Anfal Jneidi

Student Spotlight (2019)

"I'm a mechanical engineering major and originally when I came to Norco College, I had a hard time deciding on what to major in and I was kind of jumping around between lots of STEM majors. I knew I wanted to be in the STEM field...I just didn't know what. So after doing a lot of research and asking a lot of people I decided to go for mechanical engineering because it's a lot more flexible and I can use it to go into lots of other fields as well."

"My first semester was a little difficult because I was one of those students who didn't want to really be involved, but my second semester was actually a lot better because I got to know a lot more people. I became a student ambassador. I started volunteering on campus and soon I started working on campus. I really met a lot of amazing people who really want to help you grow and really care about you and honestly it's a really cool campus."

"I like how small we are, which makes it a lot more easier to get to know people because you're surrounded by...you know ...it's like a small little town, so everyone basically knows each other. You walk around and it's like you basically almost have a class with everyone else."

"I'm going to be part of the Loma Linda project next year, which I'm really excited about, and there was this other internship that I was accepted to and it was NCAS. The NCAS program is a program for college students where you do this five-week course about usually what NASA does ,especially what like all the research they've been doing about Mars and the expedition's that they're hoping to carry out in the future. After you're done with this five-week course if you pass then you get a chance to spend four days on any one of their bases. I am so thankful because I got to go to the Armstrong Flight Research Center in Lancaster. Not a lot of people get to go there, so I was really thankful, and it was a really cool experience because you get to see a lot of the things that, like a lot of the research they do into flight and how they hope to make flight more efficient. The whole time while being there it was just really exciting, and it kind of encouraged me to keep going because it does get a little difficult when you're in a STEM field. Especially when you get to those higher level math classes you need to take, those really hard science classes."

"So this year was (the women's cross-country) inaugural season, and this is the first ever cross-country team, and it was the women's cross-country team. It actually went really well. We ended up making it to Championships. We didn't get to state but hopefully in the future. And it was a really cool experience because I've never been a part of an athletic kind of team. I really wanted that team aspect where everyone's like a family. And I remember when we would go to our meets, it was really hard waking up really early in the morning, but the whole time when you're just in that bus with, like, all these other girls and everyone's just, like, they have one focus one main goal and everyone's so encouraging and it's like a big family honestly and I really loved being a part of it and it was it was a really cool experience."

"I really want to work for NASA, and I'm not really, like, I don't know exactly what in NASA I want to do, but, hopefully, maybe in the distant future long term, I would love to apply for the astronaut program and I'd love to go to space. And I want to be so far away from the earth that I can blot it out with my thumb. And after that maybe after I'm done working with NASA, I would really love to work in science and be involved in like marine biology and stuff like that to hopefully and be involved environmental science as well and I just have a lot of things I like and that's how I love STEM so much is because if you're involved in one thing you can always easily go into something else and be involved in that."

Video

BACK TO THE STUDENT HIGHLIGHTS PAGE