“Logan,” called my dad from the other room. I quickly put down my LEGO scale-model dyson sphere, the megastructure I planned to build during retirement, and scurried to the next room; it was story time. As my dad picked me up into his easy chair, he searched for the great storybook from which tonight’s wisdom would come. As he meticulously pulled a worn leather-bound book from the shelf, he began to read: “Once upon a time in an undiscovered land known only to the locals as computer science, there lived the number one and the number zero.” I could hardly wait to hear from the latest chapter of CPE 101: An Introduction to Computer Engineering. Tonight’s story was going to be a thriller, the beginnings of computing. Filled with tales of the fathers of computer science, such as Boole and Turing, this story is our favorite, and he knew how to tell it perfectly.
While I hate to shatter my dramatic illustration of any engineer’s green world, my dad, in reality, didn’t tell me bedtime computer stories, but my parents did raise me in an engineering-friendly environment. My parents always encouraged me to explore, test, innovate and optimize everything. Never take anything for granted and always test the facts yourself was the advice given; if it’s broken, fix it and if it’s working, optimize it—that’s the basis of my life. In my early years my aptitude as an engineer was clearly visible. My science projects consistently surpassed my classmates. The best example of this was in eighth grade when our class did the egg-drop experiment. The goal was to create a contraption that, when dropped from a two-story building, would keep the egg safe and prevent breaking. My egg didn’t break and my teacher was tremendously impressed with my design. For interested parties, it was very simple: I took a Styrofoam cup (which I placed the egg in, cemented by peanut butter) and taped filled water balloons to the bottom (to absorb the impact).
I was also always very gifted in computers. I remember vividly building my first computer in fourth grade. After seeing such innate aptitude, I envisioned that I was destined to become a computer scientist. I had always enjoyed writing code and naturally a career in something I enjoyed was something to be pursued. But, I enjoyed hardware much more than software. Yet, I was still under the impression that computer science was for me. My whole perspective on my career changed one summer. I attended an engineering camp at one of the best engineering schools in the nation and worked in a group on an electrical and computer engineering project. Originally, I had planned on being more involved with the computer science of the project but I quickly realized that I was natural more inclined to the engineering aspect of our project. I began to design the circuits and hardware of our device with seemingly innate knowledge. And the transition to a soldering iron to assemble the project felt even more natural. Even my social skills are engineering tailored. My integration with the all the engineers I met at the school was seamless. So I changed my mind; I was a computer engineer. That being said, computer science is a door I’m leaving open for myself. I still very much enjoy the field and am even considering a duplex career, but I plan to focus my education on computer engineering. My career goals are to work at an industry-leading company designing the latest gadgets and, when I finish a graduate degree, eventually get into research and developing new technologies, especially in the area of artificial intelligence. You can attribute this decision to my environment, I did grow up in an engineer’s household, or even to natural selection that befitted me with this natural talent. But whatever attribution you decide is best, the result is still the same—I’m an engineer.