UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — “If I do this, will I be pigeonholed into this forever?” That’s the question that many students ask themselves when they choose a degree. In many ways, the college experience is a way to lay out a life path — get an engineering degree, become an engineer; get a business degree, become a CEO. But rarely is the path as simple as it’s made out to be, and sometimes, people end up pursuing areas that are completely outside of their area of study.
Such was the case for Pooja Mallipamula, a 2012 graduate of Penn State's College of Engineering and Bellisario College of Communications. Growing up, her Indian family placed a high value on stability, she said, and she knew she would have to study something that would provide for her financially, even if it might not be what she truly wanted to be doing.
“I did creative stuff in college, but I wasn’t allowed to fully pursue that,” she said. “Coming from a middle-class mentality, it was always stability over chasing dreams.”
Coming to Penn State
Mallipamula grew up in Pennsylvania, and her sister went to Penn State — on visits to her sister , Mallipamula saw the University Park campus in person and became familiar with the University. So when it came time to choose a university, Penn State was the obvious choice; again, her family valued comfort and stability, she explained.
“It just felt like this is what I should be doing,” she said.
Mallipamula came to the University as an engineering major and immediately began pursuing her studies — aggressively. She graduated early from Penn State with two degrees, mostly owing to the fact that she took summer classes and loaded up on credits during the semester.
“My last semester, I took 27 credits,” she said. “My adviser tried to convince me not to, but I was determined. My GPA wasn’t as high as it could have been, but that’s because I overloaded and drowned myself in classes to graduate early.”
Her classes were heavily male-dominated, and most of her friends were men, she recalled. This continued a theme for her: As someone who was born in India, but mostly raised in the United States, she said she had a sense that she didn’t quite belong in any one particular group.
“I’m this weird person where I’m not truly international, but I’m not truly American either. I felt like international students had their own ‘thing’ and I didn’t necessarily fit into that, but I wasn’t ‘American-American,’” she recalled. “But Penn State is a melting pot, so I got to surround myself with people from different cultures and backgrounds.”
While Mallipamula put most of her efforts into engineering, she disliked it at the time, she recalled. She always knew engineering wasn’t her passion, she said, but a few experiences at Penn State really solidified her desire to pursue a more creative field.
First, she took a theater class, which was “something that gave me a chance to vicariously live,’” she said. Then, she attended two concerts during her time as a student that pushed her towards communications and creativity. The first, Maroon 5, she saw in Pittsburgh — and got to meet the band backstage. A week later, she attended a concert on campus — Travie McCoy and B.O.B. — where she had front-row seats.
"At one point in the concert, I held Travie McCoy's hand," she recounted. "Those experiences really made me realize I wasn't meant to be in engineering. I wanted to connect with people."