Years ago my parents took me to a museum, or what I assumed would be a museum. Once we arrived all I could remember was, how the heck is this supposed to represent history. The sun beating down on our heads while we slowly made our way up this giant ramp. We finally get to the top and I vividly remember the runway filled with planes and jets. This was the intrepid, a sea, air, and space museum located on an aircraft carrier, meant to portray the American military history. As we continued walking on this enormous ship the number of planes kept growing in numbers and at every corner, I would notice a new one. Not only were there so many ships but each one was designed differently. Some had red stripes while others were completely painted black. Some had jets, others had propellers. I even got to see some helicopters.

After sweating in the sun for hours, my parents took me to the submarine part of the museum, the Growler. This wasn’t attached to the boat but sat right next door to it. You can feel the claustrophobia start to kick in just walking through the door onto the sub. You could also feel yourself get colder and colder as you venture down deeper into the submarine. Sunlight started to disappear and all we were left with were these yellow lights lined throughout the boat. As we started walking through we passed the sleeping quarters and even a mini jail cell. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, the amount of thought that went into building is what really started me on my engineering path.