Another welcome to the community, sorry for the delay.
Continuum-mechanics sounds like a very intensive subject. Perhaps you could corner the X16 market for software for this field.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif)
Is FORTRAN still kicking around in the university engineering world? The SuperPET had it as language one could learn, but that ran on the 6809 CPU, not the 6502. I got to explore it along with APL and COBOL back in the day. Fortran made sense, APL at least connected with some of the high school math at the time. COBOL, well I didn't get it then and I feel it's not very relevant now.
While everyone awaits the shipping hardware there is lots one can do with the emulator (besides playing great games!) I hope you find time between work and school to explore.