Killing the STEM ego:
Let me start off by saying I’ve always been a little bananas. And the more bananas I get, the more enjoyable life becomes.
I came into Rice with not much of an ego, but it still grew throughout.
I graduated from High School without many friends. I made a mistake Junior year that “killed” my reputation, So in Senior year of HS, I kept to myself and focused on applying to colleges.
Arriving at Rice, I started off freshman year pretty involved with my college at Jones.
At first, classes were difficult, but manageable and I enjoyed conversing with the other students outside of class and just talking with random strangers around Rice.
However, as Sophomore year came in, I was granted the privilege of leading the technical side of the Rice Electric Vehicle team. I loved every minute of building that car, even though the car itself fell apart at the end (and the next year the wheels fell off at competition!)
In addition, my classes sophomore year became much more difficult, and required lots of late nights with the other ELECs* doing problem sets.
*Electrical and Computer Engineers
I came to a strange place, a fork in the road.
When I was around the other ELECs, I would feel pretty incompetent and unsure of what I was doing or learning*. I came close to failing a couple classes.
*When it comes to the ELEC major at Rice U., you’re sure to always find someone much smarter than you are…
When I was around my people at my college, or at the coffee-shop, or at the bike-shop, I would sometimes feel strange trying to connect with different friend groups. I would talk to anyone, but in another sense I also felt like an outcast. Not smart enough to be an Engineer, but also not sociable enough (or very busy) to have a solid group of friends outside of ELEC. When I would meet someone (inside or outside of Rice), a part of me wanted to say (Do you know who I am?), but the real part of me didn’t care about any of that, and I just wanted to connect in some way, shape, or form, and just have a down to earth conversation. Human to Human.
I spent a lot of my time riding my bike and eating bananas. Sometimes making banana smoothies for others, and sometimes just riding in circles around the bike track, taking turns in the wind.
I always struggled at Career fairs. It felt really strange to talk about myself to others, and to boast my accomplishments.
I struggled to find internships which increased my feelings of incompetency when it came to ELEC.
After a good friend referred me for an internship, joining a company full of Bureaucracy and corporate culture felt strange to me.
On one hand I enjoyed the engineering, it was fun. On the other hand, I didn’t feel like my ideas were being valued/taken seriously, and the workload I was given was less exciting than what I had done at Rice.
A part of me enjoyed the work, and another part was just there because it paid well and I was expected to do it.
Anyways, long story short (or if you’re looking for an explanation to the past couple weeks):
People will think whatever they want to think regardless of what you do or say,
So why do you care about what your personal image looks like online? Or about what people talk behind your back? I want to be the person I am in person. My voice, my face, the way I talk and my manners, etc.
I don’t want to just be pictures of nice beaches on Instagram* and happy pictures of me during the day of Beer Bike of Facebook.
*Exception for the beach background for this blog
What’s wrong with sharing the sorrows and the woes of life?
When putting something up online, people can approach it from many different perspectives, especially if it’s just a few words.
A lot of times they won’t see the actual idea, since they just see it from their perspective.
If that idea isn’t being shared in person, if there isn’t a physical voice behind it, it leaves room for misinterpretation.
In the end everyone wants the same thing,
to make a little bit of money and spend time with their family.
aka a simple life. And I’m no different than anyone else…
I’ll see you around,
-Manuel
P.S:
All is well,*
have a good day**
-Manoj***
*all is well* is a line from my favorite movie, “3 idiots”. You should go watch it, it’s on Netflix. 😉 It’s the story of an ideal engineer, but it’s only in a movie, it doesn’t exist in real life…
**have a good day is a generic English expression to say to strangers. When you don’t want to share too much information and you’re trying to myob…
***Manoj is a nickname my Indian friends that I lived with during my first internship gave me. I also have Spanish and Chinese nicknames （小马）