Welcome back to The Return Desk. I am Nurul Hashim. My guest today is Mei Ling Tan, a structural engineer in Penang who left the profession in 2014 to raise her children and went back in 2023, nine years later. Engineering is not a field that waits for you. The software had changed, the building standards had been updated twice, and her new manager had been a graduate trainee when she left. Mei Ling talks about the evening courses she did before she dared to apply, the four-day week she negotiated in a five-day firm, and the first site visit where she had to ask a question she was embarrassed not to know. Her honesty about that moment is the reason I wanted her on the show. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.