Career Day 2015
For my Career Day I went to Hewlett Packard, an electronics company in Rancho Bernardo. They produce products such as computers and printers. I enjoyed doing my career day here because it is something that I am very interested in as a potential future career. Unfortunately, I was unable to take a lot of pictures there due to the fact the products I was looking at being in their secretive prototyping stage. The employee I shadowed, Ivan Chousal, has worked at HP for a very long time. In our interview, he mentioned that the skill training that most prepared him for the job he has now may not just be his engineering training in college, but also a leadership and management program he took. He enjoys his work because even though he is a manager he still gets to "get messy" and also because no two days are ever the same. He sets each day and throughout the day works to achieve them. He moved up the ranks from a basic electrical engineer, to the manager of a whole section of the electrical team. During the day, he first introduced me to himself and the basics of what he does/has done at HP. He then took me on a tour of different parts of the facility, specifically the testing labs. These labs were very interesting and showed quality control tests they completed on the products. These tests looked at things like the effects that radio-waves, various temperatures, electric shocks, sounds levels, and vibrations had on the products. It was all very interesting, due to the fact that it put certain topics that we learned in school into a place in the real world with real relevance. During the day I also learned quite a bit about how math translated into the Engineering field. I talked to a man named Rahmeen who showed the similarities between sine waves and block graphs that are used in programming. Also, a lot of math and physics equations are put in place determining voltage and outputs of the circuits. Engineering is a field that I would definitely consider pursuing. I like it because it uses topics that I am currently interested in school. Also, many of these engineers had little projects going on their desks that were hands on. I am a big fan of solving hands on projects, and doing that day in and out sounds amazing. In order to have this kind of job, you need to have an Engineering Degree from a well known and established university. My dream internship for junior year would be to work on a military base as an engineer. Joining the military or attending a military academy for college has been a huge thought for me. Seeing if I actually liked the on-base lifestyle would really help me see whether or not I should seriously consider the military.