How I Found a Love for Engineering

I first realized my love for engineering when I was eight years old. I had stumbled past one of my fathers old books and one specifically happened to catch my attention. This book was not filled with colorful pictures, or imaginary events but simply what most people would consider "just lines". Not me though, my adolescent eyes grew wide with amazement as I would lay for hours somewhat studying each page of my new book of blueprints. Of course, at such an early age I didn't have much of an understanding of what it was exactly that I was looking at, but something always told me there was more to it that meets the eye.

After my father was positive that this was something I wanted to learn more about, he brought it upon himself to teach me everything he knew. He worked as a construction worker and it wasn't difficult for him to get his hands on materials to start a project of our own, but for our safety he wanted to be sure that I knew the basics first. A few months past and my knowledge of what once was "just pictures" grew rapidly by the day. After many minor projects my father and I realized it was time to start a something more complex. So for weeks my father and I sketched up our own blueprint of a house, we constantly revised it, making sure it was exactly how we wanted it to be, then it wasn't long before we began construction. Obviously we didn't have the funds or materials to build an actual sized house, but our plan was to build a "birdie mansion"! we would dedicate at least 2hours every Saturday to work on our project, at times it seemed like we were getting nowhere. At the time I didn't quite realize why something that seemed so simple was taking so much time and work, but my dad explained to me that everything good takes time and when we finally were to complete our project it would be all worth it.

We spent about 3 months on it before it was completely finished. Turns out my father was right after all, when I seen what we had created I was beyond speechless. This was nothing like any birdhouse anyone had ever seen, it was complete with white and blue siding, shingles on the roof, we even put window boxes on the windows to hold bird seeds! We paid close attention to make sure the future owner would be comfortable, so we made sure we made our house with big windows and a sun roof so that every room we created had access to sunlight.

Although many people seen this as a simple "phase" I was going through and thought I might end up growing out of it, I knew deep down that this is something I truly wanted to do in the future. This was by far my passion, what I was put on this earth to do. There is no greater feeling to me then being able to turn a simple idea into a magnificent creation that everyone can see. If it wasn't for the support of my family and the motivation of my father I may not have ever