of opportunity available to us, and our generation has the opportunity to break the mold and pursue a different kind of career that is more in tune with the rapidly changing environment in which we live.

So, what do you think? What’s the next step? How should this alternative career center operate, and what should be its purpose? How can we show students that it’s okay to do something a little on the edge, and provide resources and networks for us to tap into that will propel us forward on this path?

Post Numero Uno: The Cause

I am on a mission to do something TOTALLY AWESOME after I graduate: to explore my passions, to travel, to be inspired, to reflect on what is important to me, and to learn in a non-academic, non-corporate setting. I want to work on meaningful projects with motivated people, and I want to wake up in the morning every day and feel that my work has a purpose, and that I am part of a larger, global effort to affect positive change in this world.

That said, I am just beginning to scratch the surface in uncovering what possibilities exist, or what kinds of experiences I might be able to create for myself! So, I plan to use this blog as a record of my personal quest to seek out those opportunities, and I invite you to come along for the ride! Hopefully, if you are on a similar mission, we can take on this search together – I’ll post my thoughts, and I would love to hear yours. :)

A little bit about me:

As a senior in high school, I read a Wired magazine interview with a man named Larry Brilliant that changed the course of my academic career. At the time, Brilliant had just been appointed the director of Google’s philanthropic branch, Google.org (after having spent the early years of his career working to eradicate smallpox and polio in India), and declared in the interview that engineers were the best source for solutions to the world’s biggest problems. So at 17, I decided that I was going to be an engineer and change the world.

As a student at Carnegie Mellon, I sought out opportunities to do this type of work through an organization called Engineers Without Borders that works with communities in developing countries on small-scale water, sanitation, energy, and construction projects. And in May, I will graduate with a degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering. My college career has provided me with opportunities to explore my interests through research, through travel, and through meaningful discussion, and I truly feel that after four years I will have acquired a concrete set of analytical and technical skills that I can take with me wherever I go. I will admit, though, that it is not my fondness for fluid mechanics that has kept me on this path for nearly four years.

Instead, I am fuelled the fact that nearly 1 billion people on this planet lack access to clean water; that 2.5 billion lack access to sanitation; that children in developing countries across the globe are not in school; that we are cutting down trees more rapidly than we are planting new ones; and that we are consuming the earth’s resources at unsustainable levels. I get excited about straws that filter river water, and merry-go-rounds that generate electricity. I jump at the mention of bamboo schools and urban farming.

I love interacting with people – I find that my level of happiness at the end of the day is a function of how much time I can spend engaging in interesting conversation, cooking dinner with friends, and collaborating with other students (and not staring at a computer screen).

I love nature, and playing (biking, running, hiking, skiing, star-gazing) in the mountains. I spent a summer and the second semester of my junior year in Bozeman, Montana, and fell in love with the lifestyle and culture that is so intrinsically rooted in the natural environment.

I’m also an idealist. I view the world from a place of opportunity for a more equitable, more respectful, and more peaceful future, and I want to be a part of this movement for real change.

No, I am not the same girl I was when I ripped out the Brilliant interview and pinned it above my bed. But at 21, I am just as eager as I was at 17.

And so it is with this mission that I take the plunge into the unstructured and uncertain world of infinite possibility upon graduation. I don’t intend to sit in a cubicle and work for The Man, and so the search for a high-impact, global, socially and environmentally-conscious, potentially technical opportunity for next year begins…

NOW.