From Circuits to Cartons: My Unplanned Path into Packaging Science

I manage packaging development and quality for a mid-size confectionery company—a role I’ve held for a decade. If you’d told my 20-year-old self that this is where I’d end up, I wouldn’t have believed you. My plan was electrical engineering. Specifically, cars.

In high school, I was convinced I’d work for an automotive manufacturer one day. That vision carried me into a university electrical engineering program. For two years, I chased that track—labs, circuits, the hands-on stuff that felt tangible and real.

Then the theoretical coursework hit. The advanced programming classes, the abstract math. It just… didn’t click. Not the way I needed it to. By my third year, the gap between what I enjoyed (applied, practical problems) and what the degree required (heavy theory) was too wide. The department made the call: I was out of the major.

That was a tough semester. You don’t plan on getting removed from your chosen path. I met with career services, frankly unsure what came next. They’d seen students like me before—strong in hands-on application, struggling with pure theory. Their suggestion caught me off guard: packaging science.

I’d never considered it. I scheduled a meeting with the department head mostly out of curiosity. What he described—technical rigor applied to real-world material performance, structural design, supply chain logistics—was everything I’d been missing. It was engineering, but rooted in physical outcomes. Creative, but within a structured framework. I filed the paperwork to switch majors that same afternoon.

Looking back, that pivot wasn’t a detour; it was a correction. Packaging science gave me the applied technical challenge I wanted, without the theoretical friction that had stalled me before. Ten years in, at a company known for its seasonal confectionery, I’m solving problems that are both tactile and technical—how a material performs on high-speed lines, how a structure protects a product, how a design communicates on shelf.

The path wasn’t linear. The plan changed. But finding the field that matched how I think—that was the point all along.