idk if this engineering thing is right for me guys
I left off my last post exploring my frustration with the final end to my senior year.
I'm not really on some kind of miraculous other end after all of that. My teammates wound up getting better grades than the TAs admitted they deserved, and I got a worse grade than the work I put in to the team overall since I spent so much more time trying to prep my teammates to pass that I didn't even have time to rehearse our oral presentation.. because a teammate overslept on the day of the final.
I'm definitely not over that.
I went on to get married and spend a few months in Europe - win. But came home with a broken foot and anxiety through the roof about my employment prospects.
I gained the ten pounds I'd fought really hard to lose from my time abroad, back.
An entire year has passed, and somehow...
I'm fine. But I think I struggled a lot more in college than I thought, and somehow a year hasn't felt enough to heal from all of that properly (the broken foot sent me into a severe depression, it was... not great).
I completely lost my 'engineering spark' through it all. Between jobs being listed that wanted... seemingly everything to do the things I learned my first year (by the way - this was my least favorite part about interviews, when they would ask me to talk about a 1st year concept and I couldn't because it had been nearly 6 years at that point, I also hated when the recruiter would tell me the interview was about one thing and it'd be about another thing entirely), and none of my friends getting jobs even after graduating a year before me...
Maybe I did chase engineering a little bit because of a boy at first... but it was also because it was the one field I saw which just clicked for me, which just tied all my most fun HS classes together. And I did get my degree in the end, it's not like.. I couldn't do it.
And then we moved away from all of that, and moved in with family. And I got a couple of dogs, explored house remodeling and backyard design a bit. Let myself explore life a bit further, tried to step away from everything.
I still haven't made any friends down here. But I've called friends I hadn't before, and met up with others I'd made in college and who lived close ish enough for me to visit a couple of times (before gas prices decided the sky was a nice place after all).
I didn't get a job, either. The one time I started thinking about going for a cashier job just for something to do... I got so sick I just took it as a sign from above. And then my husband got a job and I found some fall master's level classes I could take at a local college and...
I might be feeling some hope about all of it after all. I know each person's on their own little timeline, but the nature of my anxiety just makes it... confusing to understand that, sometimes.
But really, I'm starting to figure out things I want to make again. Small projects to try out, here and there. I was learning about LED matrices and PCB design to try and make my own little digital habit tracker.
I had a classmate in college who I got to work with a bit towards the end of our class together on one of the later assignments. He'd done it, I'd done it, and we'd been the only two to get to that point for that assignment, so we were comparing and trying to see how we got to our values.. and relieved when some things matched, and puzzling over why others didn't. It was fun stuff, and it was my most immersive EE class - so I really adored it. I wound up being able to explain my method, had confidence in just why I did that, and was able to point out something that he'd overlooked with his own problem.
He was really smart, by the way. Asking questions in class, doing study group every week with others. Had two internships under his belt, I might be making some stuff up now it's been a while but he was clever in a way that scared me. But I'd just helped him with a fairly complicated topic - and that made me feel like maybe I had a place in engineering. Maybe I was smart enough, too, to hold these concepts in my head.
A year later, he'd make a comment to my husband when told I hadn't found a job yet - "but... she was really smart. Super helpful in X class. How am I supposed to get a job if she didn't manage to find one yet?"
This comment makes me cry whenever I think about him. I've been searching for something to tell me I'm not in the wrong place - and he'd thought it, this whole time. He thought I belonged - fully.
Anxiety, when it cripples you like this, is absolutely terrifying. It holds you down, it robs you of your voice, and somehow it tells you it's all your fault, all at the same time. It makes you watch the world pass you by - makes it spin and dance joyously by you while you are locked in a chair and made to watch choppy reruns of every mistake you've made in your life. Flushes your brain until you believe, too, that those mistakes are YOU and everything else in life was just a fluke, an accident, a lucky stroke. It convinces you that it isn't even worth trying anymore, because LOOK at all those other times you failed. It would be pure insanity to even try again.
I say this - while staring at Altium and working my way through one of their training courses. I say this - while listening to my husband play with his friends and hearing the 3D printer whir away at something I designed for our kitchen. I say this - while my cheeks are still wet from remembering what he said and hearing a woman in the background talk about her own twisty path into the engineering path I'm trying to follow for grad school (once I feel confident enough to apply).
If you followed along with this... tale of me, trying to find myself again - thank you. I appreciate you for deciphering my replacement for therapy.
I'm gonna figure out how to shake off this anxiety that's got such a huge chokehold on me and make this engineering thing right for me again guys <3
-your ever suffering keyboard warrior
P.S. I would go to a therapist, but I find myself often forgetting why I'm even there because obviously I'm not depressed!! (I am shrugging and joking in case you can't tell). So online journaling to strangers it isss.
P.P.S. I am currently reading this beautiful book series called the Agaped Bearer and it has also healed my soul in a lot of small ways and I feel like I just need to toss this in here too since it has been a whole year since I last posted!!