#HCSS is back this week with Electrical Engineering senior Ben Barnett from Burleson, TX! Barnett is a Maverick Terry Scholar and an IEEE Officer.

Ben Barnett stands in front of College Hall.

MR: Tell me about your experience with your major.

BB: So I actually started as a Mechanical Engineering major, and ended up realizing that I was kind of looking forward to the Circuits class in that major, and I wondered how it applied to EE. So I just decided to switch. It was a really good decision. I love all the things I do in EE, as hard as it is. Specifically my interest is in the energy field, but there’s a lot of things you can do with it, like microcontrollers, programming, software engineering…power systems, just all sorts of stuff. I very much enjoy what I do on a day to day, and plan to go into energy research.

MR: What are your goals after graduation?

BB: I’m going to apply for graduate school in my last semester, which is this fall. I’m also going to apply for jobs at the same time. Right now I’m thinking that I’ll pick between the two. So I’ll hopefully get some job offers, and I’ll have an idea of the responsibilities and the salary and all that stuff. And I’ll hopefully get into some grad schools that I apply for, and I’ll see what the benefits are of that, and weigh the pros and cons… Right now I’m leaning towards grad school because what I want to do is heavily research-oriented, so I think having a PhD would be very advantageous, but I also want to make money, so you have to make that balance.

MR: Aside from applying to grad school, what goals do you have for the rest of your time as an undergrad?

BB: My time as an undergrad is actually pretty close to being done, but my final semester I’ll be doing the Honors Senior Design…finishing up that project, doing the job applications, grad applications, and setting myself up to see where I go next…. I don’t have too lofty goals because it’s like, I don’t want to stress myself out too much.

MR: Has being in the Honors College affected your goals?

BB: For sure, for sure. Doing the Honors contracts with professors has made me go talk to them and made me build connections, and get into doing research. I started with an Honors contract for my Physics class, and ended up doing research in the Physics department because of that. And then, I did that for a while and enjoyed it, and kind of wanted to explore other options, so now I do research in Electrical Engineering. So the Honors college has helped me a lot actually, because it’s forced me to build connections, and it’s put me with like-minded people who are driven and have high goals for themselves. So I’ve built a lot of connections and been able to have opportunities presented to me that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.

MR: What has the community experience been like for you in the Honors College?

BB: Every time I’m around, it’s very positive. The people who work in the Honors College, they’re very nice. The students are very hospitable. It’s peaceful and it’s quiet – I really like it. I’m not around as much as I wish I could be, because I’m just so busy with other responsibilities, but it kind of feels like an oasis in the desert of college you can come back to…find some grounding, and refresh yourself. A lot of the people, they understand, because they’re so similar. They have similar mindsets, similar goals. They understand kind of what you’re thinking and maybe the stress you’re under… It’s kind of like a home away from home.