Surviving 4 Years of Mechanical Engineering: Tips and Tricks

[agusta]

Oh my god. My 4 years of mechanical engineering starts in one week. Its going to be hard. Any tips on how to not make it bloody impossible?

 

[enigma]

Form a regular study group for each of your classes.

Join ASME or some other similar professional society and spend time at their lounge.

Making friends with people who are as serious about their studies as you are about yours are key.

 

[ovoleg]

beginning?

phff, the easy classes are first. Don't even bother with study groups...They waste time.

Get serious with groups when you are on your last 2 years

 

[agusta]

Well I may just do a bit of both. Bit of study group and a bit of not. I’ll see how it goes. What sort of stuff does engineering even involve, in terms of physics and calculus etc? I don’t even know. Will it have seriously hard calculus and physics because that’s not my specialty. By that I mean I am reasonably good just not at the top of the class. I mean I can make anything out of anything but I can't tell you the area under the conic section “xxxxxx” (cant think of an example) without taking ten minutes to think about it. Am I screwed?

 

[FredGarvin]

It's going to be a bit of a shock. Just be prepared for it. Most of all, I have to agree with Enigma in that you need to surround yourself with others that are serious about doing well. If you surround yourself with people who party a lot or don't want to study, then you'll find out just how quickly you can fall behind. The schedule in every class is go-go-go. Stay on top of things, don't procrastinate and you'll do well.

Personally, I thought my first two years were the harder ones.

 

[minger]

The first year will be review of high school (at least it seemed like ). Here is where you develop bad study and class habits (not studying and skipping class). In your second year, classes get harder, but you still have your first year habits. Aside from this, you will start to get to know people who are 21 and can get you alcohol when you want. Try to avoid this, and keep partying to 2 or 3 days. Halfway through your third year you will realize that you are losing your scholarship if you don't pick it up a little. You start doing better. Oh, by the way, my school is co-op mandatory and thus 5 year program. Anways, 4th year you turn 21 and start the bar scene. Since it's a little more mellow then the party scene, grades continue to improve as classes get more interesting. Fifth year, your classes are even more interesting, so you do better. The rest of your classes are just fillers to graduate, and thus are easy. Your grades continue to improve.

You look back and wonder why they scheduled Dynamics so early in the morning. You scoff at how easy Thermodynamics really is. You graduate in what seems like 4 months with many memories and many lack of memories. Welcome to college...

 

[chroot]

Since you got accepted, the admission people at your school believe you are prepared for the school's program, have a high likelihood of success in that program. You're definitely not "screwed" if you're a bit rusty on some things from high school.

Everyone else has given you the best possible advice already: don't procrastinate! Treat each assignment as if it were due a few days before it is technically due, to give yourself some buffer. Anticipate spending a day or two studying like a madman before a big test. If you ever feel like you're going to have to stay up all night to finish something, you are behind. Don't skip any class, ever, unless it's a matter of life or death.

- Warren

 

[agusta]

"Chroot" I am liking that advice. Pretty much what i would do/be like anyway. "Minger" I am in New Zealand so our drinking age is 18 (which means everyone starts drinking at about 16), so I've sort of got over the "getting trashed for the sake of it" stage. Its stupid really. Cant really be bothered with spending money i don't have on getting wasted. I will have the odd beer at the pub though. Orientation week starts in 3 days, so I am looking forward to seeing all the pissheads getting smashed. So i really just need to keep my stuff together and keep on top of things?

So cheers for that. I'll probably be posting questions on here for you experts to help me with.

So thanks for that.

Peter

 

[i_wish_i_was_smart]

drinking age is 18 here aswell, believe me getting trashed for the sake of it isn't over, now i don't spend my days studying a doing homework all that much for one reason and one reason alone, SCOOP, its all about scoop, profs are generaly lazy and or don't have time to completely change their course year after, therefore the assignments are usualy the same and tests alternate every year, now how do you get scoop, well make some upper year friends, join the school engineering society and participate in their social event ei: flag football tournemant, pizza night, toga or hawaiian parties, then you meet all the upper years and get to make friends with them then later on you ask the if they have their stuff for this course or that one, usualy people don't throw out their course material

 

[leright]

the first couple years of the engineering curriculum aren't bad at all. It's just calculus, english and physics stuff. When you get to the first semester of the 3rd year you get into the engineering classes and it gets tough. By the second semester of the 3rd year you'll be pulling your hair out. :p However, you'll make it, but I don't think that the admissions always accept only people that are truly capable of completing the program at all schools. Some schools will admit almost everyone, but the engineering program is just as rigorous as the more difficult schools to get admitted to.

 

[leright]

drinking age is 18 here aswell, believe me getting trashed for the sake of it isn't over, now i don't spend my days studying a doing homework all that much for one reason and one reason alone, SCOOP, its all about scoop, profs are generaly lazy and or don't have time to completely change their course year after, therefore the assignments are usualy the same and tests alternate every year, now how do you get scoop, well make some upper year friends, join the school engineering society and participate in their social event ei: flag football tournemant, pizza night, toga or hawaiian parties, then you meet all the upper years and get to make friends with them then later on you ask the if they have their stuff for this course or that one, usualy people don't throw out their course material

This is a great way to go through the engineering curriculum and not learn a thing. I wouldn't recommend you do this, personally, as I consider it almost the equivalent of cheating. I recommend you honestly go through the curriculum as it is meant because you'll get a lot more out of it.

You may not NEED to take this advice to get by (meaning simply getting your degree) in the curriculum if you follow i_wish_i_was_smart's advice, but you'll thank me later, since you'll know something when you graduate and you'll build character. I'm more happy with a B if I understood everything deeply than with an A when I barely grasped a thing. Learning is of primary importance to me, NOT grades.

1.) Read the textbook thoroughly and understanding EVERYTHNIG (understand concepts at an intuitive level and a mathematically rigorous level)
2.) THINK in class. Don't just brainlessly write things down!
3.) Go to every lecture.

 

[chroot]

drinking age is 18 here aswell, believe me getting trashed for the sake of it isn't over, now i don't spend my days studying a doing homework all that much for one reason and one reason alone, SCOOP, its all about scoop, profs are generaly lazy and or don't have time to completely change their course year after, therefore the assignments are usualy the same and tests alternate every year, now how do you get scoop, well make some upper year friends, join the school engineering society and participate in their social event ei: flag football tournemant, pizza night, toga or hawaiian parties, then you meet all the upper years and get to make friends with them then later on you ask the if they have their stuff for this course or that one, usualy people don't throw out their course material

This is also against the honor code at many universities, and can get you expelled.

- Warren

 

[dav2008]

You can't cheat your way through life.

 

[6ies]

personaly I am in high school and I'm scared of how close univercity is. I am sure if you were doing well in high school you will do well in your later courses. seems like the main idea that everyone is trying to say is study, study with friends and study alone if you had work habits like this then you should ahve no problem, good luck man.

 

[agusta]

Hey guys. First month of uni. And OMG its awesome. Pretty hard at the moment but getting into it. We do calculus, physics, computer programming fundamentals and engineering fundamentals. I sort of agree with "i_wish_i_was_smart" to an extent. I mean obviously you have a look at past exams before you have an exam coming up. Just to see what you can and can't do. My uni has a website and they have the previous 6 years for most tests. So you’re meant to use them for study. They don't have assignment however. I pretty much just do the old papers when i think i should be alright for the test. Thats what I/everyone did at high school.
Anyway.

We had a bridge building competition just the other day . They gave us 5 meters of angle aluminium, 40 nuts and bolts and twenty 300mm bits of wire. Man we (had a team of 3 but the other guys had never been in a workshop in their life so i pretty much had to make it) completely smoked the record. They judge it by span x the weight it holds before breaking. The record was span 320mm weight 1020kg which gave them a score of something like 324000. I don't know when it was set, apparently it was 2001 or something around then. We got span 368mm weight 1208kg. That gave us a score of about 444000. I am pretty stoked at the moment because they said someone almost bet the record last year. They were only 800 off the record. And we got 120000 more.

Got a robot Olympics coming up in 2 months so that should be quite fun. They have to race to certain points and come back then follow lines and climb up hills etc. Sounds quite complicated.

Well i got to go study up for some physics. Got a big test coming up next week and I am not the worlds smartest person when it comes to physics.


Anyway.
Have a nice day.
Cheers, Peter