This article marks the end of my four-year journey towards my Chemical and Materials Engineering Degree at Auckland University. The realisation that this phase of my life was complete did not come after the final exam or research project hand-in but during our graduation dinner. This was a night shared by lecturers, lab technicians and students coming together to celebrate this milestone.

Recently, we completed our research projects after many lab hours, stressful writing sessions and numerous emails to our supervisors. My project partner and I came away with great results and our area of study is going to be further researched by other students, which is a great sign of success. The other papers that rounded out my final semester were a design paper focusing on industry specific examples in the oil and gas industry, engineering biotechnology and an engineering business paper.

The engineering business paper focused on perfecting executive summaries through case studies such as the Boeing 737MAX. This paper also includes the famous systems project, where engineering classes are cancelled for every specialisation for five days. In groups of 30, compromising of a mixture of engineering disciplines, we are faced with a problem to solve. The problem for our cohort was how the New Zealand agricultural sector should respond to meet the Paris Agreement. The process of working in a large team with a tight deadline and a very broad project definition was a great experience and saw many different solutions formed by each team.

Although our cohort managed to start studying as the engineering building went under construction and finish as this construction was finally complete, our class still formed a strong bond and had a great time completing this degree. We all learnt a lot and I am coming out of university with a job at Aurecon starting in the new year. This is where I completed my last internship, so I am excited to go back and get started.

Thanks for following along with my four years of study and I hope this gave you a better understanding of what it is like to be an engineering student in this day and age.