“Made in Bangladesh.” One in ten garments in the US has this label. I’ve seen it my whole life, but I never really understood its weight until 2022 when I visited my uncle’s clothing factory. Walking onto the sewing floor felt like stepping straight into organized chaos. Machines were buzzing, fabric was tearing, people were shouting instructions across the room, and somehow all of it came together to produce thousands of pieces of clothing in minutes. I followed every part of the process from weaving to packaging, and as impressive as it was, I couldn’t ignore how unsafe the environment felt for the workers who kept everything running.
After that trip, I started seeing systems everywhere. Waiting in line at Disneyland, moving through airport security, ordering at In-N-Out, even walking around campus. I kept thinking about how a tiny change here or there could make things faster, safer, or easier for the people involved. I didn’t know the name for it at the time, but I knew I liked noticing how things worked and how they could work better.
That’s what pulled me toward Industrial and Systems Engineering at USC. It connects the human side with the operational side, which is exactly what first caught my attention in that factory. I’m excited for classes like Human Factors in Work and Systems Design and all the ways USC lets you get involved, from the Viterbi Voices community to internship opportunities nearby.
When I tell people I study Industrial and Systems Engineering, they usually assume I’m learning how to build bridges or skyscrapers. I always explain that those mostly belong to civil and mechanical engineering fields. Industrial engineering looks at the whole system and the people in it. The way I like to put it is that industrial and systems engineering is engineering the engineers.
And for me, that connects back to what I saw in Bangladesh. Once you’ve watched a system that big in action, it’s hard not to think about how things could be safer or run better. That experience is always in the back of my mind when I think about what I want to do with this major.
So one day, I want that familiar tag to mean something more. Safe conditions. Responsible production. Ethical systems behind the scenes. I can work toward a future where the world will understand that a garment was made both ethically and responsibly when they see the tag: Made in Bangladesh.
