A Construction Project That Never Started
Like a lot of people in early 2020 (wait… did something happen then?), my summer internship plans crumbled faster than a cheap sidewalk. After months of resume writing, cover letter drafting, and interviews, all of my internship offers were rescinded or deferred. It felt like all that effort was for nothing.
An Unexpected Opportunity
Then, just as I was about to start a fallback job, my phone rang. After three months of radio silence, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) offered me an internship. Civil Engineering wasn’t exactly my dream field, but an engineering job is an engineering job, and I wasn’t about to turn it down. I was excited to get some hands-on technical experience!
Learning the Ropes
My assignment? Assist senior engineers on a three-mile resurfacing project in rural Illinois using a process called cold in-place recycling—basically, milling up the old road, mixing it with fresh tar emulsion, and laying it back down like a massive, eco-friendly asphalt smoothie. Once I wrapped my head around the process, I was ready to see it in action.
The Waiting Game
And then… nothing happened.
Between pandemic-related delays and a contractor’s insurance holdup, the project sat in limbo for weeks. So, rather than just hanging out, I found ways to stay useful. I compiled survey data and drafted a superelevation proposal. And, since I had some downtime, I sharpened my coding skills by whipping up a Python-based calculator to estimate the amount of paint needed for projects using the same standard we worked off of.
Lessons Learned
By the time my internship ended, the project still hadn’t broken ground—but my spreadsheets, reports, and calculations were already in use by the engineers who saw it through.
I never expected to work in Civil Engineering, but I walked away with a newfound respect for large-scale project planning and technical problem-solving. Even in an industry I thought I had zero interest in, I found challenges to tackle—something I’ve carried with me into every technical environment since.