Watney Before Becoming An Astronaut

In college, Watney studied to be a botanist and also a mechanical engineer before becoming an astronaut. His role on Ares 3 mission was to simply fix anything that happened to go unexpected and also to try and find if there was any possible way that Mars could support plant life. Having the knowledge on these subjects strongly increased his chance and length of survival on this deserted planet. Being a botanist, it allowed him to come up with the unbelievable idea of growing potatoes right on the very floor of the Hab while using the very limited supplies that were available. Very challenging, but he knew that was his only chance to exceed the amount of days he had food for and was blessed by the ability to accomplish it. His studies as a mechanical
engineer helped him with this very project greatly. For instance, he was not supplied with the amount of water needed to grow the potatoes so he was forced to find a way to increase his supply. He had to modify many of NASA’s machines to create the correct amount of hydrogen and oxygen to have a chance to produce the water. Then using wires and battery’s he found around to ignite the substances with a small electric spark. He knew his way around things and how to fix them to the way he wanted them to work.
My chosen field of study being wildlife biology and with the situation of me being on Mars would not work out to my advantage very much but in maybe one way. I would be able to have some knowledge on how to grow food with the supplies I had like Watney, but only to a certain extent giving that I wouldn’t be able to change the setting of the machines to produce more water.