It's Got to Start Someday...

Introducing... Katie Brown

After weeks and weeks of Mentor John insisting it is time to start a blog, here I am, finally. Writing a blog is the absolute last thing I would like to do in the midst of my excruciating job hunting experience. It's just another way to put myself and all my prized accomplishments out into the world, with little advice or feedback. Hopefully, taking initiative and making efforts like these will turn my luck around.

Let's start with a brief introduction...

This is me, Katie Brown. I am a recent graduate from the University of Wyoming. I am very proud of my concurrent Bachelor of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Energy Systems Engineering. I am actively seeking entry level employment in the aerospace industry in the Denver area. I believe the aerospace industry gives a more defined sense of purpose to life that is not available from any other career paths. I'm most interested in testing, robotics, and propulsion. However, despite my impressive credentials and resume, I am having little luck after an embarrassing nine months post-graduation. Because of this situation, since January 2018, once a week, I take my trusty sidekick, Potato, to meet with a group of others looking to improve their marketable skills.

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I'm commonly told I do not share enough of my personal life, so here are some fast facts:

I wish I could say I am outdoorsy due to the fact that I live in Colorado, but I'm just not mature enough for that. I enjoy creating things, which makes me love sewing, crafting and cooking. I'm good at board games and enjoy any sort of mental challenge. I love animals and have far too many as pets. I currently have 4: a cat, a dog, and two ferrets. I volunteer at the Adams County Animal Shelter so I don't accumulate any more and stop smothering the pets I do have. I am a perfectionist, which can make me a little tightly wound, but it mostly enables me to do a great job at the things I find important.

My LinkedIn profile or resume highlight some of my professional attributes.

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Sunday Programming Session

Mentor John, previously known merely as Uncle John, was the wildly successful and intelligent relative that was simultaneously the nerdiest human I've ever known. I would occasionally approach him for professional advice, and my needs became greater as the length of my job search dragged on. For this last Christmas, he gifted myself and his other niece a course on Udemy titled "Complete Python Programming Course: Beginner to Advanced." He had been blabbing on and on for weeks about how the two of us should look into the software industry because we had both been struggling to find careers in our desired fields with our mechanical engineering degrees. With the gift of this course, we finally had something tangible and structured to get us started. With this, we started meeting once a week to discuss what we have learned, get our questions answered, and see where we could go next. The utility of the meetings was quickly realized by others, and grew to five of us meeting every Sunday morning, hence the name Sunday Programming Session (Programming Church). Uncle John quickly transitioned to Mentor John as he assigned homework between meetings and guided us through practice during our sessions. Meetings are fun, with snacks, warm beverages, dogs, and nerdy jokes to get the mornings started. After pleasantries however, it's time for some truly challenging work to begin. Mentor John has written a great introductory article that provides some background on our weekly meetings.

Blog posts will be added to detail work done for the past two months. Going forward, weekly posts will be created to solidify understanding of important concepts and to document the extracurricular activities we are working so hard on! For the more tech-savvy readers, my projects can be downloaded from Github.

Photo Credits: John Funk, of course.