Hey guys, my name is Penelope, and I am a second-year engineering student studying Chemical and Materials (or chemmat) engineering.
A bit about me:
I grew up on a farm that was literally in the middle of nowhere, which meant being surrounded by a lot of land and very few people…safe to say that moving to Auckland was a bit of a shock for me.
In my spare time (when I manage to find some), I tend to find myself engaging in water related activities – mainly sailing, and I’ve recently started free diving, which I’m really enjoying!
So, the big question: why did I choose chemmat? To be completely honest, if you’d told me on my first day of university that I would end up doing chemical engineering, I would not have believed you. High school chemistry just didn’t seem to be super compatible with me, I loved maths and physics, so I came into engineering set on going into civil. But it turns out that high school sciences can be quite different to engineering sciences, and learning why things happen and how things worked on an atom level intrigued me way more than the forces on bridges did. I found myself constantly wanting to learn more. Unfortunately, we don’t do much on the materials side of things this year, but I still definitely feel like I’ve made the right decision with my choice of specialisation.