Inspired. If I had to choose one word to describe my experience at WE19, that would be it. My experience at WE19 in Anaheim, CA was very impactful and I came out of it with a new mindset on my studies and identity. Being surrounded by female engineers from UNM and from around
the nation really made me feel like I was part of something bigger: the movement to bring more women into engineering.

This is my first year in SWE and my first conference, so I came in with very few expectations and a drive to participate in everything I possibly could. When I first arrived at WE19, I was very intimidated. Everybody around me was dressed professionally and looked like very, very smart people. At first I didn’t feel like I fit in, but as the conference went on, I realized that there were many people who, like me, were at their very first conference and others had felt the same way
during their first conference. I gained more confidence talking to people, and it helped me attend workshops and presentations without any hesitation. Once I found out that there were people like me at WE19, I felt more like the people I saw as well and it created a very inclusive and supportive environment for engineers to explore possibilities in their field.
​

The workshops and presentations offered at the conference covered a wide variety of topics, from mansplaining, the effects of saying “sorry” too often, making your phone into a fitness tracker, to engineering your wardrobe for success. They were targeted towards female engineers and all STEM professionals as well. Each talk I attended was engaging and fun. I took something away from each presentation to keep in mind for the future. These talks made me think, “Wow, that’s interesting! I need to make a note of that for later”, “I’ll need to do that for my next job search,” and “I believe I can get to where that person is too.” The presentations and
speakers supported engineers at all levels and I feel everyone was influenced in one way or another.
​​

Another wonderful experience of WE19 was rooming with other engineers. Most of my usual friends aren’t engineers, so it was a change hanging out with students in similar areas of study. They were funny, kind, enthusiastic, and extremely supportive. My WE19 experience would not have been as much fun without them. Knowing that these young women are studying at the same university as I am made me proud to be part of the UNM School of Engineering and motivated me to succeed in tough courses. They helped me see that I can study difficult subjects and still thrive. Thank you, Angela, Kayli, Mary, and Katherine, for showing me how amazing intelligent engineers can be.

Recently I had been feeling more and more doubt about
whether I am smart enough to even continue majoring in
Computer Science (Imposter Syndrome, anyone?). But the women I heard and saw at WE19 motivated me to continue pushing through. I want to pursue my degree not only to be one of the women who enter into that field but also to inspire others to do the same. The conference made
me realize how much of an impact female engineers, including myself, can have on society and
on other people.

It was a great honor to attend WE19 and I hope to be able to attend WE20 next year. I witnessed many present and future successful engineers that inspired me to study hard and
reach for my dreams. I hope everyone else who attended came out a new person as well, as engineers who live, learn, and lead.
​
Mari A.

I am a junior at UNM studying computer science. I went to the SWE conference. I had an
interview with Boeing. Here is how it went. (this is definitely not presented verbatim, lol)

At the MASSIVE career fair, I went to the Boeing booth and started talking to a recruiter. I
handed him my resume, while not-so-subtly flexing the fact that I have a sEcUrItY cLeArAnCe.
The recruiter then says to me “Alrighty then, you want an interview? Come to the third floor
ballroom tonight at 8pm and we’ll see if you’re a good fit.” Heck freakin’ yeah I will.

I show up at 8pm to the third floor, and there is a SUPER long line. I thought, “there’s no way
that ALL these people have interviews right?” I start to understand that this was just a screening
process to see who will ACTUALLY get an interview. Everyone is handed two tickets, and they
can use those two tickets to talk to two different tables inside the ballroom. We are handed a
packet that describes the teams at each table. I scan the packet for software engineering
internship positions, and have it settled: I will talk to tables 28 and 29.

When I eventually got into the ballroom, I go right up to table 29. I hand the manager at that
table my resume, and he starts going over it.

Manager: “HmmMMmm, I see you have some experience at Sandia National Laboratories. ”

Me: “Yeah, I’ve been there for two summers now!”

Manager: “Okay tell me about some of your work there.”

I explain to him some of the work I did, and answered some more generic interview questions.

Manager: “Well, you’ve got a nice resume here, but I don’t think you’ll be a good fit. We’re
looking for data systems engineers. You just don’t have the experience.”

At this point, I am definitely upset. HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT I DON’T WANT TO
SWITCH UP THE WORK I DO AND TRY SOMETHING NEW!?!? JUST BECAUSE I DID
ALL THESE THINGS ON MY RESUME IN THE PAST, DOESN’T MEAN I WANT TO DO
THOSE THINGS FOREVER!!!!!! I CAN LEARN TO BE A DATA SYSTEMS ENGINEER
OR WHATEVERRRR

Anyways… I move on and go to table 28. These two nice ladies take my resume, and ask me
some unapologetically generic questions.

Recruiter: “Describe a challenge you had in the past, and how did you overcome it?”

Me: “Well, I-” blah blah blah

A few more rounds of these questions occur. Finally,

Recruiter: “Well, I don’t think we’re a good fit. You just don’t have enough experience with the
type of work we do”

WHAT THE HECK?!!?!?!?! I’M FREAKING APPLYING TO BE AN INTERN. OF COURSE
I DON’T ALREADY HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH WHAT Y’ALL DO.

Me: “Ok, well thank you for your time.”

Recruiter: “May we take your ticket?”

I had completely forgotten about the ticket system. I hand the ladies a ticket, and I go off on my
way. I still have one other ticket to spend, since the first table forgot to collect one from me, so I
find yet another software engineering table. I want to take this moment to apologize to the
Boeing lords for breaking their little hiring rules.

The next table I talk to are very polite, but they admit that none of them are computer science.
They say that they COULD take my resume and give it to the computer science person who
WAS supposed to be there, but my chances might not be great like that. They tell me I should
spend my ticket on a different table.

So I find my FOURTH software engineering table, and queue up behind someone who is already
speaking to these people. This poor person is getting DESTROYED by the manager. All I can
see is that the manager is writing some problem with integrals on a piece of paper and the person
isn’t able to answer it. They tell him he’s not a good fit, and he starts asking questions for how he
can improve himself. He eventually leaves.

At last, I got up to the table, hand the manager my resume, and… things go fine at first. The
manager asks me about some of my work at Sandia, and I give him a high level overview of it. I
tell him about a project I did where I implemented some sensors on a Raspberry Pi. And then,
things take a turn.

Manager: “Diagram out the program you wrote for the sensors on the Raspberry Pi,” the
manager said, as he flips my resume over to the back and hands me a pen.

Me: “Uhhhh, okay, so here we had this sensor that was detecting radia-”

Manager: “No. I don’t care about what the sensor was detecting, diagram out all the threads and
processes in the program you wrote.”

Me: “Okay, so uhh we have this, um, main thread which would call this thread, and we’d also
have um a different thread that is”

Manager: “There’s another thread!? Then why didn’t you diagram that one out as well?!?!”

I stumble my way through the diagram. He continues to interrogate me on all the details.

He eventually has heard enough of this story and switches gears. He takes my resume, and starts
writing C code. Not just pseudocode, like actual C code that would compile if you typed it
character for character into a compiler.

Manager: “Tell me what’s wrong with this code.”

I answer this fairly obvious problem, but he starts hammering me on the details.

Manager: “Okay, so we are continuously allocating memory, but what happens when we
eventually run out of memory?”

Me: “Uhhhhh, the program crashes?!”

Manager: “And how do you fix it?!”

Me: “Uhhhh, free the memory?!?!”

This goes on for a while as he switches to more coding problems. I don’t think I have said uhh
and umm this many times in my life. I understood and had solutions for all of his problems, but
the way he was pressuring me felt like I was being forced to cure cancer at gunpoint.

Eventually, the manager sets the pen down and looks at his hiring buddy. They nod at each other,
and he says to me:

“Alright. When do you have time to interview tomorrow?”

I felt a massive wave of relief. I had wasted an hour and 45 minutes here in this ballroom by
now. This event closes in 15 minutes along with all the other fun events in the convention center
that I was missing out on. But I finally landed an interview. In the words of 21 Savage at Camp
Flog Gnaw (later that weekend): “my throat dry.”

The next day, I showed up to the Boeing interview booth. I’m called into a room, and the same
manager from yesterday sits me down, and says, “Do you know what a structured interview is?”

Me: “Uhhh, I guess, I mean isn’t that just an interview?”

Manager: “Yes, I will ask you 4 to 5 questions, you will respond to them, and I will take notes on
your response.”

Me: “Okay yeah, so it’s just an interview?!”

Anyways, the questions start coming and they are pretty generic. A few questions go by, and
eventually he asks, “Describe a time where you faced a problem, and had to go to someone more
knowledgeable for help.”

I rack my brain really quick, and offer a decent story:

“I once had to install linux packages onto a Raspberry Pi at work without being able to connect
the pi to the internet. I was still just getting familiar with linux so I struggled a bit. There was this
one package that I couldn’t get to install on the pi. I then went to a mentor, and realized that my
mistake was that I was building the linux package on my windows machine , and then moving
it onto the pi.”

I thought it was a pretty good story, but I didn’t realize the one logical fallacy I stated. You can’t
build linux packages on windows machines. The interviewer immediately pounces on that.

“You built a linux package on a windows machine? What are you talking about? That is not
possible. Do you understand how linux packages work? Do you know what the difference is
between a .dll and .so file?”

He proceeds to explain the differences between .dll and .so files. I reiterate to him that I was (and
still am) pretty new to all this linux stuff, and that I wasn’t lying (AND I WASN’T). So he asks
me once again: “HOW DID YOU BUILD A LINUX PACKAGE ON A WINDOWS
MACHINE”

Me: “I… I um... I used Cygwin…”

The interviewer pauses for a few seconds.

“Oh... Okay. That makes sense. Okay, carry on.”

WHEW. I won’t get bogged down in the details, but basically, Cygwin is a tool that makes the
process I described possible to do. At that point, I was no longer under arrest and I was in good
standing with the computer science laws. I feel a wave of relief and continue on with my story.

The rest of the interview went just fine. I asked a decent amount of questions at the end to show
my interest. When we were ending, the manager then made some pretty suggestive comments.

Manager: “Soooo, will you be around over the weekend?”

Me: “Uh, yes, I will be here until Sunday night.”

Manager: “Okay, just ummm, be sure to check your email and phone.”

Me: “HhmmmmMMMMmmm okay okay, I hear you my guy. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ”

Aaaaannnnnnnnnd so that is how my interview went. Later that night as I was getting out of an
Uber, I received an email from Boeing. It was like “congrats u got de job!” and told me to go to a
congratulatory brunch in a ballroom the next day. The brunch was pretty nice but it definitely
took out a chunk of my Disneyland time (smh). There, I saw the first manager who rejected me
and it felt empowering to give him that glare that was like “See, b***h, I’m worthy.”

As of now, I don’t know if I will take this Boeing offer, but I’m leaning towards it. All I know is
that it’s in Fairfax, VA, which is 30 minutes away from Washington D.C.

There are plenty of other interesting events that happened to me at this SWE trip, but I felt like
this is the one most worth sharing. Some other notable things that happened was having 4 other
interviews (Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin), going to disneyland,
and going to Camp Flog Gnaw. This trip was an absolute blast, and I would definitely
recommend getting in on this conference next year if you have the chance.

So, the moral of the story is: breaking a FEW rules is fine on your job hunt, and never fold when
an interviewer is drilling you.
​
Completely unrelated photo (from Camp Flog Gnaw):
​

I had the awesome opportunity to travel to Anaheim, California for the 2019 Society of Women Engineers (SWE) national conference: WE 19. The theme this year was “We Live, We Learn, We Lead” and I can say with confidence that I did all three.
​

​This is my second year as a member of UNM’s chapter of SWE. I was lucky enough to attend WE 18, last year’s national conference, and because of that, I had some expectations going into it. My main priority was to listen to the keynote speakers. At WE 18, I wasn’t able to see the Thursday speaker. This year, my friends and I made sure we got there super early to not only get to listen to the speakers but get a great seat!
 
My Thursday started off with a plate full of pastries, a cup full of more cream than coffee, and so much excitement for my first talk of the weekend. Carol Malnati, Vice President CRHF R&D at Medtronic, was the opening keynote speaker for the conference. I was completely captured by her first story. 

​She explained a turning point in her career. She was a mother working towards her Ph.D. when her professor gave her a lower overall grade than her male classmate. She explained how she confronted the professor, asked some of the most difficult questions while remaining calm and fought for the grade she deserved. Even then, she fully admitted how discouraged and defeated she felt but, in that defining moment, she decided to power on for her daughter.
 
Throughout the speech she gave great advice like following your inner compass, being resilient and finding your own moxie. After her standing ovation, I wandered over to where the UNM chapter took our group photo. It was then when I finally realized how many students our organization took. I was so proud we took 39 students and I really wish I had more time to get to know everyone who came.
​

​The rest of the day I bounced between the career fair and tech talks. It was different going to a career fair when I already have a job that I love. I talked to some companies and got awesome company swag, but having a job took a lot of pressure off the 30-second elevator speech I practiced about a thousand times last year. SWE’s career fair is one of the largest for women engineers. I got to learn so much about companies I never knew before and got some resume tips. Other members were lucky enough to be asked to interview and offered jobs or internships.
 
The second day, Rachel Hutter, Senior Vice President for International Facilities Operations Services and Worldwide Safety, Health and Engineering at Disney, empowered the crowd using the strong female characters from Star Wars to celebrate a new theme park’s opening: Galaxy’s Edge lands. Not only were there snippets from Disney’s Star Wars movies and TV shows but each piece of advice had a brilliant story accompanying it that kept me engaged the entire talk.
I revisited the career fair and went to some more tech talks. Some of the speeches where super funny like “How Netflix is ruining your Career” or exceptionally empowering like the plenary panel, “#SHECANDOIT.” The second day of the conference was my time to work the SWE boutique. This is one of UNM SWE’s best fundraisers. It was fun to volunteer for the club and look at how cool our stuff was. I fell in love with the SWE crew necks that sold out at the conference. The club is now special ordering it for our members (thank goodness)!
​

​By the end of the weekend I was super tired and so behind on homework, but I had a really amazing time living, learning and leading. I wasn’t at the conference the whole time either. I got to go to Downtown Disney, went out with the organization for out group dinner, and took a trip to San Diego. The conference was a perfect pick me up right before finals and re-inspired me to pursue engineering.
 
I hope you all are able to find new inspiration in your dream career field to help finals feel a little less awful.
 
Anna