Reactions

As you all may or may not know, I am a girl in mechanical engineering. I'm not making myself to be special or superior to any other person in any other program but it's just a fact of life that you don't see that every day.

When you meet people, you obviously have to go through the small talk of school and what program you're studying. It's inevitable. I think asking people what book they're currently reading is a much more interesting form of small talk. I am going to make that a thing. But of course, when I tell people what I'm studying, I get THE BEST reactions. They're usually extreme and there's always the typical ones but I've gotten some pretty atypical ones. Since I get a kick out of them, I figured you dudes might too and this is what the rest of this post entails.

1. Wide eyes. This is usually when they're trying to mask the fact that they had a reaction altogether and go on to regular answer like "Oh, are you liking it?" and "Are you living in residence?"

2. "I'm so glad there are people like you..." This comes from people who can't believe anyone would want to continue doing math voluntarily. They kind of make a joke where they're thankful that "people like me" exist because if it were up to them to do what I will be doing once
I graduate the world would start crumbling in on itself.

3. Genuine questions. There are people who know a few things about the classes I'm taking and ask how I'm finding them and all that. I like giving them feedback.

4. The future-thinkers. These are the same people that always asked what you were going to major in back when you were in high school. Now that you've got that pretty much cemented in, they move on to the next big milestone: your career. You are asked what you plan to do with your degree and where you'd like to live and basically all the questions that make you want to go back to kindergarten where everything was safe and certain.

It's always the creepy old people too

5. BOYS. WINK. This reaction is by far the creepiest and kind of the most insulting. This is where they point out that engineering is mostly filled with people with XY chromosomes. They ask for ratios of girls to guys in your classes, and, inevitably, talk about how easy it will be for me to find a boyfriend. Like whoa, who has time for a love life when you're taking these kinds of classes. That is definitely not my number one priority.

6. Doom predictors. These people know of other people who also decided that they could handle becoming an engineer but ended up doing really badly or dropping out or switching to a different program and on the outside I'm all like cool story bro but on the inside I freak out because it's not like I was a child prodigy or anything I've had to work hard and what if it's not enough and my entire life falls to pieces before my eyes.

Your turn! Tell me about the funniest or most insulting or best reactions to whatever you're doing with your life!

No Biggie

I have only realized that I have failed to share a pretty major milestone in my life. Seriously, it's all any conversation I have with an adult I slightly know or am just meeting is about. I need to go sit in the corner of shame for a while and think about what I've done. But first, the news.

As you can probably infer from when I straight up tell you I'm in my last year of high school, I'm in my last year of high school. That means I'm headed off for university next year which is a both terrifying and exciting thought. Terrifying in that everything will be new and you have to fend for yourself. I've heard many horror stories about how your prof doesn't care about you and that your final will be worth most of your marks. And then all the what ifs of me not being able to handle it and not finding a group of people that doesn't want to only party at all times going through my head doesn't help at all.

First though, you gotta apply. I sent in my applications about two weeks after we got our pins from OUAC, which is the website Ontarians apply through. No little than three days later, I got my first two acceptances, both from OttawaU. Maybe two or three days later, Carleton called in with news of acceptance as well! I actually worked hard in grade 11 so they liked what they saw I guess.

Here's a summary of what I got myself into: At OttawaU, I got in for mechanical engineering and physics while at Carleton I was accepted for engineering physics (I see a pattern here.) Both universities gave me a $3000 per year entrance scholarship (that's 12,000 bucks ladies and gents. Super helpful!) and Carleton threw in a $2000 eng. phys scholarship cause they like me. My final decision is to go to OttawaU for mechanical engineering and do coop because I hate the feeling of being in debt plus who can say no to a little on-the-job experience? Staying home is much cheaper so I went with that even though my dream school is the University of Waterloo where math and science are really big.


I'm glad I finally got it over with and have a destination post-high school. I'm still wavering over whether I made the right choice between engineering and physics since I enjoy my physics classes very much but haven't actually had the chance to try out mechanical engineering, I only know what I've heard. I REALLY don't want to be stuck with something that I don't enjoy doing. I guess it all has to be taken one step at a time.

One AWESOME thing that has come out of all this (besides getting in and getting scholarships) is that I finally have something concrete to tell people when they ask me what I'm thinking of doing next year. No vague answers, I can tell them what I'm going into and where and let them draw their own conclusions!

Brainstorm

I just made a brainstorm on future topics for this blog.

Here's the list:
Socks: matching or unmatching?
Reasons it's good to be *blank* (insert short, blond, quiet, etc.)
Useless skills I have
Embarrassing story
Where I'll be at seventy-three
Useless skills I want to learn

I know, real deep and thought-provoking.

While we're on the topic actually, what do you want me to ramble about? Book reviews? My life? My thoughts and opinions?