After obtaining my engineering degree, I worked as a field engineer for a company that made cardiac monitoring systems. Soon I was working on a marketing plan for the same company and moved into future roles in business rather than engineering. In fact, I’ve intentionally stayed away from doing anything technical. I liked being in technical companies and hearing about technical breakthroughs, but I just didn’t want to touch it.
Recently, I have found myself learning Rhino 3D software and 3D printing and re-learning C programming. AND I LOVE IT! My husband has been so surprised at this sudden turnaround, and he asked me why I had fled from tech in the first place and how I had gotten interested in it again.
Well, I’ve been thinking about that. I think that there are two reasons that I fled. First, my time in college was not actually my most enjoyable. I had a few professors who openly didn’t think that women should be engineers and made it a bit difficult to feel totally comfortable in my classes. I felt like I had to work twice as hard to be treated the same. Granted, once I got into my specific engineering major, my professors were fantastic and supportive, but those first years of basic engineering classes were frustrating. Second, I think I was just tired. Almost all of my classes in high school and college were very intense, high math and science courses – except for the occasional elective that required a course in another department. I’ve known many people over the years who have said that they have gotten their degrees and will never go back for another. I think I just felt that way too. Just tired of it, so the idea of business was new and exciting and different than I had ever done before.
So those are the reasons why I left, so now, how did I get interested in it again? The answer: necessity. I was invited to be part of a joint state and federal program called SEAP (Self-Employment Assistance Program). The plan had been to develop physical 3D models based off some of the models that my husband had created to understand various concepts while in medical school. I thought that he would design the models, and I would be the business/operational side to produce and sell them. But my husband is in medical school. He doesn’t have a huge amount of time to do 3D design work plus he had already started working on some other products himself. In order to make the 3D models a reality, I would need to find a designer (expensive!) or learn to do it myself. I thought I would just try it out for a few days and see how it went. I was picturing that it would take me months to get a basic box made but I was thrilled to discover that I understood it and could start really designing after taking a 2-week course from Rhino. Awesome! I was well on my way. Then we started talking about an app that would be another product of the same business, so I just thought I’d dust off my C programming. I’ve been enjoying that too!
So I’ve gotten back to my technical roots; however, I’m so happy to have the business background, experience, and education as well. I think that both allow me to see situations from different perspectives. I hope that it will make me a more well-rounded professional.
