# Young Engineers Australia

> A quick update about some of the activities of Young Engineers Australia.

- URL: https://blog.kochie.io/articles/07-yeav-update
- Author: Robert Koch
- Published: 2023-02-28
- Tags: 100DTO

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Last year I was fortunate enough to work with a great team of passionate
engineers on the committee for the Young Engineers Australia branch in Victoria
(YEA-V). We've been working hard to bring some great events to the community,
and I thought I'd share a few of them with you.

Last year Young Engineers Australia (YEA) ran a national case competition for
graduates to solve a real-world problem. The theme of the competition was
sustainable infrastructure, teams were tasked with investigating how to build
climate sustainable infrastructure that can be used to solve the climate crisis.
You can see the
[finals stream on our website](https://yea.engineersaustralia.org.au/yea-case-competition-2022),
I'm hoping we can run something as fun and thought provoking this year.

We also ran a number of events to provide our members with networking and
coaching experiences, including our open mic night and charted stories series
where our talented committee shared their experiences in becoming a chartered
engineer and how it's improved their career.

![Our committee talking about becoming Chartered Engineers.](https://blog.kochie.io/images/articles/07-yeav-update/charted_event.jpg)

A big thanks to all those who showed up to our open mic night to practice their
public speaking!

![Open Mic Night at Engineers Australia's Melbourne Hub.](https://blog.kochie.io/images/articles/07-yeav-update/open_mic_night.jpg)

There are some more fun ideas we have in store for this year so be sure to
follow us on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/yeav/) to stay in the
loop.

## Finding Your Feet

I was able to talk to
[Engineering Australia News](https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/news-and-media/2022/11/meet-robert-koch-graduate-member-and-software-engineer)
late last year about some of the lessons I've learnt so far in my engineering
career. I wanted to expand on some of the points I mentioned in the article.

A common theme I see with young professionals is that they lack the confidence
to trust their own judgement. I think this is natural for anyone who is new to
their career and finding their way, it often gets called Imposter Syndrome but
I think there's more to it than that.

When I first started at my current job one of my managers asked me what I wanted
to do with my career, having worked in engineering for all of 5 seconds I had no
idea what I wanted to do, this isn't imposter syndrome, I know that you start at
the bottom and have to learn the ropes, I think what most graduates experience
is a lack of direction. So what can you do if you find yourself in a similar
experience? I think the best course of action is to fail, and fail often.You're
probably never going to have a better safety net then when you first enter the
workforce. Try out different things, learn different skills in areas you find
interesting and some that you don't, you never know where inspiration hides.

I often see people recommend finding a mentor and that can also be useful, but I
think a mentor is only helpful once you have an idea of what you want to do. So
my recommendation is to find a mentor once you have a feeling of what you'd like
to specialise in.

## One Final Thing

I was recently elected as the Co-Chair of the Victorian division of the YEA-V
and I'm looking forward to working with the committee to bring some great events
to the community.

We've got lots of great ideas for this year planned with some old favourites
returning and some completely new events in works so watch this space to see
what we do next!