High school for me revolved around getting good grades, doing well in sports, and participating in outdoor activities with my family. I went to Davis High School in Kaysville, Utah and I played football, basketball, and volleyball. The classes that I learned the most from in high school were AP calculus, chemistry, and a few engineering classes. I decided that I wanted to go to college in another state so I decided to go to California.
California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo is the school that I decided to attend. The main reasons that I chose the school is that it had a great engineering program, it was close to the beach, it has a very temperate climate, and the city is revolved around the college. The degree that I chose to pursue is environmental engineering because I really enjoyed math, chemistry, and engineering classes in high school. I wanted to push myself in school, but not past my breaking point, and environmental engineering turned out to be a great route for me.
Cal Poly’s college of engineering is very well known all over the engineering industry and Cal Poly students are very competitive when trying to receive a summer or yearly internship with a well-known engineering firm. Some of these companies include Space X, Tesla, Northrop Grumman, Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. The civil/environmental engineering companies that students compete for include CH2M, Arcadis, Carollo, Brown and Caldwell, MWH, Water Works, and WSC. The best way to get an internship is if you know someone who works for the company and it took me a while to make connections with people who work for these companies.
After trying to get an internship with one of these engineering firms for about 2.5 years, a family friend of mine named Diane took me under her wing to help me reach out to water resources engineering firms. Diane is the district manager for a water district north of Seattle, Washington, so she has many connections to civil/environmental engineering firms around the Seattle area. After she worked her magic for me, I was able to get 6 interviews in the Seattle area and I decided to intern with Carollo Engineers in downtown Seattle for the summer.
