Engineering Inspiration: Passion through Practice

If you had asked me a couple of years ago if I wanted to study engineering, I would’ve probably laughed. I had a very limited knowledge of what engineers do and had never considered it as an option. I’ve always been quite STEM oriented but also have a lot of other interests and passions. After finishing high school back in Denmark, I decided to take a gap year (which turned into two), where I could work, travel, and take some more time to decide what I wanted to study. During this time, I considered everything from social work to journalism to marine biology or psychology.

At some point in my gap year, I was advised to maybe consider an engineering degree. After researching it, engineering actually seemed like the perfect mix of science subjects, creativity, solving real world problems and making an impact on different parts of society. Once I started looking into the different possibilities, I knew straight away that the Environmental field is where my passion is.

I had known for a while that I wanted to move to Australia to do my degree but was unsure at which university. As I was investigating different universities and I liked the sound of the environmental engineering degree at UNSW. I also saw the possibility of doing a minor in Humanitarian Engineering. This was an aspect of engineering that I until then didn’t know existed until then but that aligned perfectly with my interests and passions.

I really like the direct approach this takes to solve different challenges that are faced in communities. The combination of Environmental and Humanitarian Engineering is something I am very excited to explore further throughout the next couple of years of my degree. I believe this is going to be a great way to be able to apply the theory I’ll be learning in a visible and direct way which for me is a huge motivation.  

Studying at UNSW so far has been amazing! Even though my first term was completely online, I still feel like I have been able to get involved in many ways.

I joined Impact Engineers at the end of the last term and am super excited to be a part of the future projects that we are working towards. This term I have been taking advantage of all the different societies that there are and the many social events. This has allowed me to meet a lot of people and opened several opportunities and connections. All in all, I am excited to be a part of UNSW and to see where this degree will take me over the next couple of years.

Find out more about Humanitarian Engineering & Enviromental Engineering