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The pivot out of engineering
I saw a question on Quora that lead me to tell a new story about how I wound up with a math major in college — and moreover, how I ended up without a degree in engineering, before too much time had been invested. The specific question I was answering was the following:
How does college provide countless opportunities for growth, newly emerging challenges, and an accumulation of rich interpersonal experiences?
Anyway, here’s my story, which tells the tale of my academic escapades as a college freshman and how I made initial commitments to extracurricular activities in college.
Oh boy this is a great question because it can be answered so many different ways, in part because everyone’s experience is unique and special. Among the things that makes such an experience special is that the path towards a job or grad school at the end of college is rarely linear, and you won’t usually end up where you thought you would when you started college. You’ll be influenced by friends you didn’t know you’d make, professors you didn’t expect to learn from, and late-night philosophical discussions with friends over beer or whiskey over the meaning of life.
There are a bunch of accounts I could give of this from either my own college experience (at Carnegie Mellon) or from the experiences of my friends, so I’ll pick an example that I…