Jessica Blackwell

Everything I do, I just hope that it makes my family proud, and that I can do it and hopefully glorify God. I hope that people I connect with and talk to see that I'm a spiritual person and that I am a Christian, and I don't have to tell them that, that they can see that. I hope it sparks an interest that they see she's a good person and she has achieved all this stuff, and I want to be like her, and then they ask me questions so that I may lead them down that path one day, if that hopefully would spark an interest in someone else. Family and God are my two main reasons that I do everything.

The best career advice I ever received came when I was in college. I played tennis in college, and one of my friend's dads told me, no matter what degree you choose, it doesn't matter what degree you choose. He said when you go to look for a job, everyone is just looking to see how many years you went, because that tells them that you can stick it out in hard times and get through. And so whenever you get to the job that you're in, you stick it out and you make it through, and they see that through your degrees, and that's what's gonna get you in the door, and then your hard work and your effort is what's gonna keep you there. That's always just stuck with me.

I would just say, you know, you're gonna love every second of it if you have the mindset that you just love to create and see stuff from start to finish. You want to see it from concept to development, that you're gonna love every second of it. Designing the machines, getting your hands dirty, you gotta do a little office work, but you're gonna love every second of it. But it is gonna take a lot of time and a lot of effort, so be prepared for a little bit of hard work. But if you're willing to stick it out, it's gonna be so rewarding whenever you finish your project. It's not gonna be a cakewalk, but it is a very rewarding job.

The biggest challenges in the field, I would say, with being manufacturing, is probably just the pressure of trying to get stuff out in a hurry. Every time you are manufacturing something, in any type of manufacturing, you want it out the door as quick as you can get it out the door, with the best quality, the least amount of work involved in it. But you want to keep your quality up, so you always have pressure that you want it out, you know, you have a project coming up and they want it out yesterday, so you're constantly trying to design it as fast as you can, manufacture it as fast as you can, ensure that quality is where it needs to be so that it's going to withstand whatever job that it's intended for. That's probably the biggest pressure as far as manufacturing, as far as my job day-to-day, is just the pressure of the line, making sure that you get stuff out as fast as you can get it out, but also the pressure of not going too fast so that you catch up with sales. Just trying to balance that out. As far as biggest opportunities, if you look at most bigger organizations, most of their CEOs and heads of departments have an engineering background, so as far as opportunity, if you go in any company as an engineer, the likelihood of you moving up the management chain is fairly high, or it's more so in your favor. So that's a big opportunity as far as career growth, salary, opportunity on that front.

In my personal life, I value family, and I value time with them, and I just enjoy anything at all related to them, giving them time, letting them know that I'm here for them, being able to help out when I can, be there when I can, and always be a part of that. Professionally, I value just the ability to learn more, and whenever someone has a problem and they can't solve it, I love that I'm the one that they come to to find the answers, and me being able to solve those problems. Because problem solving is, you know, if you're an engineer, you're gonna love problem solving, and whenever you solve that problem, it's just the best feeling ever. So I love the satisfaction of solving problems that no one else can.