What does it take to get a job around here?

I understand that the job market in the United States isn't great right now, and I understand San Diego has a 14% unemployment rate -- everyone keeps repeating that. But I am far more capable and wise than to be disheartened or discouraged from my abilities to succeed by a statistic.

There are not many chemical engineering educated people out there who are capable of coming up with their own ideas, communicating well their ideas, and leading people. I am.

Moreover, I acknowledge the evident changing trend in how we conduct business and educate future generations, because the way in which we learn and process information has changed.

A person who is capable of leading a company into the revolutionary change is crucial. That's great that we have people who have been working in the industry for decades; of course they should be valued for their experience and wisdom, which a person can only gain through time. But it’s also important to find people who are intelligent and capable of working with these experienced and wise people to progress in a forward-thinking way. That’s what I can do.

This is what I can bring to any job I do: my clear vision, sharp mind, and hard-to-beat ability and desire to make the company I work for the best it can be. Just like my mother, a therapist, and grandfather, a doctor, can easily see what's wrong with a person, I can easily see what's wrong with a system by just observing how the system works and occasionally asking a few questions. Then, I can almost always come up with at least one solution. This is one of the reasons I entered engineering -- I like finding solutions to problems.

And, frankly, I don't think I even needed a degree to prove that I was good at this. All a degree did for me was allow me the ability to apply equations to solving problems, when, really, problems are often too complex to be solved through material and energy balances. All a higher degree will do for me is make me more specialized with my equations towards solving more specialized problems. So I don't understand why people keep shaking their heads when I tell them I have a Bachelor's, not a Master's. Schooling isn't the solution to everyone's problems -- schooling is the solution to the problems of people who are incapable otherwise.

I have never been incapable; I just needed the right nurturing to bring out my capabilities. And traveling was the best nurturing I could have asked for. In the different countries I visited, I began seeing how many different solutions to problems different countries have, and I came back a lot more attune to how we do everything here in America.

My time spent in college, interestingly enough, was the most confused, stressed, and sleep-deprived time of my life. I kept wondering what I was doing there, what was the point of what I was doing. Thoughts of uncertainty flooded my mind and inhibited my ability to see solutions to problems as clearly as I should have. My exam scores suffered, and thus my GPA plummeted. Really, all of my life suffered just because I couldn’t realize any long-lasting solutions to my problems.

I wish I could do those five years over again, but instead I have to acknowledge what was and prove myself otherwise. This obviously is the more difficult route to live, but there's a saying by a Roman philosopher that goes, "It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."