By Alejo Navarro Goldaraz, Junior, Mechanical Engineering
Alejo Navarro Goldaraz loves helping people fix their bikes and enjoys spending time outside with friends and family.
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Why did you choose to be an engineer?
I have always been a fan of taking on little projects to fix things around the house. Engineering to me is the process of figuring out why something is broken and trying to fix it!
I suppose the conclusion to this long-winded account of my introduction to engineering is that it has taught me how to think. Crucially, it has provided me with a toolkit that enables me to tackle problems that I would have never previously thought to be formally approachable. For that I am grateful, and I look forward to continue learning and seeking new ways to approach the next “why?” that I come across.
Growing up, my family would spend summer vacation in a house on a somewhat remote town in Uruguay. Until last year (2019), we had no WiFi and, to this day, the bandwidth isn’t strong enough to support a mildly healthy Netflix addiction, so we had to figure out other ways to spend time.
One of the projects I took on to spend time was building a small house in the forest next to our house. For the better part of three months my siblings and I would wake up every morning and look for the latest branches that had fallen off the trees that we could add to our house. Once the summer ended and I went back to Buenos Aires, I continuously tried to emulate the feeling of ‘building’ that I felt that past summer. That’s when I knew I wanted to study engineering.
I had no idea what exactly I was going to do next, but I knew I wanted to do my best to build something myself. So, as many often do, I turned to the internet for inspiration. That’s when I found the greatest collection of DIY YouTube videos to do anything you can think of. I started with 5 minute tutorials on how to properly replace a light socket, then a saga of 3 minute videos teaching you anything you might need to know to fix a bike and even ended up watching a 20 minute explanation on how to build and take care of your own home beehive. From that point onwards I have never stopped taking every opportunity that I can to build something new or fix something broken.
Engineering is not only duct tape and DW40 (although it might be a significant part of our home improvements); engineering is about having the curiosity and the discipline to wake up every morning to look for whatever (metaphorical) branches you can pick up and work on.