Dinner with your Future

SWE hosted many events winter quarter but there is one event I want to highlight. I want to congratulate the success of the Third Annual Dinner With Your Future. It is a mentorship event where undergraduate students, (ranging from freshman to super senior status) come, eat, and enjoy dinner at the dormitories with fellow UCLA graduate students and alumni. This year, it was held in De Neve Private Dining Room during E-Week (April 6 to be precise). We had a great attendance! We had a grand total of 13 alumni and graduate students and 24 enthusiastic undergraduates.

From start to finish, the room was buzzing with conversations. Each table in the Private Dining Room had a different profession/concentration which ranged from all the majors, including law! Personally, I thought my table was the best. I sat at the law table and for the first time, I got to personally speak with Puya Partow-Navid (UCLA '01 - Computer Science), a patent lawyer. He talked to our table about his ups and downs while he was at UCLA, surviving the dot com crash, applying to law school, and finally contently working at his current firm. This mentorship event was definitely beneficial to me as a developing engineer because after talking to Puya, I felt that I have more career options than just a traditional technical engineer . I strongly believe that without Dinner With Your Future, I would not be able to have this opportunity.

Once again, I am congratulating the success with Dinner With Your Future! The event would not have been possible without the help of the other co-hosting engineering organizations: TBP, ESUC, AIChE, ASCE, MSE, UPE.

Cynthia Ma
Treasurer