Students, look to you left and look to your right.. by Angelica

Students, look to you left and look to your right.. by Angelica - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

My name is Angelica Connor and I a rising senior majoring in Materials Science and Engineering. In my underclassmen years at my university, I met a lot of other STEM majors and when I ask them what their most memorable experience from a teacher, they would tell me it was their first class during their first week during freshman year when the professor tells them to look to your left and look to your right because one of the three of you wont be sitting here after graduation. Some students got scared and left class next day but the others worked hard, determined to be the 2 students remaining. However, my most valuable lesson from a teacher was in my last class in my first week during freshman year. This class was a biomedical engineering class and we spent the entire class looking through videos of current catastrophes like the BP Oil Spill and collapsing bridges. At the end of the videos he stood up in front of the class and said "What do all of these disasters have in common? Engineers work on every aspect of all of these projects and somewhere down the line someone messed up and no one caught it. Maybe in a less critical career it may not be a big deal, but when engineers mess up, people get effed up. When engineers mess up people get hurt. So as you go to your classes in the next 4 years and you come across a hard test or homework, don't cheat, don't copy off of your friend. Don't take shortcuts. Learn the material. Because you are going to need to know all the information from all of these classes you're going to take here. To help catch these mistakes and prevent you from making mistakes when you get a job as an engineer so stuff like THIS doesn't happen." To this day I have kept the phrase "when engineers mess up people get effed up. Learn the material." with me in every class, every homework and every exam and it is still the most important lesson that I have learned from any teacher. It taught me that in the STEM field and in any field by just learning the material and paying attention I can make a difference in the lives of others.