47. [Career Exploration] Computational Engineer at the University of Texas (UT Austin) + Exploring going to college in a field underrepresented by women with Niccole Riera
September 26, 2023Sonia Cacique
47. [Career Exploration] Computational Engineer at the University of Texas (UT Austin) + Exploring going to college in a field underrepresented by women with Niccole Riera
47. [Career Exploration] Computational Engineer at the University of Texas (UT Austin) + Exploring going to college in a field underrepresented by women with Niccole Riera
Sep 26, 2023
Sonia Cacique
Ep. 47 Have you ever felt the weight of the world on your shoulders, grappling with the anxiety of deciding your life path while navigating the pressures of high school? Our guest, Nicole, a junior computational engineering major at UT Austin, went through just that, but with a twist. She had a steadfast determination not to follow her parents' engineering footsteps. Yet, a summer camp and a chance encounter with the field, her love for computational engineering emerged.
Journey with us as we discuss Nicole's college experience and her strategies for networking and standing out at career fairs and expos. We also delve into her exciting internship journey at Oxy, an oil, and gas company in Houston. From the recruitment process to applying theoretical knowledge in real-world scenarios, Nicole shares it all. She also emphasizes the importance of asking questions and seeking help, a strategy she used to overcome her physics class challenges.
Nicole doesn't stop at sharing her journey; she also offers invaluable advice for exploring careers, applying for scholarships, and deciding on a university. This episode is not only informative but also truly inspiring. Get ready to be motivated and perhaps find answers to some questions you've been grappling with!
Ep. 47 Have you ever felt the weight of the world on your shoulders, grappling with the anxiety of deciding your life path while navigating the pressures of high school? Our guest, Nicole, a junior computational engineering major at UT Austin, went through just that, but with a twist. She had a steadfast determination not to follow her parents' engineering footsteps. Yet, a summer camp and a chance encounter with the field, her love for computational engineering emerged.
Journey with us as we discuss Nicole's college experience and her strategies for networking and standing out at career fairs and expos. We also delve into her exciting internship journey at Oxy, an oil, and gas company in Houston. From the recruitment process to applying theoretical knowledge in real-world scenarios, Nicole shares it all. She also emphasizes the importance of asking questions and seeking help, a strategy she used to overcome her physics class challenges.
Nicole doesn't stop at sharing her journey; she also offers invaluable advice for exploring careers, applying for scholarships, and deciding on a university. This episode is not only informative but also truly inspiring. Get ready to be motivated and perhaps find answers to some questions you've been grappling with!
Thank you, nicole. Thank you for joining us here today at the College and Career Ready podcast. You're having me. I'm really excited for you to share your career journey and a little bit more about the career you are pursuing. But so our audience can get to know you a little better, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background? Yeah, so my name is Nicole.
Speaker 2:
I am a junior computational engineering major at UT Austin and with a business minor, and I'm currently interning in IT at Occidental Petroleum, which is an oil and gas company in Houston.
Speaker 1:
Tell us a little bit about your career journey so far. When did you decide you wanted to pursue a career in computational engineering?
Speaker 2:
Well, I was actually always. I was always against engineering because both my parents were engineers. So engineering was like the one thing I knew I didn't want to do. And so I went into a more music path and I did a music production camp and it was at that camp where we used this software called Ableton and I was just so fascinated with like the software and how, oh, this key does this and this button does this. I was like, how does it all work behind the scenes? And so it sent me more into a software path and I went to a UT Austin has these info sessions for their engineering schools and so they had an info session about each one and one of them was computational engineering.
Speaker 2:
And at that info session there was a group of students talking about a project they did where they modeled a brain and it showed parts of the brain where it had cancer. Oh wow, and I really enjoyed that. And so I decided that that's something that I wanted to go into. And, yeah, and that's how I just computationed the thing. I love it. How old were you or what year were you? I was, I was, I was honestly really late in the process. I think I was like the end of my junior year. I didn't know what I wanted to do until like the end of my junior year or like the summer before my senior year is when I'm around. There is when I figured it out.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, did you have any any stress along the way the first couple of years in high school, not knowing what you were wanting to pursue?
Speaker 2:
I think freshman year it didn't hit me Like I was just like, oh, high school, like you know it was, I was still kind of living in bliss. It didn't hit me until maybe sophomore and junior year, especially once I was taking all the SATs. I was very stressed out. I was like I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what I want to do. I was, I was everywhere. I wanted to be a business major, I want to do a MIS, I wanted to do music production and then I finally settled on engineering because I've always loved science and math and those have always been my strong suits and I even did like an engineering camp where we built a drone and that's really also I don't know. I tried a lot of different things before settling on the major that I did.
Speaker 1:
The friends that you surrounded yourself with? Did they know what career they wanted to pursue? Or y'all kind of on the same boat?
Speaker 2:
A lot of them were also kind of in the same boat, some of them. I have one friend who she knew what she wanted to do since freshman year. But a lot of us were in the same boat, like we were all trying to figure out. We were all going to info sessions, we were all doing some kind of summer camp to figure out what we wanted to do, or researching because you can also look at YouTube videos Like I was. What is? I didn't even know what engineering was, if I'm being like it wasn't until my sophomore year that I knew that there were different types of engineering.
Speaker 2:
I thought when people say I'm an engineer. It was just this one big field. But it's like there's chemical engineering, there's petroleum engineering, there's computer engineering, there's all different types of engineering which I didn't know, and so I had to do a lot of research into each of those types of engineering to figure out which one I wanted to do.
Speaker 1:
How did you narrow down to what college of choice?
Speaker 2:
My summer camp was at UT Austin and so I kind of just fell in love with the campus and my professor, or the professor that was teaching that summer camp, he was a UT mechanical engineering professor and he was he was a really great professor and I don't know. I really liked Austin, I like UT, and then I mean UT Austin's the only school that offers my majors and undergrad Got it.
Speaker 2:
So in that aspect my choices were limited, but I did have other choices. With respect to engineering schools in general, it's just UT Austin has one of the best engineering programs in the US?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely. Did you struggle with mental blocks, mental health, stress or anxiety during those years in high school?
Speaker 2:
Definitely. Yes, I think I was. I mean, I was in a bunch of AP classes, I was taking all of these SATs, I was also doing my extracurriculars. I felt so pressured to like be perfect so that I could get into the college of my choice. And then, on top of that, I didn't know what I wanted to do. So it was the stress I feel. Like in high school, people really make you feel like, if you like, you have to choose what you are going to do for the rest of your life. You know what I mean. Absolutely, you have to choose right now your career for the rest of your life. That's not true Now. I know that's not true because I know so many people who chose a career path and then ended up completely different. Absolutely. But, like in high school, it felt so stressful because I felt like, oh my gosh, I have to figure out right now what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, what I mean. And that's a lot of pressure to put on a 15-year-old or a 16-year-old.
Speaker 1:
But you don't have to have life figured out.
Speaker 2:
When you're that young, it's just, it goes, it flows, everything works out the way it's supposed to, which I know now, but I didn't know back then.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, it definitely caused me a lot of anxiety. Any tips for high school students currently if they're in that situation where they're stressed, they don't know what they want to do. Looking back, would there be anything that you would recommend yourself, I think just remember that everyone is in the same boat.
Speaker 2:
Like I think it's so easy to feel alone, like to feel like you're the only one who is going through all of that, and I promise you, like everyone is feeling those same things of oh my God, I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life, and it's kind of comforting to know that we're all kind of in this together. You know what I mean. And you don't have to have life figured out. Life works out the way it's supposed to. Yeah, like you're 15, you're 16, life is not. You're not going to have your life figured out when you're that young.
Speaker 1:
You're not even a quarter way through your life. Tell us a little bit about your career in computational engineering. What can you share with students? Because you said this is a new undergrad program, so tell us a little bit about this career path.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so a lot of people in my major end up working at places like NASA or Lockheed Martin, which is, I think, a missile defense company. It's my major is in the aerospace department, so we have to take a lot of aerospace classes and physics. I had to take a lot of physics. We just do a lot of coding and simulations. I have one project that I did where I coded and I did a code to plot the trajectory of a comet using its orbital elements. And then I did like another project where I pretended I was an Amazon delivery truck and I was trying to find the most optimal route. So it's basically just like optimization trying to find the most optimal solutions and stuff and using a bunch of physics in that.
Speaker 1:
It's my understanding that it's a field where women really do not stand out a lot. There's more men in this field, so tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:
There's I'm thinking my in my major, in my class, so my I'm about to be a senior actually there's less than 10 girls, like I know all of the girls in my major and I mean in my classes I have aerospace girls and computational engineering girls, but there are only like six of us and so we all we're all really close in our major and, yeah, my major is really small already and so it's like six out of 50 computational engineering majors. You know what I mean. We're a small field, we're still growing.
Speaker 1:
How has it been so far at UT and your experience there?
Speaker 2:
I love UT. I love UT it's I mean, engineering is stressful in general. There have been plenty of all nighters and like late night study sessions that have made me really stressed. But I mean throughout. In the midst of all that stress, I feel like I'm always grateful to just be here, like UT, austin is beautiful UT the professors are are amazing. We're getting taught by very good professors here and the people are amazing. I honestly I've enjoyed my experience so far at UT.
Speaker 1:
Very good. Is there any resources there at UT that you just really feel have been pivotal for you in your education journey there?
Speaker 2:
There are a lot of resources here. They have a lot of like tutoring opportunities and then for career they have. We have these things called engineering expo, where they bring in a bunch of companies every year for two I think, like two or three days, and then you just go and it's like a high school fair or something.
Speaker 2:
And basically just they have like tables and then you go up and you just talk to them and you kind of pitch yourself to them and for a lot of those companies, when you're talking to them, that's your application, like that's your interview. Like I went up to a lady because last year was my first time going, and I went up to this lady and I was just talking.
Speaker 2:
I was like hi, I'm Nicole, I'm a competition engineering major and she was asking me questions and I was telling her about projects I've done. And then afterwards she was like okay, so this is actually the interview and we would actually be really interested in you coming and applying for us. And I was like this was the interview.
Speaker 1:
I didn't know, this was the interview.
Speaker 2:
I'm like, yeah, there's a bunch of opportunities like that here at UT.
Speaker 1:
And.
Speaker 2:
I've like tried to take advantage of them as much as I can. It's just COVID made it a little hard, and so my sophomore year, my junior year, were the first years where I could really take advantage of all the opportunities that UT has to offer. But I'm going to go again in August and hopefully I can find a job offer or something.
Speaker 1:
That's right, because it's your last year. How exciting. That's awesome. How did you start your group? I know you said that there's very few of you women in the program, but how did y'all connect?
Speaker 2:
UT has this program called Women in Engineering so they pair us with an upper class. Then it's like a buddy. Our buddy was also a computational engineering major and she now works at Lockheed Martin and she actually reached out to us and asked if we wanted an internship opportunity. So that was a nice connection and stuff. But through that Women in Engineering program I met other computational engineers that were in my major and in my field. And then UT also has this thing called SIGS. Your freshman year. You have the opportunity to join a SIG and you can meet other people in your major. In my instance it wasn't just computational engineers, it was computational engineers and aerospace engineers, because computational engineering is so small. But usually it's like people in your major and then they sign you up for certain classes. So you don't have to worry about that, because registration can be really stressful.
Speaker 1:
Your first year.
Speaker 2:
So if you join a SIG they have a list of classes that that SIG takes and so you just take all of those classes and they're supposed to satisfy your curriculum. And so through that I also met a couple computational engineers. But we kind of just met through each other. I met some girls and they had met other girls and so we kind of. And then, since we were so tiny, in our classes I would sit next to someone and I'd be like hi, I'm Nicole. I'd be like what's your major? It's really like computational engineering major and I'm like oh, I love it.
Speaker 1:
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Speaker 2:
I'm more of an extrovert. I feel like I'm very I can be introverted. There are times where I definitely feel like my social battery is drained and I'm like I don't really feel like talking to people. But if I'm put in a situation where I have to talk to people, then I can be pretty social, like I can just be like hi, I'm Nicole. You know, I just kind of bounce off of people's energy.
Speaker 2:
I feel like you know like the more extroverted you are, the more extroverted I will be. You know what I mean Absolutely. But if I'm put into a new situation where I'm meeting new people, I feel like I definitely am more of an extrovert. But I mean I definitely have my introverted moments.
Speaker 1:
I love it. Did you start networking socially from freshman year, or is that something you evolved as you got more comfortable with the university?
Speaker 2:
I think I did. It evolved as I got more comfortable. First my year it was really hard because it was on Zoom and so talking to people was really hard. It was really hard to make friends. I really didn't know that many people in my major. I had met up with three other computational engineering girls, but they kind of all already knew each other, and so that was a little like oh, how do I talk to them?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and.
Speaker 2:
I feel like as I progressed and as I got older I was able to talk more and more. I definitely was not as extroverted my freshman year as I am now. I think now I'm more comfortable talking to people just because I've had to. You know, do you have to really put yourself out there to stand out like, especially with career fairs and expo and stuff like that? And so I think talking to people like my career is in your hands.
Speaker 2:
I think, that is kind of what made me be like oh, like these are my peers, Like I don't need to stress out too much about how you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, be more yourself, authentic, exactly. You know and I'm glad you bring that up because I hear this a lot from the professional world where people are looking for more authenticity, they're really looking for people who are just being more themselves and rather than trying to change who you are to accommodate others, because I think in the workforce especially, that really stands out being more yourself, because you have your own unique skills and talents that you'll be able to shine in your own way.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's exactly what my manager Oxy, when I first started, that's exactly what she said. She said that we're looking for authenticity and we're looking for genuine people. Like you know, we want you to be genuine. We don't want you to kind of change yourself to what you think we want, but to just be yourself and let that be enough.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. Kudos to you for starting your networking early, because you know you're a year from graduating and these are the people who you're going to be reaching out to for job opportunities. Yeah, Very good. Now currently you're interning, so tell us a little bit about your internship. Is this the first time you do an internship in your four years of college, or have you been interning before?
Speaker 2:
This was my first time interning. I think last summer my mom was really pushing me to do an internship but I was just like it was my. I felt like it was going to be my last real summer, you know, because this summer I have my internship and the next summer, hopefully, I'm working, and then it's like you never get summer breaks after that. Yeah, and so I kind of took last summer to just I went to Peru and I visited my family and I went to Miami and I visited my family, and so I tried to take the summer to kind of just spend it with my family and just enjoy it. But so this summer it's my first internship ever.
Speaker 1:
Oh awesome. So tell us about that experience. How did you find your internship? What would you recommend students?
Speaker 2:
I found it through Expo. They were at Expo so I was talking to a couple of the companies there and I saw them and, yeah, I found them there. Then I had also read an article about female CEOs and Oxy, our CEO, is. She was the first female CEO of a major US oil company. So I was like, wow, that's crazy. She is amazing. She is very intelligent. I feel like not many interns get to say that they've met the CEO three times, but she is really involved with her employees, which is really nice to see.
Speaker 1:
Walk us a little bit through that process. You met them through Expo and then did they offer internships then, or you outsourced them once you were ready to look for an internship.
Speaker 2:
They offer internships every year, so they're always looking for interns.
Speaker 1:
They always have summer internships at Oxy, and so you applied, and what was that experience?
Speaker 2:
like I applied and then I waited to hear if I got an interview. And then they interviewed me and it was me and three other people.
Speaker 1:
At the same time.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, at the same time, One of them actually was my VP. I didn't know he was. Now he's my VP, but I didn't know at the time that he was VP. I'm kind of glad I did it, because I think I would have been a lot more nervous if I knew he was a VP. But yeah, it was me and three other people and it was an interview and then they gave me a call a couple I think. Like a month later they offered me a position as an IT intern and then love it, just like fill out a bunch, because there's different departments in IT. There's like business systems, there's infrastructure, there's cybersecurity, and so they had us rank kind of where we wanted to go and yeah, Super, super.
Speaker 1:
How has this experience been so far? Getting hands on work experience?
Speaker 2:
Amazing. Honestly, the people are amazing. I love that. Oxy has done a really good job with their internship experience. They took us to go see part of the production of oil in New Mexico and that was really cool to get to see in person. But they have a lot of intern activities and I feel like I got really close with the other IT interns. We're all like there's like 10 of us and we're all kind of just one big little family and everyone is so friendly. Everyone. If you have a question you can ask anyone. Even the VP is like people that are higher up. They're like, oh, like, schedule a meeting with me and we can talk. We can talk about anything. You know what I mean. I was like, wow, like they're so open and like the CIO, he's like come and stop and say hi, you know what I mean. They're so open to being there for you and like they just want you to ask questions. That's like their big thing. They say ask a lot of questions, be curious. They want curious people, yeah.
Speaker 1:
I appreciate you sharing that, Nicole, because that's something that we want to portray to our students is to never be afraid to ask. I always tell them to, even if they say no, at least you know you ask number one but number two. If you don't ask, the answer is no already, If you don't even ask. So always reach out, feel comfortable. People are always willing to help, especially our youth, because y'all are our future.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's exactly what they say to you.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, well, it seems like we have very common, common mission here, super. So what do you think would be ideal for this type of program?
Speaker 2:
Definitely, if you are good at physics and math and you have an interesting coding, this is the career, because it's a lot of math, it's a lot of physics. I did not know it was so much physics when I came into it. It is a lot of physics. If you really like physics, it's perfect for you. And math I was a very big math person, so that's why I thought it would be a really good fit for me. I like coding and stuff, but those three are the big ones.
Speaker 2:
If you just like coding, it's more of a computer engineering path, I feel.
Speaker 1:
You should take.
Speaker 2:
But physics heavy, it's very physics heavy.
Speaker 1:
So, since you did not expect so much physics, have you struggled with physics with your physics classes and how have you dealt with it?
Speaker 2:
I definitely struggled a lot. When I was in high school I took a physics class like junior year and my teacher without for three months because she was sick. One of the most basic things in physics is vectors. I didn't learn vectors when I started college. I got to my physics class and my professor was like okay, now do these vector problems? I was like what are vectors? It was a lot of office hours. I had a really good TA. Luckily, with her I was able to learn vectors pretty quickly and I was able to pick things up pretty fast. There's a lot of resources at UT. We have the I think it's called the Sanger Learning Center. A lot of people go there and get tutored. I know engineering has its own tutoring. Sometimes they just have tables and they have signs that say tutoring from this time to this time. But honestly, the TAs that's really where I did most of my learning for physics and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:
Our students. Ta is teacher assistants Awesome For students who might not know what office hours are. Pretty self-explanatory, but tell us about office hours.
Speaker 2:
Office hours are. Usually there's a set time that professors have or when you can come into their office and just ask questions on homework, on material. Some professors don't like homework questions. It depends on the professor. Some professors only like homework questions, some professors only like material. They'll let you know that in the syllabus that they get you at the beginning of the semester. Office hours are where you can go and you can usually ask questions on projects or homeworks or material that you're confused with and things like that. It's really nice to go to, because some professors don't get a lot of people at their office hours. When you go to their office hours they really appreciate that. I had one professor who bought me from an A to an A because I would go to his office hours.
Speaker 1:
Wow, that's very encouraging. Almost like tutor what do you call it after school? Tutoring time in high school? Very well said. When that happens then you can just drop in, or if you don't find the help you need there, you have additional resources such as scheduling, tutoring with teacher assistance and other opportunities. Correct, when you were telling me about you realized that you didn't have the basic knowledge of physics. Based on your experience, did you feel that a lot of students were in the same boat as you were, or a lot of them felt more prepared, and then how did that feel for you?
Speaker 2:
I think a lot of us were kind of in the same boat because, I mean, physics is hard in general, especially in college. College physics is really hard In my major it wasn't an engineering class, that was specific to my major- it was just an engineering physics.
Speaker 2:
It had chemical engineers, it had a bunch of engineers. I think that helped me a lot, because they didn't feel there are a lot of aerospace engineers who love physics they're amazing at physics but there were other types of engineering fields who really don't need as much physics. They were also struggling, and I was struggling, which was nice to see. We all were like oh my gosh this is a lot of physics.
Speaker 2:
We just weren't expecting so much physics, but we were able to pull through. We studied a lot with each other too. We would have our little study groups and we would study for exams or we would help each other with homework. Questions like that that really was helpful.
Speaker 1:
You said that you're taking classes in aerospace. Is that something required for the program?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, since my major is in the aerospace department, we have to take a couple. I had to take low-speed aerodynamics. It's because we end up working in more aerospace still like Lockheed Martin and NASA. That's why I mentioned the code that I did where I plotted the trajectory of a comet using its orbital elements. Those are things that require a little more aerospace background. It's doable, it's doable.
Speaker 1:
I really heard classes.
Speaker 2:
Aerospace is really important. I have a lot of aerospace friends who love it. I like the coding part of my major more than I like the aerospace, but it's really nice to learn about all of those things too.
Speaker 1:
Now that you're having this experience in your internship, are you considering other job opportunities that you could possibly qualify for or apply for after graduation?
Speaker 2:
Definitely, I'm still exploring all of my options. I do think I want to go into a more software path. I feel like with my major people tend to go different routes. So there are people who go like the Ness, the Lockheed Martin route, and then there are people who go more of a tech route into IT or software. I think that might be more of the route that I would take, but I'm still considering all of my options. Even now I still don't fully know.
Speaker 1:
That's great that you say that, because we always say, even if you had narrowed down where you wanted to work, still leave that door slightly open, because you never know what might come your way or what opportunities might be there. And so this is where I wanted to bring back full circle to our conversation earlier about being in high school. We all evolve I mean we all do. We're human beings as part of the growing and learning process, and I feel that, whether it's in high school or in college, you will start learning new things, meeting new people, having new experiences that will shape you to that next step. Whatever that is, and even in your career when you graduate, that next step might not even be your forever. There might be other opportunities that will evolve over time, and that's definitely part of the learning process. Do you have any financial advice for students based on your experiences or anything that you wish you would have done or you would like to share?
Speaker 2:
I'd like to have scholarships, any scholarships you can. I think I didn't think I was smart enough to apply to certain scholarships and so I was like, oh, I'm not going to get it. But I mean, honestly, I feel like I could have gotten it. I think I just didn't believe in myself as much as I should have at the time and I mean, the most that can happen is I don't get it. But I definitely would say just apply to any scholarship that you could. There's a scholarship for everything for being a woman in STEM, for being a Hispanic in STEM, for everything I would just apply apply, apply.
Speaker 1:
Was it just a roadblock that just made you think like you wouldn't be able to get the scholarship if I applied?
Speaker 2:
I think it was also just it was so much stress with everything. I was just stressed getting into college and then I was actually I wasn't even going to go to UT. I was going to go to A&M originally because I was actually capped. I was capped from UT and I was going to go to A&M, so I had my roommate, I had a dorm, I was in between A&M and Purdue and Purdue had a better engineering program than UT, but it's so far. It was like it was in Indiana and I remember I spoke to some engineers there and I was like how's your?
Speaker 2:
social life and they were like we don't have one. And I was just like, oh, I wanted a good balance, you know, and so I was going to go to A&M and I had it all set and then UT came and I had a scholarship at A&M. I had a National, hispanic.
Speaker 1:
Merit.
Speaker 2:
So I had a scholarship for their school when I was in their honors program. But then when I went to UT UT is a lot harder to get a school like a school scholarship, and so they didn't give me one. And so when I came I think just the process of dropping A&M and then moving to UT and having to find a roommate and having to find dorms and changing, you know, I had already kind of been like OK, I'm going to A&M. And then I was like OK, wait no, I'm going to UT.
Speaker 2:
That stress, I just like. I was just like I can't even think about scholarships. You know what I mean? I was like I probably will get it. I think I had a lot of imposter syndrome because I was capped from UT. But I mean now I know, like like my major was really small. If I be, I didn't realize how competitive my major was, so I don't know. Just the fact that I got in even after being capped is like a really huge milestone for me.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, when did this happen? When did when did you get accepted to UT and the switch of plans? It was.
Speaker 2:
I think it was like in April, Like it was. It was during COVID and I was just sitting at my. I was sitting at the at my computer. I was looking at my emails, Thank goodness. I looked at my email and I just saw an email was like there's been a change to your status and I was like what? Because I didn't realize that you could get uncapped. I didn't realize that putting getting capped is almost like getting waitlisted. You know, they haven't really said no, it's just like I didn't know that. I didn't know that you could even get uncapped. And so I went into my portal and I saw you have been admitted to the University of Texas at Austin.
Speaker 1:
And I was like oh wow, any last minute tips for success for students.
Speaker 2:
Just put yourself out there, just ask a lot of questions, be curious, put yourself out there. I know it's really hard. It can be really hard to just go up to people and start a conversation, but you never know who you're talking to, and so you have to try and just be yourself. Just be yourself and be like hi, I'm belong. Be friendly, like smile and try to be friendly. I feel like that's all like people. That like helps put people at ease. Like even talking to introverted people, just like putting a smile and being friendly can really help them like open up.
Speaker 1:
I love it. I love it. Well, to end on the fun, note what's your favorite book Maybe one that you're reading, or a top favorite book, a song or a playlist?
Speaker 2:
I listen to everything. I I mean, I'm really, I love music. I still love music. I've always loved music. I think my favorite song at the moment would be the color violet. Ok, it's a song called the color violet, but my playlist I have everything. I like EDM, I like Hispanic music, I like pop. I listen to everything R&B, everything.
Speaker 1:
I love it. I love it. Have you been able to find any any way to channel that, that love for music, and because I know that was something that you had originally planned for?
Speaker 2:
Honestly, that's something I'm still looking at and trying to find a way. I'm trying to see if there's something that kind of combines both my computational engineering and music, which I'm sure there is a way. But I'm actually in the midst of trying to find that because I really would like, I would love to pursue something in more of the music field. I'm still trying to, I'm still trying to find that Absolutely, but you know what they say.
Speaker 1:
If there isn't one, then that means you need to create a space for that. Yeah, thank you so much, nicole. How can people connect with you?
Speaker 2:
No, any any handle that I have is usually just my first and last name, Nicole Riero.
Speaker 1:
OK, perfect. Well, thank you, Nicole, for being here with us today and sharing with us about your experience so far. We're really excited about your last year and hopefully in a couple of years you can come back and tell us what what you are up to and what your career path looks like then.