It was a plunge that closed the chapter on one part of Brendan Humphrey’s life, and it was another plunge that will lead to his next.
A few winters ago, the current George Washington University senior engineering student was experiencing severe anxiety and seeking ways to manage it. After listening to a podcast on the subject, he decided to try cold-water plunging, a type of cryotherapy that aimed to build resiliency and restore balance to the nervous system to improve cognitive function and mood, according to the Mayo Clinic.
After his first four-minute immersion into a frigid Lake Erie—a five-minute walk from his house in his hometown of Erie, Pa., Humphrey felt relief and continued with the practice. With a renewed sense of focus and self-confidence, he attacked his studies at GW and immersed himself in his passions both inside the School of Engineering and Applied Science classrooms and outside.
While that all led him to some impressive bullet points on his resume, Humphrey knew he would need to do more to land a job he really wanted after Commencement. So, too, did Dennis Weeks, his coach through GW Career Services.
Weeks encouraged Humphrey to make connections with people in the mechanical engineering industry and at companies he valued.
So, Humphrey once again took a plunge—or perhaps a leap of faith into fate—by sending a LinkedIn message to an engineer at Plunge, a California-based startup company that makes plunges and saunas focused on health and wellness. It seemed like a perfect fit for Humphrey, who has improvised by taking daily cold showers and ice baths while living in D.C.
After their first email connection, where Humphrey shared his own journey with cold plunging, a job opened at the growing company. Humphrey applied, and that same engineer recognized his name in the applicant pool from their email exchange months earlier.
One thing led to another, and now, Humphrey is apartment hunting in the Sacramento area, where Plunge is based. He’ll be a mechanical engineer at the company and will begin shortly after GW’s Commencement on the National Mall on May 19. His boss? That same engineer Weeks encouraged him to cold message earlier in the semester.
“The reason that probably happened was because I was reaching out to him before he knew my name, and he knew that I was interested,” Humphrey said. “Dennis (Weeks) just really walked me through how to make connections with people.”
GW Career Services recommends conducting informational interviews as a part of networking and job searching to explore job market options and to learn from the experiences of others. The office recommends platforms such as GW Career Connect and LinkedIn to connect with peers, alumni or industry professionals, and GW career coaches such as Weeks can facilitate those connections and determine questions to ask during informational interviews.
Humphrey secured his employment over spring break, easing the burden of job hunting at graduation time nice and early. Not only did he land a full-time job, but he did so at a place that excites him.
In fact, Humphrey has long had ambitions of working at a startup in California—inspired by Apple’s Think Different campaign in late 1990s and early 2000s. In fact, once Humphrey secured his opportunity at Plunge, he tattooed the phrase “Here’s to the Crazy Ones,” the theme of a Steve Jobs’ narrated commercial during the Think Different campaign, on his thigh.
Humphrey, a mechanical engineer with a knack for design, loves the idea of working in a startup culture because of its encouraged creativity.
“At a startup, every single person has a valuable role to play,” Humphrey said. “That’s what I’ve always wanted. I want to be a part of the change.”
At Plunge, his official title will be junior mechanical engineer. He’ll be documenting design changes to plunge tubs and heat saunas during each iteration of the process, and he’ll also be working on some of the current designs. He’ll have to further familiarize himself with some of the company’s different CAD packages, which is software he used in classrooms at GW.
He is thankful for the all the experiences at GW that helped prepare him for this opportunity, including a yearlong capstone project in which he and his classmates just recently presented at Virginia Tech. Humphrey and fellow engineering students received a grant to develop and build an autonomous drone.
The competition in Blacksburg, Va., features several other schools, and the goal was to create a drone that could track all the other teams’ ground vehicles and shoot water on them, sort of like a firefighting mission.
Humphrey enjoyed the opportunity to represent GW on a stage with other universities.
“To be able to rep the GW logo and compete against other schools and see our design we’ve worked on for a year was just a really cool and fascinating thing to see,” Humphrey said. “It was great having some school spirit, and it was just a good feeling to be able to say, ‘Let’s Go GW.’”
And in a few weeks, he’ll plunge into his new work life with a full arsenal of confidence and accomplishment he’ll take with him to California.
