My name is Joenel,
and I'm a manufacturing engineer at Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, California.
Space Systems Loral makes commercial satellites for
all different kinds of companies. They do things like TV,
radio, some weather satellites.
My work is involved in making sure we get everything done on time.
A big part of that is making sure the technicians have what they need.
You can see some of the thrusters up there -- the thrusters aren't fueled up yet.
I went to junior college and I was just taking classes.
My advisor asked me what I like to do, and I told him I liked some science stuff,
and have him like a general background.
And he told me I should be an engineer, and eventually I transferred to San Diego
State and then I got a degree in engineering.
A typical day for me is like
I come in, I go into what we call our laboratory,
and I walk around. I'll talk to the technicians -- gotta make sure that they have everything
they need --
as far as being able to understand drawings,
having all the parts, having everything
from chemicals that they need to do different processes. We do a lot of
calculations on our
efficiency, and whether or not we're making things that the correct speed.
And we have what it is called a design engineer,
and they basically design a lot of the satellite
different parts of it, and sometimes their
drawings aren't totally clear. My job, if the technician says, "hey, I don't
understand this drawing,"
then I have to kind of interpret it, or figure it our, or call the designer
and see if he can explain it to me, and and then after I understand it, I'll go and
try to put in layman's terms for the technician.
I maybe don't apply like everything that I learned in calculus and algebra,
but I do apply, like, not given up on a problem
or sticking with it, or just because something is difficult I don't give up.
The classes that helped me in high school, probably,
were obviously the math classes even though I was bad at it. English classes --because
you do a lot of writing, you
do a lot of -- just writing emails and stuff and you don't want to sound dumb when you have to
write to your manager or somebody else's manager. I like interacting with
people and helping people.
And if I was, like, recommending anything to high school student today, I would say take
as many classes as possible and as many different things so you get a
taste everything, and you can find out what you really like.