Career Advice for ME Major Seeking Direction

[JSBeckton]

Career advice desperately needed

I am a currently a junior in college working in a co-op rotation for a major power company. I work in predictive maintenance doing a lot of infrared scans, vibration testing, motor circuit tests, trend building and evaluation, fan and pump balancing, etc…

I enjoy what I do and its pretty safe to say that we won’t end up outsourcing our power, and the industry will continue to grow as more and more power is needed. I am a ME major and plan on taking a good core of Nuclear engineering classes incase there is ever a strong push (that bears fruit) towards nuclear power.

I started to get into engineering because I loved math, physics, mechanics and CAD. I guess I feel that I am started out on a path that will take me into the manufacturing industry and I will never get to experience the design side that I think would be really fun. Is it a curse of such a broad major that you cannot get to try everything because you will never really be proficient an anything?

It seems that the design jobs are the ones that are being outsourced, and my maintaince co-op will leave me with no design experience so I imaging that I should just continue, I am already 27 (will be 29 when I graduate) so I don’t think that I have a lot of time to try every industry to see what I like best.

I know that everyone always says “do what you like the most and don’t let anything stop you”, but if that were feasible we’d all be eating cheesy puffs and drinking beer all day, we would never have made it to the moon.

Any advice?

 

[CPL.Luke]

In my oppinion it depends, are you really happy with where your life is going? do you really care about your carreer, or do you want to make money to have fun and live life? do you need money right now?

if your happy where your life is going and where you think you'll end up, then go with it. If you don't like the idea of endlessly testing components than go and find internships at design firms and such.

As long as your young and don't have any major responsibilities (like family or a wife) than you should be going out and looking for something that just hits you right and you could see doing for the rest of your life.

I would venture to guess that nuclear is going to come back in a big way 5-10 years from now, and they're going to need designers and the like, so if you want to do something with nuclear I would highly recommend it.

 

[JSBeckton]

I guess I would like to know the job outlook for both fields and maybe some feedback from people that work in those industries.