My internship at Carpenter Marty (CM) began rather unexpectedly. I was at home during spring break and wasn’t thinking about an internship, I had applied to several and those had not amounted to anything. One day I got a call from a number I did not recognize, and that turned out to be CM calling me to schedule an interview. My interview came later that week, and I left feeling optimistic and I said to myself, “I can really see myself working here, I got a good vibe from the moment I walked in.” About two weeks later I was offered and accepted an intern position. I did not know what I would be doing, but I approached it with an open mind.

Throughout the summer, I bounced around from project to project and group to group, mainly working with the bridge and survey groups and getting to do a little bit of everything. Most of what I did on the job were things that I did not learn in school.

My favorite things that I’ve done this summer have ironically been what I’ve done the least work with: traffic and surveying. For the past year and a half, I have started to narrow my focus and get a better vision of what I want to specialize in with civil engineering, and traffic has stood out to me as that specialty. What excited me the most with traffic was the speed study I assisted Chelsea with and the data analysis for the Pendleton, Indiana project I worked with Gina on for a short time. A close second to the traffic work has been the bridge inspections with Lucas. I enjoy getting out of the office occasionally and seeing firsthand what I was working on for the bridge group the week or month prior.

If I had to describe my experience in one word, it would be comprehensive. Overall, I got to either work on or watch what goes into a transportation project, and a lot of that were things that I did not know much about. As a result, I learned a lot about what civil engineering is and what kind of civil engineer I want to be when I graduate.

Jacob Durbin

Ohio University

Class of 2023