Going into my fellowship, I thought \u201coh cool, the EPA, lots of environmental type people with Birkenstocks\u2014very crunchy, I\u2019ll fit right in.\u201d\u00a0 Okay, so I WAS pretty spot on in some ways, but I quickly learned that there is so much more happening at the Environmental Protection Agency.\u00a0 Throughout my three weeks at the agency, I was continually surprised by the career and job opportunities I encountered and shadowed.\u00a0 Though my knowledge of career opportunities didn\u2019t change, I gained insight into how far reaching specific fields of study are, and how much people can do with specific degrees.<\/p>\n
One of the first things that I learned is that there are so many different types of engineering degrees, and even more jobs to go along with them.\u00a0 When I used to think of engineering, I only thought of science-y and math-y things that were far outside of my scope of understanding; however, there is a lot more to it than that.\u00a0 If I knew about environmental engineering when I was younger, I would definitely have had a different career path.\u00a0 Additionally, I was very impressed with how this type of engineering played into Geography Information Systems, and mapping.\u00a0 The type of services this kind of mapping provides informs large scale decision making in communities across the country.<\/p>\n
In addition to this, I was also blown away by how far computer science and coding can get a person.\u00a0 These degrees can and will get any one a job anywhere\u2026and the face of computer science and coding looks way different from what I had imagined.\u00a0 I am so impressed with what can be done on a computer, and what computer programs can simulate.\u00a0 In addition to this, coding is the new face of research and experimentation.\u00a0 This, above all else, is what I am sharing with the young people I work with; if they want job security, go into coding.<\/p>\n
Another interesting group of people I got to work with were health and human services employees.\u00a0 These people have backgrounds in medicine, policy, and communications, and I really got to see how versatile degrees in these areas are.\u00a0 After spending time in a world outside of education, I am excited to share this experience with the young people I work with.\u00a0 I know that a lot of juniors and seniors in high school don\u2019t really know how to answer the question \u201cwhat do you want to do when you graduate?\u201d Hopefully, in sharing these experiences, I am able to show young people that there is an entire world for them to explore.\u00a0 I kinda wish I had someone who could\u2019ve shared all of this with me\u2026that said, I\u2019m know teaching is the right career for me, I will happily connect young people with their futures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Going into my fellowship, I thought \u201coh cool, the EPA, lots of environmental type people with Birkenstocks\u2014very crunchy, I\u2019ll fit right in.\u201d\u00a0 Okay, so I WAS pretty spot on in some ways, but I quickly learned that there is so much more happening at the Environmental Protection Agency.\u00a0 Throughout my three weeks at the agency, I was continually surprised by… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":549,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/549"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2019-eericson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}