Anna is a white woman studying electrical engineering at a northeastern institution. She attended alternative primary and middle schools that did not expose her much to science, math, or engineering as a child, but for high school, she switched enrollment into a competitive science and technology high school. In addition to exposing her to a number of high-level science classes, Anna participated in novel design and research projects and was particularly interested in systems engineering. As a college student, Anna spent her freshman year focused mainly on her general courses, but did have time for an engineering design class where she helped build Rube Goldberg machines and robots. After looking at the curriculum for each major and reading descriptions of the classes, she was drawn to the electromagnetism, computer architecture, and digital logic design classes, and decided to major in electrical engineering.
I saw classes like electricity and magnetism in my college curriculum was like, I want to study engineering because that’s where science and design and math and technology all meet up. I feel like it’s such a varied field you can do whatever you want with it.
From Anna’s first interview.
The image below is a journey map that Anna created summarizing some of the highs and lows from her second year as an engineering student.
Want to learn more about Anna’s journey? Check out her tag here (or by clicking the ‘Anna’ tag below) to see quotes from her interviews over the years.