Even Boring Civil Engineers Have an Origin Story

<p>In this episode Sam talks about what led him into civil engineering and then eventually in 3D visualization as part of public outreach. </p> <p>Transcript:</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>Me and my brothers there were four of us close in age and we were each assigned one de facto and mine was Donatello and Donatello was the inventor of course. And so, I was the inventor and I wanted to grow up and be an inventor and so I told this to my dad and he said well in the real world inventors are engineers.</p> <p>And so that kind of stuck with me as I grew up and as I started to get into college and take career aptitude tests. I quickly learned that engineering kind of would fit my personality at least that. I thought at that point and the aptitude tests pointed me in that direction and I really liked Legos Lego Mindstorms at the time.</p> <p>I liked things like robotics. At least I liked imagining how they worked. I guess. I wasn't building them much myself other than the Lagos. And so I I headed to my mind that I was gonna grow up and be an engineer and eventually that evolved into being a mechanical engineer, so I went to school at UNLV and I was a couple years into study my studies as mechanical engineering and I went to.</p> <p>Me with a counselor and they said that in Nevada if I wanted to stay in this area that I wanted to that there's not a lot of opportunities for mechanical engineers. And I had gotten married my wife's from Nevada as well and so we decided the council recommended that I should look into civil engineering and so I did that and I eventually switched my major into civil engineering.</p> <p>And so fast forward to 2010 and I graduated with a degree in civil engineering. And. Up to this point I didn't really know what engineers did and growing up in my small town. I didn't know any engineers and so all I knew of engineering was kind of what my studies would at what I learned in my studies in school.</p> <p>But one thing that became a big part of my studies was 3D modeling. So I started messing around wi