Nothing is Given, Everything is Earned

Engineering is a notoriously tough field, taking math, science, and experience and wrapping it into one discipline. While considered tough, engineering is the field that consistently breaks the barriers of what is thought to be physically possible, just as a field like medicine consistently changes what is thought to be humanly possible. I am not sure what I expected when I started doing research in the Combustion Lab at the McNair Aerospace Center. I started as an Undergraduate Research Assistant in this lab officially in the Fall of 2023. The research involved studying the reactivity of ethanol under various temperature conditions at constant pressure. The aspect that I am studying is the chemical kinetics part. Chemical kinetics deals with understanding the rates of chemical reactions. 

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With this project, I was going to be learning skills that with subject matters I had not yet learned. One of the new things I had to learn was how to code with a new software application using the fundamentals of chemical kinetics–two things I knew very little about.  I was apprehensive about the knowledge gap, but I knew I was going to be surrounded with professors that are experts on the subject, and students who had been working in the lab for years that would be willing to mentor me while I began to learn the ropes of this area. 

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The same semester that I took on the chemical kinetics project, I also took EMCH 592, which is Introduction to Combustion. This class directly relates to the research I am doing. While in the classroom, I learn the fundamentals and theory behind the subject. In the research lab, I take the concepts that I have learned in the classroom and both directly and indirectly apply them in order to get the results I am looking for. 

Being part of the combustion research group means taking part in weekly research meetings, where undergraduate, master’s, and PhD students all come and present their research updates and receive feedback and criticism from the professors who are experts in that field. During one of the meetings, I was asked to present my progress which I was not yet confident in. This particular time, it did not go very well. The code I was working on still contained several errors and I was not sure how to explain the direction I was going. I was really discouraged about the lack of progress that I had made and how poorly I did when trying to explain it. 

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After the meeting, the same professor that teaches my combustion class and is also the professor who is over the combustion lab, worked with me to fix what was wrong with my code and explain to me what I was trying to achieve. The PhD students who had been mentoring me also stayed behind to help and figure out how best they could work with me from that point. During that meeting, the professor said something to me that I will always remember when doing my work. He said, “Nothing is given, Ashley. Everything is earned.” Artifact 1 shows an example of code that I successfully wrote and used with help from my professors and peers. Artifact 2 shows an example of a more successful research update. This takes knowledge I learned in the classroom and skills I have learned in the lab and puts them together to present the conditions I am investigating. 

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From that point on, I repeated that to myself whenever I was struggling with a particularly difficult concept. I repeat it to myself when completing work for combustion, an example of which is shown in Artifact 3, an example a tough take-home exam I completed. I repeat it to myself in the research lab when I am working to present valid results. I think this is going to be something that I repeat to myself through my entire career, and even to other life aspects outside of my career. I want to be able to expect nothing, even when it is earned.