the bit

It all started, as so many things in my life do, with a bit.

I was sitting in my high school math class when my teacher asked, “Who here wants to be an engineer?”

The girl sitting in front of me shot her hand up. “Good for her,” I thought as my teacher jotted down her name. “I need someone from each grade. Anyone else?” I remained quiet. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but I figured it’d involve writing. Engineering was not on the radar.

However, a voice piped up behind me: “Cassidy wants to be an engineer - she told me yesterday.” I turned around. It was my friend Jess. This was completely untrue, but the bulk of our relationship was the two of us just messing with each other, so it didn’t shock me that she would say such a thing.

“Oh Cassidy, do you? That’s great,” my teacher responded as she wrote down my name. It felt weird to actively refute the idea and make her erase my name from the list, so I just shrugged. Hey, why not? Who’s to say I didn’t want to be an engineer? (Other than, you know, me.)

I didn’t think much more about this exchange until a few weeks later at a school assembly. I was sitting in the auditorium humbly twiddling my thumbs when I heard, “the Society of Women Engineers award goes to Cassidy McDonnell.” Huh. I walked to the stage, exchanged handshakes with the principal and walked back to my seat with a certificate and a pamphlet of information.

The girl from my class whose hand shot up that day was the only other recipient of the award, so I’m pretty sure my math teacher just needed people to give it to. By graciously volunteering my name to mess with me, my lovable bully Jess inadvertently inspired the immediate trajectory of my life.

the aftermath

Until this point, all I knew about engineers was that they built bridges. That sounded boring and tedious and I also had trouble drawing a straight line with a ruler, so it didn’t really feel like the career path for me. However, the pamphlet I received depicted women designing life saving medicines and intricate water treatment mechanisms and explained how engineers do important and admirable work to help people. The high achieving 16 year old in me who was pompous and self-important enough to have the life goal of “change the world” decided it was, at the very least, worth consideration.

As I began mentioning engineering as a potential career path, the responses I received indicated that it was difficult and impressive, which solidified my decision. I needed to constantly prove to people that I was smart and therefore worthy, and our culture’s focus on the importance of STEM fields ingrained in me that “hard skills” were impressive and admirable whereas “soft skills” were not. I was told that engineering was what smart people did, so I convinced myself that, as a smart person, if I pursued anything else, I would simultaneously be selling myself short and depriving the world of my brilliant mind. It was simply not an option.

the decision

Driven by this warped reality I had created, I entered college as a civil engineering major (an admittedly odd choice for someone whose only career insight was that she didn’t want to build bridges). I objectively knew there were other things to study, but the volume of options was overwhelming and I was told most of them wouldn’t get me a job anyway. Engineering was safe, admirable, and predictable and I was so afraid of stepping out of the narrow “STEM is good and worthy” construct I had created for myself that I wasn’t really aware that doing something different was a legitimate option. I had my mind set on what I thought would impress and satisfy those around me, so engineering it was. It didn't occur to me that I was allowed to dream of something else.

I wanted to be someone who loved engineering, so I worked to convince myself that I did: I read academic articles about carbon emission, attended lectures on sustainable architecture, and worked on multiple international projects designing water systems and retaining walls. It didn't cross my mind that I didn't actually like these things; I thought this was what I was supposed to do and I was honestly surprised and confused that I wasn't surrounded by others doing the same.

I was so wrapped up in concocting a particular persona that it didn't occur to me that I could funnel all of this drive and self-discipline into something I actually enjoyed. Or that something I actually enjoyed could matter to the world. I needed to be extraordinary and for some reason, in my mind, this was the way to do it.

Additionally, the attitude of moral superiority that shrouded the engineering school locked me in: we all thought our lives and our classes were harder than everyone else’s and therefore we were somehow better than those outside our hallowed halls. Whether this attitude was explicitly spoken or simply felt, we reveled in the accomplishment of enduring our weed out classes despite the fact that those who were “weeded out” often bloomed in the greener pastures where they landed while I continued to subsist in the pockmarked dirt where I had stubbornly submerged my roots. In my mind, choosing something different meant quitting and quitting meant being a failure, one of the most shameful things a person could be.

the consequences

Ultimately, I ended up with an engineering degree because I based my identity on how I assumed others perceived me. The “oohs” and “ahhs” that resulted when I told people my major fueled my continued climb towards a destination I had little interest in reaching. In the same way others pursue money and status, I was pursuing the admiration and reputation that came along with the arbitrary cultural capital I had mentally contrived. I needed people to be impressed by me, so I did whatever I thought that required. 

I didn’t want to be an engineer; I wanted to be someone with an engineering degree so I had external proof that I was capable, that I was worthy, that I was valuable to the world. People kept telling me that I could do anything with an engineering degree because it was a sign that I was smart and knew how to solve problems. It never occurred to me that I didn't need that specific degree for those things to be true.

the reflection

If I were to start all over, I don't think I would have chosen civil engineering. However, I don't regret the journey that has led me to this point. Engineering school taught me to fail, to pursue things I don’t understand, and to ask for help from those around me. It has forced me to accept, and eventually embrace, that being surrounded by people who are smarter, more experienced, or more accomplished than me doesn't mean that I'm a failure or that I shouldn't try. Rather, it means that I am immersed in the potential to learn and grow and it's my prerogative to do so.

It has taught me to shamelessly embrace the challenges that are worth pursuing and to shamelessly step from those that aren't. And it has also helped me to differentiate between the two. So much of my life has involved relentlessly running into brick walls simply because those particular walls have elicited admiration from the world around me. I have continued to force square pegs into round holes (told you I'm not a natural engineer) for fear that my natural talents and passions would not be seen as worth pursuing. And that if I fail in those riskier arenas, then I have nothing to fall back on; I truly have nothing to contribute to the world.

Pursuing things I don't care about has held me back from the opportunity to invest in the things that do. But that doesn't mean those pursuits have been for naught. They have helped me to build up the courage to embrace the unknown of following my dreams. What does that mean? It's still up in the air. Maybe we should ask Jess.