Once upon a time, I grew up wanting to become an engineer. I always was fond of math as a kid, and I was told by a lot of adults that engineering would be the best route to take. At our high school, we had “engineering” classes that you could take. These classes involved programming, learning C&C drilling, creating models in AutoCAD, and playing around with BoBots, and were some of my favorite classes in school. It seemed like a no-brainer that I wanted to become a mechanical engineer.
I ended up going to the University of South Carolina, or USC (not to be confused with the name-stealing University of Southern California that lays claim to the acronym) for mechanical engineering. I felt well prepared for my classes given my background in high school and was excited to start learning. Little did I know, the classes I took were not entirely mechanical engineering related.
Taking Calculus 1 should have been the first red flag. Everything was a little over my head, but I pushed on as best as I could. I felt myself losing interest in the subject matter of my core curriculum, but I was determined to become an engineer and have a job working on projects like I did in high school. Calculus 2 and Statics were the game changers. I quickly went from “I sort of understand this” to “What did you just say?” in a matter of weeks. What made matters even worse is that while I struggled with the material, my friends and fellow future-engineers fully understood everything and were doing well in their classes while my grades slipped.
Instead of asking for help, I cloistered myself away. My can-do attitude slowly became apathy to what I was learning. Instead of going to after school study programs, or meeting with a tutor, I blew off classes I should have been attending and didn’t ask for help until it was too late. Instead of talking about my struggles, I bottled them up and slowly slid into a depression.“
"Was I just dumber than my other classmates?"
...was a thought that I frequently had at that point in my life.
It took me 3 times before I was finally able to get a passing grade in Calculus 2. By that point, I was so far behind my friends that I no longer saw the point in trying. In my 2nd year, I decided to leave school and go back home, thinking I was not smart enough for college.
Little did I know, my problem wasn’t that I wasn’t smart enough, but I wasn’t driven enough. It took years of working in a job and becoming more mature to realize I could have solved my own problems by asking for help, working through my problems when things became difficult, or even just showing up. When I decided to become a software engineer, I was able to take these lessons with me to help me succeed in school. While I have regrets about that period of my life, I am happy with the path I am on now, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
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