Is engineering for me?

Question

Is engineering for me?

The thing is though, i do engineering studies at school ; and i find it very boring ! maybe its just the teacher . I also dont like writing reports all that well. I also dislike considering the environmental affects, recycling, learning the history of particular products, etc.

As a result of this, im not sure if i should be an engineer when i grow up...

At the same time though, i love doing maths ;p and i also like chemistry and physics.

So the question: is engineering the right career path for me?

Also, if you're an engineer, could you please tell me what you do on a day to day basis?... helping me with my decision on whether engineering is right for me.

Answer 1

Engineers build things.  If you don't then you're not.

I find engineering boring too.  I'm a chemist or material scientist, depending.  In most cases all technical types take available knowledge and do new things with it.  Sometimes its trivially new and sometimes it requires creativity and new information.  I'd suggest that there are many engineers graduates who prefer the stimulation of people to the drafting board, and that there are many more jobs working with people, too.  But you should like the learning you are doing.  If you are the type (and you seeem to be) that needs a good teacher to enjoy a subject I suggest you switch to history or english or something useless, since they have to be good to attract students there.

Answer 2

Sounds like you (and all of the posters so far) should NOT be in engineering.  I'm an engineerer and I love what I do. Engineers build things, yes, but it's not all about sales and marketing, it's about making life better for people and society.  If you don't have a passion for this, along with problem solving, creative thinking, and getting things done, you yourself a favor and take up math or applied physics and stay in school forever...!

Answer 3

I'm doing engineering at uni. I find most of it quite boring. However I know that was still the right choice for me. Some things I find really fastinating, unfortunately most of the fastinating stuff isn't what you cover in you lectures (certainly in your first year) but this boring stuff has to be done if you want to become an engineer.

What I am looking forward to however is the specialisation that occurs as you go through your degree. You will get to quite often specialise in a very narrow field even if you are doing a general course. This narrow field will be your favourite topic so can certainly be very enjoyable to study.

Very quickly you get into a system of writing reports and you can rattle them off quite quickly. Its still a chore but not that bad once you have the hang of it.

Honestly I don't think many people find the core learning of engineering interesting (judging by the number of people on the verge of falling asleap in lectures) but if you can trudge through that then you can open yourself up to all sorts of interesting topics.

Liking maths is good, that's all engineering seems to be, just applied to different situations. I would say that liking maths (and being good at) is much more important than liking physics. Chemistry is mostly irrelivant unless you want to be a chemical engineer. Good integration and algebraic skills are absolutely vital but numerical skills are not very important. No engineer bothers doing sums in their head, they all use calculators.

Answer 4

You sound a little like I did when I was growing up.  I ended up going into electrical engineering and that was really a mistake for me.  Math, chemistry and physics are the basic sciences and engineering is the application of these sciences to make useful products for your company to sell, so it ends up about money and marketing.

You could major in chemistry without the engineering attachment or applied physics.  Mathematics is also possibility but the advanced courses end up very theoretical and I found that didn't suit me either.  After I got my BSEE, I changed my major and started grad school in math.  Another mistake.  I think my best choice would have been applied physics.

You really have to figure out your own passion.  Do you like building stuff, thinking up things to make and get working?  And for what purpose, to put another product on Walmart shelves or to discover and learn?

In some ways I wish I had stayed in the world of academia and worked in the research labs but egos abound there also.

It's a tough thing to figure out and everything changes so much that the right advice today can be wrong in a few short years.

I always loved the work I did, but the politics and BS seemed to dominate and spoil what I loved to do.  I guess when you work for others, you eat their bread and do their will as Kipling said.