By Dylan Scherpf, Engl 336.001
Emily Rosser is a college student
who is uncertain about her major. That may seem completely unexceptional, and
it is. However, unlike many students in her position, she is doing something
about it by taking time off from college, to go to college.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambrige, Emily started her college career as an Engineering major. After two and a half years though,
she began to have doubts about becoming an engineer because she is
admittedly “not so good at math,” and decided to take some time off.
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| Emily Rosser with her self-made Companion Cube, back when her hair "wasn't boring." |
Emily spent a year “hanging around Boston”
with some friends before moving back to her parents’ house in Accident,
Maryland. “Cash was one of the main reasons I came back to live with my parents,”
Emily explains. As dismal as that may have felt at the time, it paid off not
much later. Today, Emily makes the forty minute commute to Frostburg State University
a few times a week along with her mother who works in Cumberland. Here, she is
taking advantage of what she sees as the biggest difference between FSU and
MIT; liberal arts courses. Although both schools are similar in size, MIT is
heavily focused on the math and science majors. It offers very little writing
and even less art. The existence of a Fine Arts building in Frostburg came as
somewhat of a shock to her.
Aside from taking courses here,
Emily also has an internship as a mechanical engineer at Garrett Container Systems, Inc in Accident. Garrett designs, manufactures, and sells a variety of
combat gear and military shipping containers as well as a few miscellaneous items
like their Zombie Defense Kit. Her job there, as she puts it, is to “play with
automatic sewing machines and tactical gear. It's paradise for a geek
with a utility belt.” And she does indeed have what she calls a “nerdy little
utility belt,” equipped with pouches that she sewed herself, giving her the look
of a true engineer who values function over ascetics.
In the near future, Emily plans to
return to MIT with new-found focus. She will pursue a joint mechanical
engineering and technical writing major in hopes of getting into the niche of
translating “Engineer into English.” As long as she has a little free time to
sew and build though, she’ll be happy.
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