[139; 163-169; 173-184; 186-192] During my third semester, I participated in a job shadow related to my dream job. I found out about the opportunity through someone in my robotics team. One of the other students there has a family friend who mentioned that their parents had gotten in a car accident and were going through the process of getting prosthetics because there had to be amputated. And I was like, “Wow, that’s crazy.” But also, of like, “Can you tell me a little bit more about the prosthetics that they’re getting?” And so, the lady is very engaged in helping people, like college students than high school students pursue their goals, and so she immediately plugged me into the prosthetists and the head engineer at the company, at ‘national orthotic and prosthetic company’. And she contacted him and gave me his email address and all of that. And we set up a meeting time.
During my job shadow, he was able to fix something on his patients’ leg and put it back on their leg and they were able to walk out. And he ended up saying that I could come back as many times as I wanted. It was a positive experience. I’m also interested in working with robotics and prosthetics within production lines. I can’t intern with the company where I job shadowed, because you need a medical degree to work or you need the full degree to intern with him. But I hope to get an internship with the company that supplies the manufacture-able parts that they make. So not the custom-made part that fits onto the limb, but like the joints, the knee and the foot and the calf and just other parts of the prosthetics that can be manufactured. They said that they’re looking for interns, so I’m hoping that that I will be able to work there this summer.