Senior Engineering Student: How did we get here?

For starters, hi! I’m Abby and I’m currently a senior in mechanical engineering at LSU (graduating May 2025). I’m 28 years old and working on my second bachelor’s degree. So how did we get here? Let’s roll it back a little bit. Fresh out of high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew that going to college was “expected.” I’ve always enjoyed problem solving, so engineering felt like a good fit and I enrolled at LSU as a Biological Engineering student.

After my first semester, I decided to switch majors to Biology (big mistake). After another semester, I got a scholarship from Northwestern State in Natchitoches to go be a math major. That is how I landed myself with a math degree. I graduated in 2017, still having no idea what on earth I wanted to do. I got married, moved to Georgia, and I managed to land a job in higher education sales which allowed me to support myself.

So what’s next?

Fast forward a few years, I’ve moved back home to Louisiana and I’m getting divorced. I’m working in Financial Aid and it pays the bills, but I know that I don’t want to do it for the rest of my life. Then I start thinking about what comes next. I always came back to my love of problem solving, math, and science. This led me back to the world of engineering, but what discipline would I choose? There were so many options. I narrowed it down to chemical or mechanical through a lot of pros and cons lists (shout out my mom for the help).

After narrowing it down to two options, I started studying the flowcharts for each degree. I was so thankful LSU had them posted on their website. This made it easy to look through the coursework requirements for each. After several days of looking over the flow charts, I knew I didn’t want to take the amount of chemistry courses required for a ChemE degree… so that leaves Mechanical Engineering. It’s broad, it’s very physics based, and (in my opinion) is the most math heavy of the engineering disciplines. It was the perfect fit.

My Happy Ending

I haven’t regretted a second of choosing this degree path. Being an engineering student has posed it’s challenges, especially while working full time through most of it (see my tips and tricks on this here). I’ve enjoyed being a supplemental instructor and mentor to other undergraduate students and made so many lifelong friends throughout this degree. I’m well known throughout the department, both by my peers and instructors. I’m so excited to graduate from undergrad and pursue graduate school before moving into the professional world again. Cheers to May 2025 graduation!