Seek Struggle and Develop the Strength for Tomorrow:

Stealing 30 minutes of Chemical Engineer Ms. Mousumi Ahmed’s life

 

          “The job you want is not necessarily the job you’ll get, but it’ll most likely be for your own sake.” These enlightening words of Ms. Mousumi Ahmed, an enthusiastic chemical engineer, working as a Senior Controls Engineer in the UTC/Carrier Corporation, Richmond, Virginia for about three years gave me an insight on what to expect before starting a job. As an aspiring female chemical engineer, I wanted to see the working environment through the eyes of another female engineer. Fortunately, Ms. Ahmed, who is a practicing chemical engineer, is one of my relatives and came to New York for a short trip. So, without wasting the opportunity, I scheduled a meeting with her via email. Ms. Ahmed, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Virginia Commonwealth University, is very humble, friendly, and ambitious. Throughout our conversation, she constantly emphasized on the importance of facing struggle in life and its priceless life lessons. In our brief interview, she provided me with great information about her responsibilities, as well as some valuable advice.

          As our conversation progressed, Ms. Ahmed unfolded the surprising truth of how she chose engineering as a profession. As an immigrant child, she saw her parents’s struggle to pay rent, living paycheck to paycheck, and often sacrificing their needs to provide their children a better life full of opportunities. In one morning during her freshman year of college, Ahmed had an eye-opening encounter. She woke up around 4 am and saw her mom getting ready for work. Usually after a long tiring day at work, her mom’s day used to end with completing the household chores. So, Ahmed’s mom was the last one to go to bed and the first one to get up as well. She realized in the quest of becoming the “Americanized kid” in school, she ignored the hardship of her parents. In her words, “If you tell 15-16 years old me, that her career goal would be chemical engineering, she would probably laugh and ignore you.” Although she loved mathematics and science, she was not intending to pursue this profession. The 17-year-old girl who never focused on her career realized her responsibility towards her family that day and decided to rethink her career choice. She did some research and decided on chemical engineering as a major, which involves critical thinking and problem solving. She took it as a challenge and later discovered her passion for designing while taking a chemical plant design course. As she said, “watch me today- very content with my profession which allows me to support my family as well as have creative satisfaction.” It became very clear to me that she is not ashamed of the situation she was in, but rather very proud and grateful of what she has achieved.

          According to Ahmed, the road to success was full of obstacles and insecurities. She spoke of many instances during her college life when she felt so discouraged to continue her strive towards being an engineer. One of her major issues was procrastination. It became nearly impossible for her to keep up with the pace of her classes while working part time to support her educational expenses. She was struggling with the fear of failure, so procrastination became comforting to her. The young, bright student overlooked many internship opportunities because of that. Also, she had the misconception that as long as she has a good grade point average (GPA), she would get a great entry-level job, which contributed towards not applying for enough internships. Consequently, Ahmed graduated with a good GPA but had very little experience. She was struggling to find a job. After 6 months of her graduation, finally she joined a company, however, her struggle didn’t end there. Even though Ahmed had the knowledge, she was lacking the ability to apply it. Therefore, it was not enough to be a competent engineer, especially being a female in the male dominated industry. It took her a long time to come to the realization that her fear of failure was coming in between of her potential and her dream job. So, while working there, Ahmed learned that there is a very fine line between a coward and a hero. The first allows fear to control her, while the second controls her fears and minimizes them. Learning this has assisted her in overcoming difficulties and becoming successful. The biggest challenge in her career has been proving herself as a good, sound engineer. She had to put in enormous efforts in learning the basic concepts of chemical engineering to prove herself and be heard. She was dedicated to the job and used the resources at hand to learn continuously and enhance her knowledge.

          Ms. Ahmed learned a lot during the first few months of her job, especially understanding the group dynamics and solving the problem in a group setting to achieve the goal. In her current position, she works as an individual contributor as well as works with fellow engineers. When I asked about her responsibilities, she mentioned that all individual contributors get a project specific goal. 50%-60% of the time they work on projects. Then, she communicates with internal stakeholders. When needed more information, she works closely with other engineers to come up with the solutions. Specifically, her duties include designing, developing, and testing algorithm in the simulated environment. Next, she provides this information to the software team for the final integration and testing on the real systems. Once that gets completed, they work as a team to analyze the results. About 20% of their time is given to standardize the process improvement and concept generation for the next generation products. Currently she is a part of a model based development group, where they are developing the control algorithms for Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system.

          Since, Ms. Ahmed is required to work in a group, communication is a very important factor in her job. According to her, communication is the key, it is impossible to achieve a specific goal without collaborating with other engineers. She spends about 30%-40% of her job on communication. Her company holds a quarterly evaluation and a large part of it involves communication. She mentioned that they have one-on-one meeting with manager, give each other feedback and get inputs from manager. Additionally, they can discuss what personal development areas need to be focused on. Basically, she communicates via email, report, design, participating in meeting, and face-to-face conversations.

          It was very clear from our conversation and her facial expressions that Ahmed is very passionate about her work. When asked about favorite part of her job, she clearly showed appreciation for a lot of aspects. She replied that “the best part about working as an engineer is that you are given a project goal and all the essential resources. Your job is to fulfill the goal by a deadline- get paid while enjoying the satisfaction of your creativity.” Most of the companies give you the freedom and independence to accomplish the goal any way you could. She added that it has been exciting for her to work for the company to contribute to the products that goes out into the market. Besides that, the company supports both internal and external training programs. It also offers employee scholar program, in which employees can continue study along with their jobs and company would provide tuition assistance. For the least favorite part of her job, she mentioned about the limitation and delays caused by the management levels that are outside of local company management, who are called parent company. As a part of a large organization, getting approval on proposals take much longer than expected because of its long review process. Thus, sometimes they don’t get to do advance research in some areas to acquire the best solutions because of limited resources such as time, cost.

          Throughout our brief interview, Ahmed has provided some valuable advice. According to her, it is very normal to struggle in some of the engineering courses. But these struggles should not work as discouragement, but rather consider them as motivation. Quoting the engineer, “Chemical Engineering- very difficult and rigorous course. But trust me, it prepares you to be a strong and resourceful individual.” She recommended that starting from sophomore year, I should focus on the overall experience because the classes become difficult, so it’s okay if grades aren’t perfect. She stressed about developing soft skills and professional networking alongside maintaining a good GPA, which helps to prove the continuity of performance. Specifically, knowing how to communicate with ease is essential as it helps to build a great professional relationship with co-workers and in general, gives people around you the chance to be themselves. Once your co-workers are comfortable working around you, it encourages them to honest and work with their full potential. Also, it helps you to enjoy working. Building these skills doesn’t happen overnight. Therefore, she suggested me to take my time and start from now. Putting the time and effort into polishing interpersonal and leadership skills, time management is rewarding. Ahmed said that acknowledging opportunities and taking advantage of them plays a crucial role in our development, which means internships and involvement in community are must to enrich experience. Ms. Ahmed, who has experience in multiple fields, including hospital, retail, and receptionist jobs gives me the inspiration to explore other fields while I am pursuing my dream career and to acquire as much experience as I can.

          Besides our passion for chemical engineering, Ms. Ahmed and I share the same motivating force that drives us towards success. Being immigrants, both of us saw how our parents have scarified their careers and faced struggles so that we could have access to the opportunities required to build a bright future. The biggest challenge any female engineer faces is to set the balance between personal life and career. Fortunately, both of us have a very supportive family with us all the way through this experience. Without their support and encouragement, very little can be attained. Watching her shine after overcoming these struggles, instilled the faith in me that anybody that has ever achieved anything worthwhile has encountered and overcame struggles on their journey.

          All in all, our lives’s demand struggles, so that we can obtain the strength needed for the future. Every struggle comes with a lesson, so it is important that we face it and learn from it. In short, struggles help us shape our character to become a stronger and better version of ourselves. Overcoming difficulties can lead to deeper, more long-lasting learning. After listening to her story, I have a different perspective of struggles. I highly look forward to the sweet feeling of accomplishment and pride that overcoming struggles has to offer in my career.