STORIESSTories of Resilience and Inclusion of Engineering Students
STORIESEngineering students have a lot going on, and it can sometimes feel overwhelming. We believe this page can help you learn how other engineering students have navigated their time in college, so you can learn what worked well for them (and what didn’t). This page has some condensed takeaways that can give you a starting point to dive into the stories. We also provide some tags that we think would be especially useful to students.
College may be the first time you’ve been on your own without your old friend groups, and it can be hard to make new friends. Study groups are one of the common ways in which people meet each other. Some of our participants share their stories about their groups and how they’ve been helpful for studying and support.
Tchuck & Study Groups
Anna & Support
Study groups are important for keeping up with classes and for meeting new people. When Tchuck had to leave campus because of the pandemic, he realized how much time he spent with his fellow engineering students and how they helped him keep up with his classes:
“Overall, the study groups really helped me in terms of the couple of hot points that were my exam grades. So, that was good. I mean, yeah. I will say that, not even group, just friends in general definitely helps with the hot points I would say. Just, find people and talk to people.
“I think not being on campus is definitely going to hinder me because I do think that being on campus, especially with my roommate that was an engineer, as well as being around other engineers all the time, definitely helped me navigate engineering…. I think that just the biggest thing is probably the, not the social, but I guess the, study groups thing. I do think that genuinely helped a lot. And also one of the things that we’d figured out for orgo would be we all take the quiz together… I think other people are also trying to set up that type of stuff again too. So, I do think a lot of it’s just going to be trying to still, consistently do what we were doing, just obviously, adapting to the new situation that we’re in now.”
Anna had a rough time during her third year, but she was able to stay social by meeting with her classmates to study. Her new friends helped her stay focused in her classes, but also helped her deal emotionally with the fallout from an incident that had happened earlier in the year:
“I met Oliver because we both spent an obscene amount of time at the library. So, I would always see him around and he would always see me around…. So, we hung out in the library a couple times and then I was like, “Hey, I’m going to actually the Free Library. You want to come?” So, we went on a decently long walk over there. We checked it out. I got really excited about all the books. And we just had really good conversation and then we were friends.
“The incident kind of really messed with me. The things that did help were talking to my best friend who has gone through similar experiences, and reaching out to people who I know care about me. But the pivotal moment that turned me from just really super messed up to starting to be okay again was Oliver encouraged me to tell my parents what happened. And I feel like sharing that with them made me feel less like it was my burden and more like it was okay to talk about. And, I don’t know. I think the only reason I didn’t completely fail my classes is because I have friends in them and they would always be like, ” Anna, did you do the homework?” And I’d be like, “Oh, I guess I got to do the homework.” That sort of thing.”
There are lots of reasons why you might get a bad grade in a class, but you can always improve the next time around. Encountering failure and overcoming it is an important part of being an engineer – there’s a reason why it’s one of our most popular tags! Here are a few quotes from students talking about failure and how they pushed past it.
John & Mental Health
Josh & Helpful Faculty
Joy, Josh, & Hard Classes
John had a tough semester and failed two of his classes in a semester. But he worked to understand why he was failing and talked with other people who helped him realize that he could still succeed. By talking about his mental health with his therapist, family, and friends, John was able to get the support he needed to move forward:
“After Thanksgiving, I realized that I was going to fail a class. I had to choose between engineering and physics. The engineering was just statics, and it was a very first engineering class and the very first one that involved math and physics to a more practical degree. I decided to stop going to that class so I could focus on physics… I ended up talking to an electrical engineer who has actually helped through failing classes for the past few years. He’s someone that I look up to highly. Hearing that I was going to be okay, it really helped. I feel less bad about failing classes now.
“I went back home after finals. On the ride home, I talked to my mom about my mental health and about how I failed the classes because she has access to my grades. I let her know that it was a combination of both the difficulty of the classes and my mental health…. My mom, she doesn’t quite understand mental illness quite as much as my sisters and I would like. My younger sister is going through mental illness. She is diagnosed with depression, anxiety and ADHD. Last week, I was just diagnosed with major depressive disorder. My mom is having a hard time understanding why can’t you get over this and just focus? I went to therapy without telling my mom. I didn’t want to seem weak or low. I relied on a lot of my friends and my therapist.”
Supportive faculty and TAs are important resources for overcoming failure. Josh had some encounters with faculty that were less-than supportive, but others were more helpful:
I’ve only ever had a few bad experiences with faculty members. The professor I have for my math methods class is very rude and short at times, when you ask questions, and it almost seems like she doesn’t want to help or that she feels that the questions I’m asking, I shouldn’t be asking. It’s frustrating when faculty members treat you like a child and act like you’re dumb for asking questions on things they think you should know, when they’re the one with a doctorate and you’re the one going to school. But I’d say those experiences are very far and few between.
During an event orientation, a professor I had last semester pat my shoulder to say hello, so later I walked to his office. Even though we are both busy, we still talked for 20 minutes about my co-op and how I’m doing in school. The machine design professor sat down with me before this exam because I feel like I’m going to fail. He made me answer the questions to prove that I knew enough to what I was talking about to do decent on the exam. It’s also finding the time to relax in situations where it feels like I have none. I feel like it’s evident that I talked to my professors. I am very open about things going on in my life.
Some courses are difficult to get through. Joy and Josh talk about some of their harder classes, but also how to develop a mentality that lets you see past the difficulty right in front of you to the larger picture:
Joy: Because it was so difficult a year ago. Then, I was just so tired from trying that two semesters ago. This last semester, I was just really discouraged in my abilities to work through my classes and the homework. I was just talking with a friend about this, that it’s gotten to the point where the last time I can remember feeling like I’m actually good at something was high school…. Whereas, heat transfer is something, you fail a quiz, and then you do fine on the homework and that’s because you spent hours and hours and hours on it. Then, you fail a quiz, and then you fail a test, and it just keeps going.
Josh: So, I realized a high grade isn’t the only grade you can get. I also realized it’s a culmination of concepts, but as long as I get the ones that I’m there to master, that’s what the program was focused on teaching me at that time…. I just took that to heart and I just committed myself to say okay, well now I know. You know, I’ve got to make sure I’m on top. It’s kind of just a mental commitment more so than anything. It is more studying, I think a little bit more. But I think it’s more so asking questions and making sure I understand the concepts in a deeper sense.
Many engineering programs require students to complete internships and co-ops. Finding a position can be intimidating, but students report learning a lot from the experience. Sometimes the material they work on helps them in their classes, but more often it helps them understand what their classes are for.
Joy's Confidence
Josh's Independence
Lauren's Opportunity
Joy’s internship experiences helped her build confidence and focus less on her grades:
"The engineers were very kind, and I learned a lot from them. And I’m more confident in my ability to go through the engineering process of, “We have a need. How do we solve that need,” and how to get from Step A to B to C and finally putting it on the machine. Because it was a small company, I was able to actually see the very start all the way to actually shipping it out on the unit that the customer was going to use.
"Overall, this year has been really great in my journey to becoming an engineer. I guess, just not being bothered by grades, and putting more of my identity in, I don’t know, just being confident in myself, and not putting my identity in my grades. That was the big thing. I’m like, “I am done putting my identity in my grades and I’m focusing more on myself and the relationships I have with people in my life who’ve influenced me to be better.”
Josh found that working in industry required a different amount of independence and creativity that made him feel like an engineer in ways his classes hadn’t:
"I started working at my internship. It’s two credits for the internship. I was very excited. It was a very fulfilling experience. The company was very good. I was able to achieve a lot of personal goals and spend time with friends on the weekends. I went dinner with my team…. I think the internship prepared me to manage time and figure out what’s the best solution. I was not prepared for independence but adapting it. In school, I’m given assignments and was told what to do. Here, I was given problems to figure out how to test by myself.
"I gained a lot of experience from the real world. I’ve had 12 jobs since 14, but none of them were engineering jobs. Having an engineering job allowed me to be used to being a professional. That taught me even if the concepts don’t apply, there is a baser reasoning to what I’m doing. I can look at a problem now and solve it without any help."
Lauren turned an undergraduate research experience into an internship at a national lab:
"In addition to coursework, I am an undergraduate researcher working with a professor who studies Nano-materials. The Professor is like my boss, I guess. He’s a dude who runs the whole lab, and he tells us like, hey, we’re going to work on this project, or we’re going to work on that project. But he was one of the people who went up to the national lab to do the measurements. In general, he’s the one that knows most of what he’s doing at the lab, because he’s actually a doctor. He’s actually got a doctorate. So yeah, he knows a bunch of stuff about magnetism and Nano-materials.
"This research opportunity led to me receiving an internship offer to work at the national lab. The professor I work with in the lab mentioned how there was an internship at the national lab we collaborate with, the place he did the measurements, for experiments. He encouraged me to apply for the internship. I said, okay, I’ll do that. And so, I applied for it. And I got the job, the internship, the job, I’m going to be working on the same project that I’m doing here. So, I’m going to be doing it at the National lab, so I’ll be able to do some actual measurements, and not just do stuff on the computer."