Madilyn Chandler

What Drives Me

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with movie extras. Whenever I was sick, I’d set up in bed with the portable DVD player and watch every hour of behind-the-scenes content from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, or Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings. As much as I loved each of those films for their characters, stories, and scores, I was the most inspired by how the creators were able to bring these fantastical settings to life in a way that felt absolutely real.

I wanted to see how they made the magic, what kinds of problems they ran into, and how they solved them. Because the movie was a story, but it’s creation was something real. Something that, maybe someday, I could do too.

To me, studying engineering is like watching the behind-the-scenes extras for the entire world. It’s learning about all the problems that we’ve already created solutions for that you don’t even think about in your everyday life, and trying to come up with even better ones.

Engineering requires significant technical knowledge, but at the end of the day it’s a field of creativity. It’s a field that requires thinking outside the box, being open to new ideas, and drawing on everything that makes an engineer them, to develop a solution.

Every person has a unique story with unique life experiences that influence how they see the world. Every experience is an opportunity to learn something about yourself, your field, and the world around you. You never know where the solution to your next problem will come from.

I’m excited to bring my own life experiences and perspective to future projects that will help make the world a better place, and to work with unique people who bring all of themselves to the table.