Ben
I will bless the Lord at all times; his
praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in
the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad.
—Psalm 34:1–2
Hip surgery the day after I came home from Cedarville last December went well, I guess. My leg was very swollen from my hip to my kneecap, and I could barely hobble around, even on crutches. I’m very thankful for my supportive family surrounding me and taking care of me during the entire winter break when I could barely do anything besides reading and sitting in my reclining chair nearly all day, every day.
Dad drove me back to Cedarville a few days before the beginning of the semester. My roommate Kaleb was kind enough to pick up food for me quite a few times. When the semester began, I could not just stay in my room, so I figured out how to ride my electric longboard with crutches through the snow. Sitting in normal chairs was a painful struggle, and I had to slouch dramatically in class for the early part of the semester. For my freshman-level Civil Engineering class, I got to build a 14-foot-tall erectable water tower out of 2x4’s and screws. It was successful in holding 450 pounds of water. Overall, the semester went surprisingly well, and I finished it much stronger than I started it.
My friend Mikah was generous enough to take me to his home in Kalispell, Montana over spring break. I had never been that far north before, and the views were stunning from their valley where we could see a little bit of Glacier National Park. I was surprised almost every time I looked out the window and saw the beautiful snow-covered mountains. We also spontaneously attended my first rock concert, which was put on by the Christian band Disciple free of charge.
In the summer I had the privilege of interning at HWC Engineering with their surveying department. I spent all but two of my weeks on the field with about seven party chiefs and traveled all around Indy, usually to new land developments. I learned about topographic surveys, construction staking, and as-builts. It was cool being the one marking how much soil needed to be added or removed from an area and denoting where various sewer pipes, structures, and concrete curbs needed to be placed. One thing I did was remove manhole covers to measure the depth of inlets in sanitary structures. This meant that I actually got to watch sewage flowing more than 10 feet under the ground, which was a new experience for me. Overall, there were many great people to work with who taught me much. Lord willing, I will return there next summer and do more office work on the 28th floor of BMO Plaza, their downtown Indy office.
This fall 2025 semester has been the best semester when considering the content I’m learning. Kaleb and I came back a week early to help the freshmen move in and get oriented. It was very strange being on campus without homework, and I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself before classes began. It was very nice already having established friendships which I’ve been able to continue and go deeper with. The 5-credit-hour Statics and Mechanics of Materials class has been my favorite and is probably the most practical class I’ve taken. We’ve learned about forces, moments, torques, distributed loads, bending moments, torsion, beam bending, material failure modes, center of mass, moment of inertia, and more. We also built a truss as a team project which did not perform well in terms of predicted failure load or efficiency but still held 580 pounds before buckling failure led to its demise. In my Civil Engineering materials class, I learned how to make concrete and did so in a lab.
Overall, God has blessed me in more ways than I can comprehend this year. And I have gradually regained the ability to be physically active again, which has prompted a joy beyond description, similar to the joy of being completely forgiven before the ultimate Judge because of Jesus’s payment for my sins.