Professional Documents
Culture Documents
B-6
Capstone Reflection
The Internship:
I interned with Joseph Jackson from December to May, on showcase day, every
Thursday from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM. I learned so many things from Joseph about
working with the county and engineering in general. When I came into the office, I was
welcomed with open arms, and I never felt like an intern, but more like a partner while I
worked with Joseph. He made it his goal to teach me the sorts of things that he wished
he had known while he was working through college. I was able to use my knowledge
from my PLTW C.E.A course and apply it on a physical level to the projects that Joseph
worked on daily.
What I learned:
When people ask me what a civil engineer does, I explain to them that civil
engineers work with city infrastructures, roads, bridges, structures, and more. When
they ask me what I want to do as a civil engineer, I explain that I really enjoy structures
and the residential aspect of structures. I want to talk to people and make them happy
by meeting their personal needs. My views of civil engineering and what I can do with it
have changed since working with Joseph. Joseph has a B.S in Environmental
Engineering, and a B.S in Hydrology, and most of his projects pertained to those fields,
but civil engineering was always a part of it as well.
From Joseph, I learned the amazingness of water. At first, I thought he was
crazy for wanting to create watersheds, drive out to floodplains and survey the water
flow, and slop around under bridges to measure for insurance in the final build plans. My