Lucy Norris did not arrive at Penn with everything figured out.
She came from Santa Cruz, California, where the atmosphere felt different, warmer, softer, familiar. By the time she stepped onto Penn campus as a freshman, she carried with her the quiet confidence of someone who had always done well. School had come naturally. Life had been steady. She had her family, her friends, her rhythm.
College, she assumed, would be much the same. It wasn’t.
In the beginning, Penn felt like a leap taken before fully understanding the distance.
She had applied early decision, not entirely expecting to be accepted. When the acceptance came, it felt less like a choice and more like a path set in motion. Only later did she begin to understand how big that decision truly was and how far six hours by plane could feel when you had never been that far from home.
The first year was an adjustment in ways she hadn’t anticipated. The structure she once relied on, family nearby, friendships already formed, was suddenly gone. In its place was something new, uncertain, and at times overwhelming. But as with many things worth doing, she stayed.
And slowly, she found her footing.
What grounded her, more than anything, was the Materials Science and Engineering community.
It was smaller than she expected, and that turned out to be its greatest strength. Professors knew her name. Office hours weren’t a struggle to attend, they were open, accessible, almost inviting. Compared to friends at larger universities, where faculty felt distant and unreachable, Lucy found herself in an environment that felt personal.
Looking back, she would later describe it simply: they were a bit spoiled in the best way.
She leaned into that community. Through the MSE Society, she helped build connections among students; dinners, gatherings, shared moments that made the department feel like more than just a place of study. At the same time, she took on a leadership role in another group, organizing workshops that introduced materials science concepts to people outside the major. It was work that bridged worlds, taking something technical and making it tangible, even meaningful, in everyday life.
That, to her, was what made the field exciting.
Her academic path unfolded alongside those experiences, sometimes smoothly, sometimes not. She worked on a senior design project that feels both ambitious and fitting: turning algae into polyurethane foam. It is the kind of idea that captured the spirit of materials science, transforming the ordinary into something entirely new.
Photo Credit John Russell
In the classroom, certain subjects stood out. Failure analysis, in particular, caught her attention. It wasn’t just theory, it was about understanding why things break, how they fail, and what that reveals about the world beneath the surface. That interest followed her into the real world.
The summer before her senior year, Lucy interned at General Dynamics Electric Boat, where she worked on the materials science of welding for submarines. She wasn’t out on the ships themselves, but in the lab, testing, analyzing, and studying the integrity of welds that would eventually be used in their construction.
It was detailed work, grounded in fundamentals she had first encountered in her introductory courses. Grain size, structural behavior, material properties, concepts that once lived in textbooks now carried real consequences.
There was something satisfying about that connection. But not all of her most important memories came from labs or lectures.
Some were quieter. Simpler.
She recalled the night of the snowball fight during her sophomore year, the first real snowfall she had experienced while living in it, not just visiting. It was late, spontaneous, and unplanned. She and her friends ran outside, laughing, throwing snow, letting the cold air sharpen the moment.
Those friends, the people she had met during orientation week, became something steady in her life. One of them, now her roommate, was among her closest companions. Through them, Penn became less overwhelming, more like home.
There were mentors along the way, too.
People like Steve Szewczyk, the Director of the Departmental Laboratory, Materials Science and Engineering, who made the spaces of experimentation feel both safe and full of possibility. He wasn’t just there to supervise, he was there to help, to guide, to encourage even the smallest ideas.
If a student wanted to build something, try something, create something from scratch—he made it possible.
And that mattered.
Now, as a senior, Lucy could look back with a different kind of clarity.
There were things she would have done differently. She would have tested out of certain classes, taken more risks with her schedule, trusted herself to explore beyond the prescribed path. She would have told her younger self that there was more flexibility than she realized, that she didn’t have to follow everything exactly as written.
But at the same time, she understood something else.
Some lessons can’t be learned in advance.
They come only with time, with distance, with experience, with the willingness to stay even when things feel uncertain.
If she could speak to her eighteen-year-old self now, she would have a lot to say.
But perhaps the most important thing would be this:
You don’t have to have it all figured out.
You just have to begin.
And trust that, step by step, you’ll find your way.