I have never been one to shy away from good advice. When I decided to return to school, my good friend Randy—a landscape architect, who like me, took an untraditional path in life—had one such piece of good advice: “no matter what, get an internship.” Alas, the summer before my senior year was approaching and I began my search. Unfortunately, this period corresponded with the emergence of COVID-19 and my hopes for an internship were dashed as postings evaporated like rolls of toilet paper from the grocery store shelves. I remembered a conversation with an old acquaintance, Doyle Rausch, where he let me know he “had a good college buddy who owns a firm,” I decided to give it one more try with what felt like a Hail Mary. In this case, the football was my resume, and the receiver was Kevin Carpenter’s unsuspecting email inbox.

Fate was with me, and after a hot summer working construction and bombarding Kevin with electronic correspondence, I began my internship at Carpenter Marty in the Traffic Group. I vividly remember my first day, holding a list of projects and standing outside near the picnic table for my first project meeting. I had no idea what anyone was talking about. TIS, TAS, MOU, PTOE—had I joined some obscure branch of the armed forces? What did I get myself into? Luckily, I could not have asked for a more informed and patient group of people to mentor me throughout my internship. As I began my inaugural crash diagram (the universal traffic engineer rite of passage?), Greg took the time to customize my MicroStation tools and help me with the most basic kind of tasks— the ones like “how to draw a line.” From that moment on, I knew I was working with people who were genuinely interested in helping me learn.

I peppered the crew with questions. The first time Chelsea introduced me to “volume calculations” I thought I was staring at a giant version of the game Minesweeper. I still don’t know how to play Minesweeper, but thanks to Chelsea, I know the difference between pass-by and non-pass-by trips. This dynamic played out over and over again. Gina was always gracious when I had questions like “do we have a symbol for a horse-drawn buggy collision?” Drew walked me through the finer points of parking studies, as well as reminding me that there are Skyline Chili locations in Columbus. Nick offered me a peek into the world of surveying and Andy went to great lengths to help me learn how to research property owners, find deeds and plats, and ultimately draw up the property lines and rights-of-way in V8. As my last days were approaching, I found myself seated next to Neal, and I never missed an opportunity to have him illuminate topics like traffic signal configuration and wattage. Even my final moments were filled with great career advice as I visited Bill and Kevin’s offices to make my final goodbye. I am now standing on the precipice of what I hope is a long career in the realm of Transportation Engineering, and I’m proud to be able to say it all started at Carpenter Marty Transportation.

Anthony Collinger
The Ohio State University
Class of 2021