Clever Angle
Helping people find work that they love through the stories of others. Join host Tevin McGee as he interviews a guest from a different field of work every week to give the listeners a better understanding of what jobs there are in the market and the roadmap of how to get there. Come along on this journey as he searches for the answer to the question of is college in 2024 overrated? With the boom of online learning and swelling nationwide student loan debt Tevin is on a quest to better inform his audience of which career paths NEED to go to college and which paths may have a different way of achieving your goal. So if you are undecided on your future career or curious about a certain field and want to hear from people that are in the trenches of that career already then this podcast is for you.
Clever Angle
#45 Constructing Dreams in the World of Civil Engineering with Shelby Ophof
When Shelby Ophof swapped her marketing dreams for the concrete world of civil engineering, she did more than just change her major—she paved a path that many find daunting yet intriguing. Join us as Shelby, a civil engineer with a story as strong as the foundations she designs, spills the beans on her career transition, her coffee-review podcast adventures, and life's unexpected turns. She's not just shaping skylines; she's shaping her narrative, one candid conversation at a time.
Tune in and get a taste of how a love for mathematics and an inspiring chat over a family dinner can lead to a fulfilling career in civil engineering. Shelby takes us through the electric experience of finding her passion, the critical role of internships, and the revelations that come with stepping into the professional sphere. Whether you're an extroverted communicator or prefer the precision of numbers, Shelby's journey underscores the universal truth that the right experiences can steer you towards your niche.
Ever wondered how soft skills stack up against technical expertise in the world of civil engineering? Shelby dissects the essentials of communication, the merits of extroversion, and the art of striking a balance between academic rigor and soaking up the full college experience. If you're contemplating a career that blends creativity with calculation, let Shelby's insights bridge the gap between curiosity and action. Her story isn't just about building structures; it's about constructing a career that resonates with who you are. Don't miss this blueprint for professional and personal growth—only on Clever Angle.
We are on the road to reaching 1K downloads per episode by the end of the year, so if you could share this episode that would help us out a lot! What careers do you want to hear about next??
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Welcome back to another episode of the clever angle podcast. I'm your host, tevin McGee, and today I have Shelby Opaugh. She is a civil engineer here in Jonesboro and she's gonna be talking to us about her career and I'm excited to hear about it. Shelby, thank you for being with us today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:You were telling me off air that you used to host a podcast. Yes, tell us a little bit about it.
Speaker 1:So I started a podcast with my best friend, caitlin, my junior year of college, which is whenever things start getting pretty difficult with engineering. So I guess I picked like the worst time to start a podcast. But for a couple of months we would try a different coffee every week, whether it be like a new way of brewing coffee or like a new type of latte or whatever. We would try a new coffee and give a little review, and then we would have a topic for that week that we would talk about, and episodes lasted anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour.
Speaker 2:Where'd you get that idea from?
Speaker 1:We both love coffee and we both love to talk and we both think that we're funny, and so we would always joke about starting a podcast. And then one day her boyfriend now husband was like then do it, let's start one, because he knows how to do all of the setting up and editing and all of that stuff. So he actually pushed us to do what we were joking about doing.
Speaker 2:I will definitely put the link to the podcast in the show notes and I guess I'll be the judge if you guys are funny or not. We'll just start with a few icebreaker questions. I've got a deck of cards here for interviews. The first one, I kind of just picked three random ones out here. Who would play you in a movie?
Speaker 1:I would always I used to always say Emma Stone, because red hair, but I've been told a lot lately that I look like Emily Osment. Do you know who that is?
Speaker 2:I'm not familiar with her work.
Speaker 1:She plays Lily in Hannah Montana.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I've had multiple people come up and tell me that I look like her, which I take as a compliment, and I've even had family say it too. So I'm like, oh, I guess she would. I guess she would play me if she looks the most like me and she's a good actress.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's pretty cool. Next question I have is who is your favorite hero in fiction, in fiction.
Speaker 1:Hmm, man, in fiction is hard Probably. I don't even know if this would count as a hero, but I want to say Katniss Everdeen.
Speaker 2:Okay, does that count? No, katniss is definitely a hero.
Speaker 1:Okay, yes, I loved the Hunger Games. I still love Hunger Games. Yeah, I love the Hunger Games.
Speaker 2:Did you read the books or just watch the movies?
Speaker 1:Books. I've read the books multiple times, but I have seen all the movies and they were all good, but those were my jam growing up.
Speaker 2:I definitely think Catching Fire is my favorite.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's my favorite too.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed watching that for you is what is your recurring nightmare? Oh Like do you have any dreams that you have to?
Speaker 1:It's like scary, is that? Okay, yeah, yeah, okay I so. My mom is, like my best friend, one of my favorite people on the planet top three and I will, every couple of weeks, have a nightmare that she passes away.
Speaker 2:Yes, I know that's so morbid yeah.
Speaker 1:I know, but it's reoccurring. It's the only one I ever remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm definitely one of those people that I don't really remember my dreams a lot, but every now and then I'll have something that's like super vivid.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I need to look into what really causes that, because that's an interesting subject field.
Speaker 1:Sleep studies need to interview a sleep scientist.
Speaker 2:I don't know what they're called. Anyone that's listening. If you know a sleep scientist that would want to come on the show, I want to talk to you.
Speaker 1:That'd be cool.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's just dive into your career and just your origin story a little bit. Can you give a brief summary about who you are, where you're from?
Speaker 1:Yes, my maiden name is Blankenship, so my name is Shelby Blankenship, now Opoff. I was born and raised in Paragold, arkansas, just about 20 miles north of where we are right now.
Speaker 2:Did you go to Paragold or Tech?
Speaker 1:Paragold Okay, yeah, my mom taught there. So I went there K through 12 and then I grew up with divorced parents. I lived manually with my mom and then I would see my dad like every other weekend and then sometimes on Tuesdays, and then I came to A state for college so I didn't move very far.
Speaker 2:What do your parents do for work?
Speaker 1:My mom used to be a teacher. She was a teacher for 16 years and then this is why she's my hero. If he would have said non-fictional, I would have said my mom. She went to get her masters in education and federal programs while she was single with three girls and working two jobs, and so now she is actually used to be the superintendent, the assistant superintendent, at Harrisburg schools and Ashley is the superintendent there.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Yeah, so you have two sisters.
Speaker 1:Yes, I have two sisters Do you have any brothers or just? I have One stepbrother and one adopted brother. So my dad he was a farmer for 25 years and now he's a banker, he does aglending and he adopted my little brother. And then I also have a stepbrother on my dad's side.
Speaker 2:Do you have any memories from your childhood that just stand out?
Speaker 1:I like always vividly remember my mom ordering pizza and us sitting in the living room and eating brick oven pizza specifically, and watching dancing with the stars. We would do that all the time. I think my mom just loved it. But my mom had a gift where she can make anything fun. She just makes anything and everything fun, and so like we didn't have a whole lot of money growing up, but she always made everything fun.
Speaker 2:I love dancing with the stars and American Idol and yes, we watched America's Got Talent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So Janne are currently watching the Voice right now. So, she loves to ugly, cry to people's stories, and something that we do.
Speaker 1:I did that on America's Got Talent.
Speaker 2:For sure. So what are some of your hobbies and things you like to do outside of work?
Speaker 1:I love to read. I've got a book sitting right here. I read any chance that I get.
Speaker 2:Do you usually read like fiction, nonfiction, everything?
Speaker 1:Everything I went. I got into a kick where I liked American classics and so I own a lot of American classics. But I've been reading a lot of sci-fi too lately, but like that room in there has about 400 books in it. Do you have any book recommendations.
Speaker 2:I've recently got back into reading, so what type of book do you like? I like sci-fi and. I like like self-help books and productivity books and things like that, but my favorite fiction series as a kid was by James Patterson. Yeah, it was the Maximum Ride books.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:I love those books.
Speaker 1:Did you ever read I don't even know if he wrote these did you ever read the like the Sint books that he I thought it was him that wrote it?
Speaker 2:I think it was James Patterson. I've never read them. Are they any good?
Speaker 1:They're so good, I have three of them in there.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, yeah, for sure, like, legitimately you can borrow one if you like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:They're about, like kids, time traveling, and I read them in high school and there's phenomenal so I do remember that series and.
Speaker 2:I'll take you up on that, because I'm trying to get like a a balance of different types of books. You know that I'm reading, so I like to listen to a lot of stuff on Audible.
Speaker 1:So I'm listening to stuff on Drive-In and we lend out books like all the time, so you're welcome to go in there after we record and look through and grab some.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and definitely look through your personal library for sure. In your own words, can you give the listeners a definition of what is civil engineering?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I actually didn't even know what it was until I started with the major. I just knew that I loved math and that I loved building with Legos. But civil engineering, in a nutshell, is the design and like the maintenance and construction of anything in an infrastructure that is stationary, which is like hard to explain. So a civil engineer designed the structure of the building that we're in right now and a civil engineer designed the foundation of this building so that this building doesn't sink into the ground because there's a bunch of clay in Arkansas. That's why we're so good with farming, because we have the clay that's perfect for rice farming.
Speaker 1:Horrible for infrastructure design, because clay sinks. Civil engineer designed the foundation of it. A civil engineer designed all of the utilities, like the sewer, the water, the storm drainage of everything in Jonesboro and the roadways. There's a lot of different things that you can go into a civil engineering, so you can do infrastructure design, which is what I do. You can do environmental engineering, transportation engineering, structural engineering, which I'm wanting to get my masters in because it's really cool, but there's like a huge like expanse of different jobs that you can get with it.
Speaker 2:So when you said stationary, what would be an example of something that's not stationary? Okay, so who would design cars and things like that? A mechanical engineer. Mechanical engineer.
Speaker 1:And then like conveyor belts high troll, they do. Conveyors and mechanical engineers design those, yeah, so anything that's moving. Basically I always joke about that that like mechanical engineers design things that are supposed to move and civil engineers design things that are not supposed to move.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, that's a good way to come with that. I've always wondered that. So what would you, what would it like an electrical engineer fall in?
Speaker 1:They design iPhones actually so an electrical engineer designed an iPhone.
Speaker 1:They do a lot of stuff. It's similar to mechanical. Their majors were just. Their classes were very similar. They do a lot. They have a lot of computer science in theirs, so there's a lot of coding involved with electrical engineering. A lot of times whenever people think electrical engineering they think electrician but it's more of like the design aspect of it, so they can like design electrical systems for a building. I actually had an electrical engineering major on my senior design team last year and our senior design project was to design a new building for the computer science and engineering college at A-State and so I designed the superstructure of it, like all of the foundation and all of the columns and the reinforcement in them and everything, and then he designed the electrical layout of how everything would work and get put back into the system.
Speaker 2:So when you say electrical, like design and things like that, so are we just talking about, like, how the lights are going to be in the buildings, or because an iPhone is a lot different than like the infrastructure of a layout of a building?
Speaker 1:or something. Yes, in the same way that, like, designing of the foundation of this building is completely different from designing a sewer system, those two engineers civil engineers did both of those things, and an electrical engineer can design an iPhone or design an electrical layout of a building. I don't know a ton about it because I only ever took circuits in college, but I do know there are a whole bunch of codes that they have to meet and there's a whole lot of ins and outs with like electricity. You can't have too much, you can't have too little. There's a certain level you have to meet to be able to supply everything, and yeah, that's. That's pretty much as far as my knowledge goes.
Speaker 2:With it, though, that's fascinating me and my brother talk about things like that all the time about, like how things work and how awesome it is to be able to have an iPhone that can do all the things that it can do. So you mentioned liking math. Can you tell us a little bit about what was your school and like high school, junior high, or did you always excel in math and did you always see yourself going into a career like that?
Speaker 1:I was definitely an overachiever growing up, which it wasn't actually instilled in me by my parents. My parents were never like you have to make good grades or blah I was. I always just put that pressure on myself like I wanted to excel and do well.
Speaker 2:What do you think that came came from I?
Speaker 1:have no clue. I have no clue. I think.
Speaker 2:Just in you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just the determination in me. Yeah, it wasn't even like a comparison thing to other people, it was just like I loved the like how I felt whenever I had done well on something. But it was never pressured onto me like by either of my parents growing up at all. But I started loving math actually in middle school. I could tell you the exact teacher that it was. I'll probably send him the link to this podcast.
Speaker 1:His name's Jerry Dixon. He was my sixth grade math teacher and I. That was when we first started learning a lot of algebra. So that's whenever the variables were introduced, whenever you start adding the letters, and I just loved it. I loved the problem solving. I loved the way that my brain had to think whenever I was solving all of these problems and the way that he taught was phenomenal and made it more, made it really fun. And from then on out, my favorite subject was math and I in high school I took two extra math than I needed to graduate because I loved it so much. So it was just yeah, that was my favorite.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's definitely interesting. I think there would be a lot of people that would disagree with you.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Math being their favorite. But that's cool that you found something in sixth grade that you really latched onto. You're in high school now. You're getting ready to graduate.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:What was your plan looking like going into college?
Speaker 1:I went all over the place. I actually, for a second, thought about majoring in marketing just because I really wanted to work for the St Louis Cardinals. That was why I love baseball. I love watching the Cardinals. I used to watch them with my dad growing up. I still keep up with them and so I started out wanting to do marketing. And then I started looking into, okay, what are ways that I can use my gifts and my passion for math and still work for them. And so then I was gonna do statistics. I was gonna get my masters in statistics and be a statistician for the Cardinals, so basically, do all of the math and the logarithm still come up with their stats, which sounds so cool to me still, and then I actually call it. You know how there are just like singular moments in your life that like completely shift the trajectory of how your life's gonna go.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So this single moment my dad had a friend over at his house. His name's Casey, I think. He went to high school with my mom. He's a chemical engineer. He was over and I was a junior in high school he was like Shelby, what are you gonna do, as most people ask you? You're a junior and senior year of high school and I was like I think I'm gonna be a statistician for the Cardinals. And he was an engineer. And so he looked at me. He was like you should look into engineering. I think that you would enjoy it. And that was all he said. And that one moment I was like, okay, I'll look into engineering. It was pretty Vangellan about it and I spent the next like week or so researching what engineering was and then decided that I was gonna do it like within a couple of days. Like that one sentence that someone said to me like shifted my whole life.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. So how did you come up with? Because it seems like all of the engineering's have to do with math.
Speaker 1:To some degree.
Speaker 2:How did you with civil engineering?
Speaker 1:So I actually started out mechanical. My first semester I was mechanical engineering and I interned at high troll, which was a great place to work. I loved it. Mechanical isn't just the way that my brain worked, but that's one of the really cool things about engineering. Like within civil engineering, you have different types of people whose brains work differently and they go into different fields, but it's the same way in the umbrella of engineering. My brain just works differently than a mechanical engineer's, does they?
Speaker 1:The classes that they took that we would have to take. I just couldn't ever wrap my mind around. My brain just didn't work that way, and that's okay. But they would take classes that were the foundation of civil engineering and they just couldn't wrap their mind around it, and those classes were my favorite, and so a lot of their classes were movement, so like movement of fluids, movement of machines, movement of materials and like all of the math and physics behind all of that, and then ours, the basis of civil engineering, is one class. You could go into a civil engineering career and use this one class easily. It's called statics, which is stationary.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's basically we would always laugh about how you can sum up statics in one equation, and it's the sum of the forces equals zero. You want all of your forces to equal zero so that this isn't moving. This object is not moving and you're having to do all of the math and physics at different angles and everything to determine where this object is going. And that was my favorite class I ever took all of college.
Speaker 2:So are there classes that, no matter which engineering path that you take, that you have to take? Yes, yeah, what are those classes?
Speaker 1:Static is one of them. We all had to take dynamics, which is a lot like statics and it was a very similar to physics A lot of vectors, which is basically like an equation that describes an object and movement. So if I throw a baseball and you know how tall I am and you know how much force I put into throwing that baseball and what angle I threw it at, you can determine how high it's going to go and how far it's going to go and how much the force is going to be on its ground. That's the stuff that we would do. And then, as a civil engineer, we got to choose between thermodynamics and electrical circuits, which is a mechanical and an electrical class, and I chose electric circuits because it sounded cool and I wanted to do it and I have a computer science minor, so I thought it would help a little bit with it. That's fascinating.
Speaker 2:So with that minor do you know how to code in?
Speaker 1:it. Yes, I, yes. I think the hardest class I took was a coding class in college. It was called object oriented programming and Is that like Python?
Speaker 2:What kind of.
Speaker 1:We did C++.
Speaker 2:C++.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is very intricate is the best word I can come up with but we were like we were basically just given a problem and I had to write a code that would solve it but also follow all of the sentence structure of it. So basically, whenever you're coding, you're creating the bridge language between a human and the computer, and it was just a completely different way of thinking. And the way of thinking and coding I felt helped me a lot with my engineering stuff too, because of just the problem solving aspect of it. You can't like Google the English.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we talked a little bit earlier before we started about different podcasts that we listened to and there was a year or two where I went down like a rabbit hole on how to learn how to code. And there was this podcast. It was called Learn to Code with Me. So it would be. The host would bring on different people that would have transitioned from like a teacher or some other degree and now they've learned how to code and taken the course of it and taken jobs in the tech space. That's cool that you got to do some of that in your minor, because computers and things like that have always fascinated me.
Speaker 2:Do you have to use any of that in your job, like any coding or anything?
Speaker 1:Not really. Right now we have an IT department that does all of that stuff, but I also I took classes like operating systems and things like that, and so by far not an expert solving OS problems. Don't get me wrong, but I not in my job now, but in my previous job we had a problem come up where we were trying to get a specific type of file to work with our program and I was like I just know that there's a way that we can switch this file type in the operating system. I just don't remember how to do it and it took me a little bit of researching and then it clicked in my brain. I was like, yes, okay, I remember now and I was able to show my boss how to switch this file type over using the operating system, like using the, the MR I don't even remember what it's called using the interface that you code in to switch over the file type. No, that's it. It hadn't done it in three years. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You're in your undergrad degree and were you required to do an internship? I know you said you did an internship with. Did you say hydro?
Speaker 1:Yes, I interned with them, for I was with them from spring of 2019 when I graduated high school. So I started with them the Friday after I graduated high school and then I was with them until December of 2020. And then I actually moved to some architects. So I interned at an architecture firm here in town for two years.
Speaker 2:And this wasn't through ASU? No, they didn't require anything. Which is terrifying yeah.
Speaker 1:I wish they would. Most people ended up getting internships, but a lot of people had jobs and couldn't because they had their paying for their own school.
Speaker 2:So how did you find these internships, these opportunities?
Speaker 1:I troll. I actually job shattered an engineer my senior year and that was how I Like got in there because my school did a job shadowing thing with seniors and then In with the architects. I knew that I wanted to do something with building infrastructure, whether it be structural or what I'm doing now with infrastructure design. I knew I wanted to do that and there were no civil engineering internships open and Architects work a lot very closely with civil engineers because of the site design aspect of it, and I literally just called this architecture firm and asked if they wanted to hire an intern and they were like, yeah, come in tomorrow for an interview. So I went in for an interview and I worked there for two years.
Speaker 2:So they don't require you to have an internship. Would this be something that recommend to somebody that wants to get into? Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I know that my experience in internships is what got me the job that I have right now, so the job that you have right now, is this your first job like officially. I actually interned at a different job for my last semester of college, just spring of my senior year. It was literally the only thing available and it was in transportation, which is great and we need it. It's just I'm not interested in it.
Speaker 2:So with transportation, would that be mechanical engineering, or is that be still be civil?
Speaker 1:It's still be civil, which is a very common misconception, because with transportation engineering, you're not designing the cars or designing the roadways.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, that's what you mean by that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we did pavement design. So there's got to be like a specific like. Every type of pavement is different, it's based on the vehicle loading and the environment and what materials are available and all of this other stuff, and there's a lot to do with like flood elevations. So flood elevation is very important in my career too. We're in a flood zone right now because of you just think of all of the rivers that are around us. So there are different areas that are discernment as flood zone areas, which means they are likely. They have a 1% chance of flooding within the next 100 years, which doesn't seem like much, but it's pretty far up there in like the grand scheme.
Speaker 1:And so we have to design all of our roadways and all of our buildings based off of this flood elevation, and so that's gets into a lot of like transportation engineering as well. And then a lot of roadway design is also whenever you're going around a curve and it like super elevates to the side, we have to determine the degree of that super elevation so that the car doesn't flip over, based on the speed and the weight of the car and all of that stuff, and there are different codes that you have to meet with how big of a turn you can pull off with a certain speed that the car is going. So it's based on this posted speed. And then there's a lot of traffic engineering involved, where you're studying crashes and the reasons for crashes, which gets into like human behaviors, which was difficult. So it's very interesting though.
Speaker 2:So take me through the interview process of the job that you're currently at right now. What was that like and what does the interview look like for a civil engineering job?
Speaker 1:Yeah, this was, I guess, my first experience, so I get it could be completely different for other people.
Speaker 1:But I actually found the job on LinkedIn because I've got a LinkedIn account and my boss at my other job knew that I didn't want to do transportation engineering long term, like I had told him that whenever I got the internship, so he was aware of that. But I basically read about this company and did a quick like follow them on LinkedIn and then one of their HR people reached out to me and said hey, I see you're open to work and that you're in Jonesboro. We actually just started a new location in Jonesboro and we're hiring a civil engineer, which stands for engineer intern, which is technically what I am. So is a license. So I had to take a license exam last year that I passed and I got my EI license and then I work in my field for at least three years it can be more and then I take my PE exam, which is my professional engineering license, and then my name is what gets stamped on projects. That'll be another three years.
Speaker 2:Is it like that, that kind of licensing procedure for all engineers?
Speaker 1:Yes, and actually for structural you have to take an extra one. So you have your FE, which is the one I've passed, and then you have your PE, and then you have your SE, your structural engineering license, and so, because their work is so important, like it can't fail If a roadway fails, it's very different from a building collapsing they have to take an extra license exam. I guess I just like to make things harder myself because that's what I want to do. But yeah, this lady in HR was like we're actually hiring a civil engineer, ei, can I set up an interview with you? And I said yes.
Speaker 1:So we talked on the phone for about an hour and then she scheduled me an interview with the now boss at Craft Toll, which is where I work, and we had about an hour and a half interview and then I heard from them, probably two or three days later after that interview, and they sent me the offer letter with everything on it and wanted to offer me the job. It was a pretty quick process, not very stressful. I think that they interviewed three other people. That's what my boss told me.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you accept the offer. You're super excited about that. What is your first day on the job? Look like.
Speaker 1:So I walk in and I have my own office, which is I'm flabbergasted by having my own office, and they sent me in my office, show me how to log into my computer, like what my username is, all of this stuff. And then on the very first day they do a training orientation and they have a training orientation every two weeks, so they try to have new hires start every two weeks, clockwork and it's a pretty big company. We've got over 300 employees and we're hiring people all the time. John'sboro is actually the smallest location when we have nine people there, but the CEO actually is in this training and is talking to all of us and he's talking to all of us like where his equal, not like his subordinate, which I really appreciated about him. He just talked to us all like we were old friends and they just walk through the process of our benefits and what the training process is gonna look like and yeah, so my first day was mainly spent doing this like training session.
Speaker 2:So was this your first job, or in high school, or anything?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I worked through high school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I worked through high school.
Speaker 1:I worked at a gas station for about six months. It was horrible. I was 16 and I would work by myself from four to 11 on school nights. It was horrible. And then I worked as a sales associate at a place called Factory Connection in Perigold. Love it Still. Love all the people there. I just left because I went to college, but I was there for three years. I loved it there.
Speaker 2:So, Okay, you got set up and what have you been working on at this job since?
Speaker 1:Got in the best way possible.
Speaker 1:They basically threw me in the deep end and wanted me to learn how to swim, which is I honestly appreciated, that I didn't feel micromanaged or anything and that they trusted me to ask the right questions when I needed to ask them.
Speaker 1:So the way that my boss trains is by giving me a project and giving me the information I need and allowing me to ask the questions that I need to solve the problem, which I really appreciate. And right now, on a day to day, I'm semi-managing a lot of my own projects. I'll go to my boss for a lot of things, but as far as just the day to day of a project, I'm doing the. I mainly do site design, which includes grading and drainage, so making sure water flow is where it's supposed to go without any flooding happening or ponding, which can cause erosion and is a whole issue. And then I do sewer design and water design and erosion control, and a lot of that deals with flood elevations, like I talked about earlier, and I'm like emailing clients, emailing fire marshals, emailing R dot, emailing the city of Jonesboro, talking to city water light, because we have a whole bunch of codes that we have to meet, and so I'm just trying to meet all these codes with our projects.
Speaker 2:I was just gonna ask you if that relationship with city, water and light, if you had one with them. My sister works there so I didn't know that that was like a some kind of what capacity you work at the city.
Speaker 1:I talked to them for just about every project that we have in Jonesboro, which is most of my projects, really.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'll have to ask her, but my sister actually works in the engineering department.
Speaker 1:Oh really, yeah, I see water and light. She probably assumed my name, probably.
Speaker 2:So what projects are you working on right now?
Speaker 1:Man, there's so many. We actually just wrapped up a project in Pocahontas at Pico Foods, designed the site drainage utilities, all of that for a new expansion called control atmosphere stunning at Pico Foods because they have chickens, so it's a more humane way to like basically kill the chickens. And now McDonald's and a lot of places are requiring that this controlled stunning be used on the chickens because it's the most humane way, and so we had to design. We were given the floor plan of the expansion and we just designed all of the civil aspects of it. And then I'm working on quite a few smaller projects.
Speaker 1:So I have a bunch of very small size projects, all less than five acres. So I've got a couple of apartment complexes that I'm designing the drainage and I've got a rezoning where we're trying to rezone a couple of things which gets into real estate, which is not what I would expect to be doing. But if a plot of land is a commercial three zone and we wanna bring it to a residential one zone, there's a whole process you have to go through with the city to get that approved and the council has to vote on it. So I've got a ton of just like smaller projects so that I can learn quicker, so that it's doesn't take as long, basically, to do all of the design.
Speaker 2:So would you say that there was a big shock going from learning about this stuff to actually applying it.
Speaker 1:Yes, I have learned more in the last three months than I did in school, which is what every engineer says, and I love A-State. That is not a dis on A-State. I got a very good education at A-State and I would go back and redo it again at A-State if I was given the choice. But you just learn more whenever you're in the field, and civil engineering school doesn't even get into a whole lot of infrastructure design. It mainly focuses on structural and environmental and water. That's the three main things that we had classes in. And transportation we had some transportation, but infrastructure design and like site stuff like I'm doing wasn't really taught, because it's so hands on and every project is so different, because you've got so many different people involved and every site looks different, and so I've definitely learned so much in the last three months. Like every week it feels like I'm drinking out of a fire hose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, just information overload.
Speaker 1:Yes, but I love it.
Speaker 2:So how long have you been doing this position?
Speaker 1:I've been there since September 5th. I started the day after Labor Day, so I see you remember.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. So what are some skills outside of school that you think are essential for being a good civil engineer?
Speaker 1:Definitely people skills which you wouldn't expect. So I have to talk to a lot of clients. I have to, like professionalism, I have to be able to communicate with my clients and with the city and with a bunch of important people that have way more knowledge than I do. Just like effective communication is really important. And also effective communication in the sense of answering your emails and being good at communicating a problem or a question so that it's clear to the person that you're talking to, so that they can answer it appropriately for you. And also humbleness, like you have to humble yourself whenever you're coming into a completely different career and atmosphere and we have a student intern, so I'm not technically at the bottom of the totem pole, but besides the student intern, I am, and so just being humble and knowing that you don't know everything and allowing people to teach you is important. I don't think you can learn everything that you need to learn if you go into it with an attitude of thinking everything that's a big one.
Speaker 2:Would you consider yourself introverted or extroverted? Does this change like inside and outside of work?
Speaker 1:Definitely extroverted. I would not say it changes. I actually got married in October and I was gone for about a week on my honeymoon and I got back and everybody in the office was like it was so quiet without me because I just talk all the time. So definitely extrovert.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's cool. Do you think that to be successful in engineering, that is something that, if you're an introvert, that you need to develop some of those extroverted skills because you said people skills is very important effective communication. Do you think that's something that you would have to do if?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think you necessarily would have to be an extrovert which I'm an extrovert to an extreme, Like I'm at 100% there's. No, I'm not in the middle by any means, but I definitely graduated with some introverted people that are gonna be really good engineers and they're effective communicators, but they only communicate when they have to, which is absolutely fine. So effective communication is definitely, I wouldn't say, a requirement, but it's a skill that should be learned if you're gonna do your job well and you want to excel at your job and maybe one day get a raise or move up or whatever. But being an extrovert isn't.
Speaker 2:Do you have any tips for kind of developing that skill?
Speaker 1:I mean talking to people is one Getting advice from someone wiser than you not necessarily older, but wiser. We learned a lot of professionalism in school, but a lot of it is just by doing. I learned by emailing people and making mistakes. I actually the other day I was not paying attention to what I was doing and I accidentally sent the wrong email to the wrong person and I had to respond and immediately apologize to them and that was my fault. I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. But I learned from my mistake and I'm gonna double check where I'm sending an email from now on, just like learning from your mistakes. And yeah, professionalism is a weird thing because I feel like I'm still so young so I wouldn't be able to teach professionalism to someone. But from what I've learned, it's just been by doing and watching other people that are wiser than me.
Speaker 2:Did you ever take like oral calm in school?
Speaker 1:Yes, I do get in high school wait and to college and college yes.
Speaker 2:How was that experience for you? Because it's one of those things that I feel like I have to exert so much energy. When I'm overly extroverted, in the right situations, it comes natural for me. But given a speech or something, or something that. I could do it, but I always just felt so drained afterwards. How was your experience doing Orocom?
Speaker 1:I'm actually the exact same way. I love talking one-on-one like this, what we're doing right now. I could do this for another six hours and be fine, but if I get put up on a stage in front of people I'm going to pass out. I it's just something about it. I struggled with Orocom really bad and I ended up doing fine in both of them, but a lot of it was the memorization aspect. So my speeches were always over something I just had to memorize. It was never over something I was really passionate about. But with my job, if I know what I'm talking about and I'm able to go to someone and tell them about what I'm doing and ask a question, my mind is so focused on what I'm talking about that I'm not even paying attention to the people looking at me. And Orocom was not like that. It was very different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just I don't know. There's just something very unnerving about just a whole bunch of eyes on you and they're listening and even if they're like, yeah, gosh, it's tough. And it's one thing that I like about podcasting is okay. I can talk to somebody one-on-one and then I can just put it out until the ether and y'all can listen to it but it's not me there actively getting that feedback or looks or things like that. Definitely excel in the smaller group settings, for sure.
Speaker 2:So, that's interesting. Where do you see yourself career-wise in five years?
Speaker 1:Five years man. I really enjoy my company, so I would like to still be with them. I really like them a lot, just their attitude about things and the way they treat their employees. It's been a really good place to work and everyone else I work with says the same thing and there are a lot of opportunities internally to move up and I'm wanting to do structural long-term, which, if that doesn't work out, I do enjoy what I'm doing right now and I can always do both. I know a ton of engineers that have a geotechnical license and a transportation license, so it wouldn't be weird for me to get a structural license and an infrastructure license. But I would like to be doing some kind of structural work, hopefully within this company, but thankfully it's all over the state and so we could relatively move anywhere and I can either work in a different office or work remotely. I would be okay with any of those.
Speaker 2:That's interesting that you said you could do civil engineering remotely.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Is there something that you'd be interested in, or do you like the aspect of being around people in the office?
Speaker 1:I do love the aspect of being around people. I was actually given the option of working remotely whenever I started, and I didn't want to, but it's an option for if I go on a trip or something, I can bring my laptop with me and our laptops plug into our computer monitors and so everything is projected onto our two computer monitors. But I can just unplug my ginormous gaming laptop and take it with me and do everything I need to do on it and just call my boss if I have a question or something. But all of the files and everything that I need is within that computer, that operating system. It's very nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's cool. So what is some advice that you'd give to somebody that's wanting to get into the field If you had to give them a roadmap on if you want to become a civil engineer. This is what you need to start doing today to get there. What's the roadmap to becoming a civil engineer, in your opinion?
Speaker 1:Definitely get an internship. The people that had internships had better got the jobs. The people that had the internships got the jobs. I guess there's no way to sugarcoat that. And don't worry about your grades. Obviously pass, but I worried too much about my grades. I actually got the highest GPA award in engineering, but I feel like I missed out on so much of the college experience because all I did was study and I don't have a very good memory and so whenever I did study, I had to know the material. I couldn't just memorize it for 24 hours and be fine, and I was just constantly studying and doing homework and doing stuff for school, worried so much about my GPA. No one else cared about my GPA and yes, I got this cool award at the end of the day, but that award isn't what's going to get me jobs. It was my internships. I would say get an internship, hands-on learning, don't worry so much about your grades, but don't give in little minimal effort and barely pass your classes, obviously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, somewhere in the middle. Don't be like me, but don't be, c's get degrees.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Get at least a B plus in college. Get an internship four-year degree. Is there anything else that they need if they want to pursue this degree? Would you say that it was necessary for you to have a minor in computer science, or is that just something that you?
Speaker 1:That was just a skill that I wanted to have legitimately, just because I was interested in it. I think I was the only, or I am the only, person that has done civil engineering and got a minor in computer science. It was a very strange thing to do. People would give me weird books.
Speaker 2:Are there other minors that if someone wanted to get a minor? They compliment the engineering degree.
Speaker 1:Yes, there's actually a new electrical engineering minor at A-State and a lot of civil engineers did that, just because they work closely together. You're going to be working with electrical engineers, depending on your field you go into, and then also plant science. I actually almost did that because you can get a plant science degree and then go into some kind of agricultural engineering, which is very good for this area. So plant science is a good one. And then a lot of people got math minors. It was quite literally two more classes to get a minor, and so people would just take a summer class for two summers and get a math minor so they could say that they had it. And then it's just that extra math course or those extra math courses just to help you with problem solving in your job.
Speaker 2:So this is like an off the wall question, but if you weren't doing civil engineering, what is another career field that you would want to pursue?
Speaker 1:Probably the statistics.
Speaker 2:St Louis Cargings.
Speaker 1:I took statistics. I had to take two statistics classes for my major and I liked both of them a lot, but I probably would have ended up doing that and then getting a master's in statistics and, depending on how my husband felt about it, worked for the St Louis Cardinals, moved to St Louis. That was my dream job my junior year of college. I would probably do something with that.
Speaker 2:No, that's awesome. It's awesome that you knew what you wanted to do from a relatively early age. That's just. One of my goals is to give clarity to some people that are on the fence about what they want to do. Not sure if they'd be interested or not just to hear stories like yours and to be inspired to try something new.
Speaker 1:If anyone ever wants to reach out to me and ask questions, I will, to the best of my ability, answer them, but I also work with a lot of people that can help answer them too. Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:We'll put your island, where you can get connected to Shelby, in the show notes. Is there anything else that you want to add about your career field, or you want the listeners to know before you let you go?
Speaker 1:I think that's it. My career is very complex, but also very simple at the same time, if that makes any sense. There's a lot of ins and outs to it, but I think that anyone, as long as they're hard working, you don't have to be smart to engineering. A lot of people will hear that I'm a civil engineer and they're just like, wow, you're really smart. And I'm like actually, I'm not that smart, I just work my butt off.
Speaker 2:I don't know somebody that enjoys math is pretty smart to me.
Speaker 1:No, it's just the passion that I was given, but I was definitely both. My parents are hard working, so I got that from both of them. But I knew I'm not the smartest person that graduated in my classroom a state last May. I know that and I'm okay with that. But I was probably the hardest worker because I had to. I had to. I'm just not gifted. I had to work my butt off and I did. They can do it if they work hard, definitely.
Speaker 2:Well, shelby, I appreciate you taking the time and thanks for having me hosting me in your home to do this interview on short notice. This has been another episode of the Clever Angle podcast. I will put all the links in below to Shelby's podcast and where we can connect to with her about your civil engineering questions, and I appreciate you being on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for having me, it was fun.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Until next time, peace. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Clever Angle podcast. Make sure you subscribe wherever you get podcasts and we will see you next week.
