"Growing up in a household with a bedroom dedicated to gadgets, widgets, tinkering,
and test equipment, I naturally had an interest in engineering," Aaron says.
"By the end of high school I found myself applying to engineering schools and
was/am torn between EE and ME. Maybe that's why I'm so involved in the RSL and
controls classes."
While Aaron benefitted from this early exposure to engineering, and his interest
hasn't waned, it's still a challenging career.
"The biggest problem I see in the kid's future is staying interested in engineering
with all the paperwork, regulations, requirements, and just plain non-engineering
crap one has to put up with in this profession," Gail says.
"Rewards and struggles are at a constant tug of war with my psyche," Aaron says.
"The rewards are awesome. I am constantly learning. I am constantly amazed by
how powerful math is. It is old hat now since I have been using them for so
many years, but derivatives, integrals, laplace transforms, and Fourier transforms
are just fascinating to me. I feel like the more I learn, the less I know."
And then there's the downside. "I wake up at 5:30 a.m. for a 7 a.m. class and
then continue to work for a typical 10-hour day," he says. "Trying to balance
my life with so many commitments usually ends in personal sacrifice."
Despite that, and despite his father's early warnings, he's not ready to give
up on engineering yet.
"Now that I have a career as an working engineer, I want to keep learning,"
Aaron says. "Part of the reason it took me so long to was because I held out
for a hardware design position where I could actually work on something. I also
wanted to go to a company where they were willing to mentor me. In the future,
I would like to learn all that I can end eventually find my own thing."
See Associated Figure