Grace Qixuan
There was a period of time in high school where I felt insecure about my future path and career. It took me a huge leap of faith to study in Hong Kong far away from my hometown Beijing, with a different education system, language background in a relatively challenging subject: engineering. Like what I had in mind, getting into the School of Engineering of HKUST, I encounter struggles and difficulties like everyone else where I always strive and prosper. Gradually, my anxiety fades away and is replaced by the motivation to explore new things in cutting-edge technology, realizing and applying engineering knowledge to real-world problems. I began to love pondering over the challenging tasks, just as I love the sparks we collided from all the learning moments with my friends in the Integrative Systems and Design classes.
It takes courage to step out of your comfort zone but once you overcome your fear and doubt about yourself, everything becomes meaningful and natural to you. Just like speaking from the present, I would never quit or give up something that I really like and am interested in just because it seems hard and demanding. That is also when it dawned on me that your insecurity is not necessarily a weakness, it can also mean unlimited possibilities and visions of what you could and want to be good at.
As an Engineering Student Ambassador, I want to spark the interests of people in engineering, share my stories and inspire them. In the School of Engineering, I got to have a lot of hands-on experiences in engineering through all the projects collaborating with different industries and companies such as Cathay Pacific Airlines and Disneyland and so on to come up with various different solutions relating to inflight waste reduction, on-campus dining, library seating problem, etc. Along with that, many exposures to prototyping RC cars, sleep products, lamp design, and probing for user experience took place where we learn, apply, and create. In a word, I regard choosing HKUST and Engineering as the toughest decision ever but so far, the foremost. Are you ready to take the new challenge and a step forward too?