"Hi! I'm Walta. This is pretty much a social thing, right?"

"Nick," the other guy says simply, glancing around the room.

"Yep, pretty much. I'm Zahn as she said."

"Yep, it's a social thing, though I think some of the organizers are hoping to leverage this into doing personal interdisciplinary projects."

"Got any programmers? I've got a drone that needs to learn a little navigation."

"Shush, you, you even said you wanted to talk about other stuff tonight."

Zahn chuckles, "I am in fact a programmer, though I don't think either of our companions would be happy to have us spend the night discussing drone programming."

"No, you can exchange emails and talk about programming any time."

"So, Nick's in Aerospace Engineering, I'm in general Engineering, sounds like Zahn is in Computer Science, and you?"

He definitely trades email addresses with Zahn.

"I'm political science and linguistics."

"I am indeed in Computer Science, though I take a bunch of eclectic electives including some Poli-sci with her."

"I'm all about the science. Going to design spacecraft if I can swing it. Space is the Final Frontier after all."

"Well it's the next frontier at any rate. Whether it's the final one depends on how you define space and how flexible physics turn out to be. Regardless, that sounds pretty cool."

Alice taps Zahn on the arm and gives him a slightly exasperated glance. "I'm probably going to be in the government, maybe I'll be an ambassador some day if I can swing it."

"I thought you..." he trails off at her slightly more pointed glance. "Nevermind, I'm hoping to work for one of the bigger tech companies, maybe get into some deeper algorithms work or machine learning."

Eye roll. "I was using it as a colloquialism, yes. I'm experimenting with metal foams lately. See if I can't account to for some of the weaknesses. Particularly cost. Anyway, shutting up about that now."

"Gee, y'all are so ambitious. I'm probably going to end up as a mechanic unless something more interesting comes up."

"I don't really see myself as ambitious, I'm just pretty good at programming and I'm hoping to find an interesting job where I can use that talent. I'm not sure how much different that is from being a mechanic of some kind except how much society tends to value the role."

Alice smiles, "I think that many people, myself included, tend to aim high with something of a fallback plan. There is some ambition involved in that sort of aim, but ambition is more about how much you're willing to do to get there, than how high you set your aims in the first place I think."

"If you say so. I'm a bit surprised I managed to get into a half-decent college anyway. So that's one big step ahead of my original course."

Zahn opens his mouth slightly then closes it and shakes his head slightly before deciding on, "Let's get a table. I don't really know you well enough to know how I ought to respond to that. I kinda grew up being told I could accomplish anything and to some extent I believed that for a long time. You sound like you had a rather different upbringing."

"Please feel free not to answer if that's personal, Zahn tends to pry a little when things surprise him."

"Oh, my folks are hillbillies. Trailer trash. Whatever you want to call it. I'm not touchy about that, you don't have to dance on eggshells, people who'd judge me for it will judge me whether or not I'm open about it. I just want to live somewhere else when I finish here."

"You've got the talent to get out, for sure. I still say you should switch to Mechanical."