​Hello! 

​My name is Hyein Choi (pronounced hane), and I will be one of SWE’s Fundraising Relations Managers this year. This is my first year at UNM, studying as a Mechanical Engineer, and my first year as a part of SWE. So far, I have found this organization to be fun, educational, and helpful towards my college career. In the future, I hope to continue working towards making SWE a comfortable and fun environment for everyone to join. One of my favorite memories so far have been SWE’s game night where I was able to meet other SWE members and SWE conference where I met so many other women engineers. To be honest, it was much bigger than I had expected and the amount of company representatives there was overwhelming (but in a good way). After attending my first conference online, I hope to be able to attend in person one day.

​Throughout my first semester during COVID, I picked up a couple of hobbies. Like most others in quarantine, cooking has become a big part of my life and I enjoy learning new recipes. I took up knitting for a couple weeks, acrylic painted for a bit, have tried jewelry making, once again started nail painting, and continued my cello playing. But for the most part, I have spent the majority of my time on Netflix. If anyone would like show recommendations or have some for me, please reach out! (email: hychoi9265@unm.edu) I really hope it becomes safe for in person learning soon as I am very excited to meet everyone. I hope everyone has a great and safe semester!  

​My favorite memory in SWE was my first conference. Last year, I was fortunate enough to go to Anaheim, California for the SWE19 National Conference. We had heard that there would be a HUGE line to register on the first day, so we made sure to get up early and get there right as the conference center opened. We successfully got our badges and since we had about an hour before the keynote speaker, we wandered throughout the center. Every hall we turned down had more and more rooms, all prepared for the various small talks throughout the day. Thankfully, SWE had a nifty app to keep track of these talks, so the night before, we decided which talks we would attend. 
Then, the keynote started and our day was off! Moving from talks to keynotes to the career fair was awesome, even though we were dead tired by the end of the day! It was inspiring to see so many female engineers and scientists all together and all the talks and keynotes were informational and interesting. For me, the biggest shock was the career fair. It was huge! There were probably one hundred or more companies, including big names like Google, Facebook, and Northrop Grumman. I had brought a number of copies of my resume, so I went around to different companies and gave them a paper copy or had them take a picture of my resume to put in their system. It was definitely nerve-wracking to walk up to strangers and give them my elevator speech, but I realized that the recruiters were actually very friendly. Even though I was not familiar with the company, I also submitted my resume to Lockheed Martin. 
After the conference, I did not think too much about the resumes I submitted, but within the next couple of months, Lockheed Martin reached out to me about a phone interview. After a successful interview, they offered me an internship position! Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, I was not able to continue with the internship, but it was still amazing to get an offer.

​Hopefully everyone in SWE will be able to experience an in-person conference after COVID-19 blows over - but it is still pretty exciting to have all these virtual events to be able to make connections and have fun! Hope you guys have a great semester, and always feel free to reach out to me or one of the other officers if you have any questions!