Exploring and Reflecting- How I Decided on Civil Engineering

Hi everyone!  My name is Zoe, and I’m a second year civil engineering major with minors in environmental science and global fashion studies.  This is the story of my major moment, which is less of a moment and more of a long sequence of events that led me to where I am today.

When applying to colleges, I knew I wanted to be a history major.  I loved visiting museums and watching history programs, and I felt like history would be perfect fit for me.  But fast forward a few months, and I was feeling more insecure than ever about my plan for my life.  I began to realize that history, though something interesting to me, would require so much reading and writing, which wasn’t how I wanted to spend my time.  Even though I knew that, I was still so afraid of the uncertainty that I felt came with being an undeclared student.

Once I got to Northeastern for orientation, I felt much more comfortable with not knowing what I wanted to do, but I still had this idea that I would stay as a history major and somehow figure it out on my own.  However, when the time came at orientation for them to ask us if any of us wanted to change majors or become undeclared, I knew that was the right choice for me.  

My first semester, I took a wide range of classes.  I took an art history class, a fashion history class, a Spanish class, and a sociology class called Environment and Society.  I also got involved in DivestNU, the on campus fossil fuel divestment campaign.  I loved all of my classes, and I started to explore the idea of becoming an environmental studies major.  I wanted to combine environmentalism with policy and do what I could to really effect meaningful change.

At the end of my first semester, I started to consider the more science-based option of environmental science.  I remembered how much I disliked writing long, tedious papers, and I was becoming more disenchanted with the idea of doing that for seven more semesters.  Since there’s a lot of overlap between the majors, I decided to take classes that spring that could count for both majors.  During that semester, I really enjoyed every class I took, and I started to feel comfortable with the environmental science major.  But then I found out that Northeastern had finally created an environmental engineering major, and I started to consider the possibility of an engineering degree.  During my senior year of high school, I took four science and math courses, so I felt like I could do it.  

Over the summer I spent a long time reflecting on what I wanted.  I wanted to combine my passion for environmentalism with the love for activism and social justice that I had discovered during my first year of college.  I spent the majority of the summer thinking about what interested me, and I felt like a great way for me to combat climate change while working to fight inequality was through public transportation.  Months later at the beginning of my second year, I finally began to think civil engineering was the right choice for me.  I realized it was the perfect way for me to combine what interested me and make change.  Halfway through my third semester, I started the process to declare civil engineering, and by the second semester of my second year, I was officially a civil engineering major.  

 

By: Zoe Dickerson