Over the past month our SWE members have been hard at work writing essays to submit to the annual Schlumerger Stilettos to Steel Toes Essay Contest. At the beginning of this month Schlumberger announced the top three essays from each section.
We want to congratulate our top three essay winners:
1. Monica Leszczynski
2. Cassie Megna
3. Jessica Ranni
We had 31 submissions this year so a big thank you to everyone who participated- you are what makes this section great.
In honor of the winners here are the first and second place essays! Enjoy the read :)
First Place: Monica Leszczynski
I have always been determined to achieve
my goals and have never been hindered by restrictions placed upon me on the
basis of gender. Growing up with three brothers, I have never considered myself
to be at a disadvantage, nor have I ever been treated unequally due to the fact
that I am a female. In addition to being surrounded by a male dominated
household, I have also been accompanied by predominately members of the other
sex during my work experience over the past few years. At an early age, I took
an interest in my family’s metal fabrication business and was curious as to how
exactly the products were manufactured. As I matured and gained hands on experience
at the business, my interest in engineering continued to grow. With this
interest soon came an observation: I noticed that there was an absence of
females on the production floor. Never throughout the course of my day did I
encounter women holding welding torches, programming laser machines, operating
lathes or milling machines, moving materials, or preparing shipments. Yet, this realization did not deter my innate
interest in wanting to be more actively involved on the production floor, but
rather, it catalyzed my unique passion to make change in this “man’s world.”
My ultimate goal is to continue my
family’s 30 year “Made in America” dedication to manufacturing in Connecticut
with a keen focus on recruiting, training, empowering, and promoting women. I
am fully committed to altering the views of what women are capable of doing,
and firmly believe that females are more than qualified to bring a fresh and
perhaps even better approach to the male dominated industrial world. Though at
first skeptical of my abilities, my shop floor supervisors today find themselves
fighting over who will have me working in their departments next. Now as I dust
off my pink steel toe boots after a great day at work, I know I will someday
make changes, give women more opportunities, and contribute far more to
manufacturing than most males ever will.
Second Place: Cassie Megna
Engineers
have endless opportunities at their doorstep. How will you blaze your own
trail?
The time ticked slowly as I typed on my keyboard inside
the congested area called “my space”. My family pictures lined my desk, the ongoing
sounds of machines combined with work chatter circled around me, and the same
co-worker in a neighboring cubical talked for hours on end with her boyfriend. Putting
it all together I felt as if something was wrong. I cringed every second of
hearing her laugh like a high pitched hyena, and I could picture her there;
feet up on the desk, twirling her hair, with the wad of gum in her mouth just
laughing away the work day as I tried
each and every day to get my reports done. It occurred to me then, why am I here?
Why
am I not an engineer? A person whose opportunities could line the
hallways of this overcrowded workplace. A student who went to school to become
a person whose innovation changed the face of exists, whose small idea fixed a
lifestyle that no one could imagine themselves without. Biomedical, chemical,
mechanical, nuclear, aeronautical, industrial, and civil, these opportunities
seemed endless. I see myself in a crowded lecture hall listening to the systems
of the human body, scribbling little side notes of how this works or that works
and how I can enhance it. The ongoing problems and solutions circling in my
head and the only problem that I seem to face is: Do I have enough time to build it all?
Looking back I
can see, why my decision was made, because anything is possible, the time ticks
away problems and solutions not machines and cubical talk. I create and design
what the world needs not what the
world wants. I design what the world can’t imagine themselves without. Not
paper reports written in stuffed cubicles. I will reinvent my path with
prototypes and solutions that change my family, my neighbors, myself, and
everyone else’s life for the better. I handed my high heels for steel toed
boots and never looked because: I need
to innovate. I need to solve. I need
to be an engineer.
