Construction

To even out a slightly angry post from earlier today, I want to write about a couple of exciting things that just happened to me within the past few hours.

On Saturday, I got an email from the course 1 internship coordinator about a possible internship with a company that does construction management. Now when I decided to do civil engineering, I never knew about all these different paths that a "civil engineer" can take. You can work on everything from fluids, to skyscrapers, to bridges, to tunnels, to highways. Now I've done a few things with fluids and wanted some experience with the structural side and geotech (underground stuff, foundations) side of things. And now I've realized that there's a big difference between the design people and construction people. Designers design. They sit in an office and make sure what those architects dream up (no offense to anyone) stand up, work, is safe. Construction people (the builders) actually go out into the field and... solve the problems that the designers couldn't solve. That sounds so much more interesting... I mean, I don't have any practical experience to base this on but I don't think I actually like calculating stresses and moments and looking at CAD drawings (nevermind making CAD drawings... ewwww). Anyway, the guy I talked to is an MIT alum, course 1 undergrad. He seems like a really cool guy. The company started in New England and is all over the US. They have offices in Boston and San Jose. San Jose is a bit far from Oakland but I would be on a project team and be working wherever the project is so.... not sure what that means.

Anyhow, I was feeling really good about this company and the construction business in general when I got an email from Sean Gilbert, the MISTI-China coordinator. I think (not sure about this but), an MIT alum contacted him to get some course 1 interns for a Chinese construction company. The Chinese Communications Construction Company. Now he's forwarding my resume along. This sounds really awesome. Apparently they're one of the biggest construction companies in China. It's too bad that it's not a US company that has an office in China (which is what I really want) but they seem really well established and this seems such an awesome opportunity. I mean, it's construction+China, so cool. Anyway, I hope this works out. It sounds promising. Maybe I'll be in China this summer.

Yeah, I'm really happy about this turn of events. I was getting kind of worried since I haven't really heard back from anyone else yet.