SeasonalBeef said:
My question is how do I find my right engineering focus?
I'd greatly like to know what I can do.
First, schedule office hours with a professor in each specialty to discuss what the field involves in the real world. Most profs will be happy to spare a half an hour or an hour to discuss that and wouldn't have become educators if they didn't have strong and clear feelings about the subject. Maybe it will take you five or ten hours over a few weeks to set up and do with all of the specialities you are seriously considering. Often, students in their sophomore or junior years will spend 100-400 hours a year lining up summer jobs and often 500+ hours in a senior year lining up a real job after college, so this is not an unreasonable investment.
Second, read job posting in each field as if your were a senior, and see how you feel about them.
Third, get a copy of alumni magazines or newsletters and see what people from your school or a school you plan on transferring to are doing two, five, ten and twenty years out. If you have narrowed you search down to two or three and feel you need more input, ask the alumni office if there are any grads in that speciality they could help you identify to talk about what the real world is like in that field.
Fourth, look for online role models doing precisely the work you'd enjoy doing. Go to the webpages of their companies and look at what they did to get there. If that person isn't a billionaire, send a polite inquiry via email to see if they'd be willing to talk to your briefly because you consider them a role model and would like to know how they go there and what their work is really like. They don't get many inquiries like this and lots of them are willing to have a 15-30 minute phone call with you about it.
Fifth, look at the college catalog to see what classes each specialty involves. Ask yourself, not just if you are able to do it, but which set of courses looks most interesting emotionally, and which you dread emotionally (but you're not allowed to dread math). Focus especially on the electives that excite you or bore you, even if you don't actually do them because that will clue you into what your real feelings about the different fields are.
Sixth, look for websites of clubs at different colleges and universities and national organizations of those clubs, that may be more active than your clubs. "Engineers Without Borders" is one I'd specifically recommend looking into that my daughter's best friend did a summer program with. The Colorado School of Mines also has a very strong sustainable engineering program that is worth a look to get a feel of that field. College clubs generally don't password protect their online presence and while some have websites that suck, some have awesome websites.
Seventh, consider who else you know who has expressed an interest in different specialities and who teaches those specialities that you've met (especially after your informational interviews with professors). Don't feel a need to be fair. If you feel like civil engineering majors you know are your kind of people and the chemical engineering people you know are dorks who smell bad (or maybe you feel like you are a dork who smells bad and would fit in great with chemical engineers), this is actionable information, even if it isn't fair.
Eighth, talk out your own feelings and concerns and ideas with a friend or mentor or trusted person who may know only a little or nothing about the substance as a sounding board to flesh out what you already know but maybe haven't consciously articulated.
Ninth, if all else fails, consult a psychic (see point eight), or turn to random chance. I've made good decisions in life more than once on a whim. Since life is basically unpredictable anyway and your sources of reliable information may be shallow, the down sides are less bad than you'd think. Doing this at least points you to a single choice which you can then gut check on an up or down basis undistracted by the alternatives and could have, would have, should haves, and getting stuck in an "optimiziation" mode. Instead, you really need to be in a "satisficing" mode, which is the kind of search process you should be engaged in right now. Your goal is not to find the best possible speciality for you. There isn't one that can be reliably predicted at this stage. Your goal is to find one of the specialties that will work for you.
Tenth, as a "late bloomer" you have more life experience going into this decision making that most undergraduates. Use that to your advantage. Contact peers who became engineers or work with them, and buy those people coffee or a beer and talk with them. Consider which fields have career paths that reward maturity and life experience and which penalize it. Smaller firms tend to value maturity more than big ones, because you have more client and third-party contact that calls for common sense. Consider which specialties work best with that kind of firm size objective.
Hint: probably not nuclear engineering.
But see Robert Jordan (a highly successful author known best for his high fantasy novels who died in 2007):
Jordan was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He went to Clemson University after high school, but dropped out after one year and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War as a helicopter gunner. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster, the Bronze Star with "V" and oak leaf cluster, and two Vietnamese Gallantry Crosses with palm. After returning from Vietnam in 1970, Jordan studied physics at The Citadel. He graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Science degree and began working for the U.S. Navy as a nuclear engineer. He began writing in 1977.
, don't shoot is a certain miss 
, engineers have to make a decision at some point and so on)
do not perseverate
My new all purpose answer.
