Job Shadowing Experience

On March 31, 2011, Pleasant Plains High School juniors did job shadowing. I happened to job shadow an engineering firm: Crawford, Murphy, & Tilly Inc. This is a civil engineering firm, and their main areas of specialty are highways and bridges, aviation, water and waste water, and land development. Because of the job shadowing experience, I know more about what I do and do not want to do later on in life.

Some of my family members are civil engineers, which means I knew the basics of what people do with that job. Civil engineers deal mainly with construction of roads, construction or buildings, constructions of sidewalks, bridges, and parking lots. They also design runways for airplanes and jets. Civil engineering is probably one of the more common forms of engineering, because it is used for everyday life. Even though it is one of the more common types of engineering, it is not exactly the most interesting forms of engineering, in my opinion. At CMT, we were able to talk to engineers who dealt with highways, bridges, water plants, and computer designing the structures. We also were given a summary of the civil engineering field. I already knew some of this information, so I was not "wowed" by all of this. Also, because I knew the basics of the field, I pretty much knew what to expect. In this way, the job shadowing did meet my expectations.

From this experience, I know for certain that civil engineering is not a possible career for me. I find this field somewhat boring and uninteresting; and I do not want to do something that I do not enjoy and find boring for the rest of my life. That would be a waste of time, quite frankly. This job experience did help me to eliminate one field of engineering that I do not want to major in.

I really did not gain much from this experience except for a confirmation. I confirmed that I do not want to be a civil engineer. That is about it.

To make this perfectly clear, Crawford, Murphy, & Tilly Inc. is a very good engineering firm. I think they do their jobs well. All I am saying is that civil engineering is not for me. Just to make things clear by my blog.