<p>I hate to bog you all down with yet another essay, but I really could use your help. My strong points are math and science so any feedback you guys could give me on my writing would be appreciated. Thanks!!</p>
<p>I regretted my decision the second I stepped on the plane. Did I really believe I could live in a strange place on my own for three weeks? The longest I had ever been away from my parents was one week, for summer camp, and even then I had been with people I knew. How did I ever think I could handle being seperated from everything I was familiar with? I was beginning to question my judgement; Terra Haute, Indiana, a place I had never heard of until three months ago, could not possibly compensate in engineering instruction what it lacked in familiarity. The longer I thought about it, the farther away Indiana seemed and the more I longed for the intimacy of my home and family. I comforted myself the best I could considering that I was rapidly ascending to ten thousand feet and the time for second thoughts had come and gone. Instead, I turned my attention to making myself comfortable and making small talk with the passengers sitting on either side of me. The man on my left, an older gentleman with graying hair, asked me why I was going to Indiana and I replied that I was going to attend an engineering camp at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Much to my suprise, he asked me, Why? to which I politely answered that I intend to become an engineer. He responded by telling me that I am a girl, a fact I was well aware of, and therefore have no place in engineering, a mans occupation. He returned to his newspaper and left me to ponder what he had said; Was engineering really a mans occupation? I thought about my childhood and my first encounter with engineering; it was a barbie dreamhouse, complete with a two car garage and patio, my dad and I had constructed from legos. I was only six years old, but I had found my passion. As I grew older, my projects became more challenging and complex, taxing my reasoning skills to their limit. I found that creating the answer, rather than knowing it, is a source of relaxation and the tangibility of the problem is a source of comfort in a world that seems so ambiguous. As my thoughts floated back to the time and place at hand, I felt my anxieties melt away. I had not been seperated from everything I was hereto aquainted with, although the place and the people were new, the passion shared by all of the other participants was very familiar. However Terra Haute turned out to be mattered not, I was headed right where I belonged, with people, both male and female, who shared the same passion for engineering I do.</p>