What Do You Wish You Had Known About Engineering?

[nocturne-e]

Hi PF,

I'm a 12th grade pre-engineering student and I'm super excited about starting my degree in EE next year. Like most seniors, I've been looking into colleges and careers for months and months and I would like some personal advice.

There are many things that I wish I had known/realized when I was younger (not like I've been alive for that long, though haha) and I'm sure you have your lists too.

So, what would you say is the most important thing that you've learned or have come to realize as far as engineering or life in general goes?

 

[General_Sax]

If you don't understand a concept (and you've taken the time to try to understand the concept) talk to your prof as soon as you can.

 

[Phyisab****]

Don't be afraid to look stupid.

The biggest thing I was missing when I was younger was discipline though, and I don't think you can be taught that over the internet.

 

[Dembadon]

If you don't understand a concept (and you've taken the time to try to understand the concept) talk to your prof as soon as you can.

This is good advice. Don't ever be too proud to ask for help. Go to office hours!

Something with which I still struggle:

I have a strong desire to figure things out for myself. This trait is a vice and a virtue. Sometimes you just need to ask for help, and realize when you're spending too much time on something. If I hit a brick wall after spending a reasonable¹ amount of time on a problem, I'll take a break and work on something else. It "resets" my brain, so when I come back to the problem, I tend to see it more objectively.

¹ This value will change as you progress. During my freshman year, 15-20 minutes was reasonable for most problems. Now, reasonable can be meaured in hours. You'll get a feel for what is reasonable for you as you go.

 

[lisab]

Don't short yourself on sleep or exercise. Especially at stressful times (finals).

 

[╔(σ_σ)╝]

Don't short yourself on sleep or exercise. Especially at stressful times (finals).

I don't know about this. When you absolutely have no idea what has been going on in a course for the whole semester and you have a final on it the next day the least thing on your mind is sleep.

But I guess your point is to avoid such situations.

 

[berkeman]

Hi PF,

I'm a 12th grade pre-engineering student and I'm super excited about starting my degree in EE next year. Like most seniors, I've been looking into colleges and careers for months and months and I would like some personal advice.

There are many things that I wish I had known/realized when I was younger (not like I've been alive for that long, though haha) and I'm sure you have your lists too.

So, what would you say is the most important thing that you've learned or have come to realize as far as engineering or life in general goes?

Very intelligent question from a 12th grader. Keep it up!

** Read "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill, cover to cover. It's an easy read, and is the intro EE text for many colleges.

** Buy and build a few electronics kits that interest you. Get them at Radio Shack or online. They include a "theory of operation" generally, so in addition to getting practice at soldering together useful circuits, you will start to see how and why practical circuits are put together.

** Reading H&H and building a few kits will help you to start asking the right questions as you learn more complex and detailed EE stuff. If you've built a few things that use transistors, when you get to your intro transistor course, you will be saying to yourself, yeah, I've built that before, and I wondered why that resistor value was chosen, etc.

** Work hard at your studies -- this is the most important time in your life to do well, prove yourself, and strengthen your mind and skills.

Have fun and kick some butt!

 

[The_Duck]

People actually seem to care about your college GPA. Get A's.

More generally, try to figure out what you want to be doing after college as soon as possible, and make yourself the best possible candidate for that job or graduate degree program or whatever. If you put off figuring out what you want to do, you'll later find you've missed opportunities to prepare yourself for it. On the other hand, realize that your interests may evolve.

 

[twofish-quant]

People actually seem to care about your college GPA. Get A's.

Curious, because I've learned the opposite. People don't care that much about GPA's. In college, I got B's when I could have gotten A's, and it worked out really well for me.

More generally, try to figure out what you want to be doing after college as soon as possible, and make yourself the best possible candidate for that job or graduate degree program or whatever.

Again. I've found the opposite. It's difficult/impossible to figure out what you want to do because the world changes too quickly. Also, it's sometimes a bad ideal to make yourself the best possible candidate because you end up with other people who don't care about you, running your life.

What can happen (and what actually happened to me) is that you make yourself the perfect candidate, get the job, and then three years later, you get fired and your job goes to Pakistan, because it turns out that the perfect candidate works for a lot less money than anyone in the US.

If you put off figuring out what you want to do, you'll later find you've missed opportunities to prepare yourself for it.

On the other hand, you may have find that you just missed out on the nice trip on the Titanic.

 

[The_Duck]

twofish-quant, I readily conceed that you have far more experience than I and your advice is likely to be far more valuable. My above post is the relatively uninformed perspective of a college senior.

 

[twofish-quant]

twofish-quant, I readily conceed that you have far more experience than I and your advice is likely to be far more valuable. My above post is the relatively uninformed perspective of a college senior.

Curiously one thing that I try not to do is to give advice. I try to tell stories. One set of stories involves the bad advice that I've gotten from people that were older than me. :-) :-) :-)

Your parents care about you. Your friends care about you. Your co-workers and teachers care about you. Individuals care about individuals. But institutions like universities and corporations don't care about you. Yes, you might have to put on funny party hats and jump through hoops to get a job, but at some point you just have to look at the committee and say "I really don't give a flying flop about what you want me to do because you really don't care about me."

My boss at work is a nice caring person. However he and I are part of a big corporate bureaucracy and that bureaucracy doesn't care about me or him, and that bureaucracy will toss us both off the airplane if they think that they can make some money off of it. What's really funny is that the system is intentionally designed so that there is no one person that you can point to do say "I can get mad at that person."

Everyone is just doing their jobs. Everyone is nice and sympathetic, but in the end you end up with a knife in your back. Personally, I think it's funny, and I can think it's funny because my career is not at the center of my existence. So when I get stabbed in the back and tossed off the train, I'm leaving with a smile on my face. Literally. The last time I got laid off, I was in a better mood than the person that was laying me off.

One other thing that I've found. When I was seventeen, I expected to grow up one day. The idea that I had was that one day I'd get to the end of the rainbow, and there would be a pot of gold. That you'd get a career, a family, and nice house, the whole deal. You get the job and the wife and the career, and everything would end up living happily ever after. However, I've figured out that life really doesn't work that way. There isn't a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You never live happily ever after. But the reason I'm mentioning this is that I think I would have been happier knowing that being unhappy was "normal."

But that's not a bad thing for me. I try to look at live as an adventure. Good things happen. Bad things happen. But if you look at life as adventure, you end up living one day after the next, until you die.

One other reason for not caring too much about what the committee thinks is that they may not know what to do. If you are graduating right now, then life is going to be painful for you. Unemployment is at 10%. No one has any clue when that is going down, and I don't think anyone knows what to do about it. There are a lot of questions about "should I do this or should I do that." The truth for a lot of these questions is the answer is "no one knows and you are going to have to figure it out for yourself."

I have no idea what the world is going to look like in a decade, and I don't think anyone else does either. Now, if you get a good education, then this should help you to figure out how to respond to the situation, and that's more important than getting a good GPA.

 

[Astronuc]

Hi PF,

I'm a 12th grade pre-engineering student and I'm super excited about starting my degree in EE next year. Like most seniors, I've been looking into colleges and careers for months and months and I would like some personal advice.

There are many things that I wish I had known/realized when I was younger (not like I've been alive for that long, though haha) and I'm sure you have your lists too.

So, what would you say is the most important thing that you've learned or have come to realize as far as engineering or life in general goes?

A lot of good advice has been given.

Something I learned during my upper-level years was about networking. There are professional societies devoted to supporting students as well as professionals.

If one is serious about EE, then get a student membership IEEE - www.ieee.org. I became a student member and remained a member for many years.

Don't be afraid to seek assistance - in course work or otherwise - particuarly from the faculty or graduate students.

 

[flemmyd]

i think college GPA matters right when you get out of college. if you're the average 21-22 year old graduating, you basically have: major, gpa, and any research projects they were attached to. there's not a lot of "real world" experience for anyone to look at when they see your resume. but that's more of a signalling thing between you and the employer/graduate school, than a representation of your talents.

if you don't have (some) merits to stand on by the time you're 27ish, that's a problem...
this is where the education matters, not the gpa.

 

[Stan Marsh]

if you want to go to a top univ to do phd, work hard to get As, and join a group, do some cutting-edge research. It will be very helpful if you have a recommendation from some famous professor or have a paper published

 

[NanjoeBot]

Back in high school and early on in college, I wish I had known that girls are actually just human beings, and they're easy to talk to~!

 

[aspiring_one]

1. Your study habits could always be better
2. Don't waste time
3. Don't overload yourself and try to look impressive (with course-work that is)

 

[Oriako]

Btw, excellent post twofish-quant. Very insightful!

1) Don't take more than 5 courses a semester IMO!
2) Try to have a life outside of school and never neglect friends or family
3) Play as little video games as possible. I was in a top 10 in the world raiding guild in world of warcraft and spent over 200+ days played time over 6 years playing world of warcraft, BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME EVER. I also got number one in the world on various xbox arcade games such as TrialsHD, etc. BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME EVER. DON'T PLAY VIDEO GAMES FOR MORE THAN 5 HOURS A WEEK! (PLEASE!)

 

[bleedblue1234]

Well, we are the same age actually, but I will give some of my wisdom I have garnered.

1) As the person above me said, no video games (by this I mean more than 3-4 hours a week)

2) Pick a major, and stick with it. Don't be afraid to experiment, but realize you will never find a perfect major. Your calling is what you wish it to be.

3) Pick one thing and do it better than anyone you know

4) Don't spend too much time studying. Don't spend too much time partying.

5) Simplify, simplify, and simplify some more.

6) Realize woman are humans too, and sex, or good feelings, is/are not the end all be all of a relationship.

7) Life doesn't work out sometimes in ways you expect. The most successful people are adaptable and look for opportunities when they call.

 

[jbunniii]

I was in a top 10 in the world raiding guild in world of warcraft and spent over 200+ days played time over 6 years playing world of warcraft, BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME EVER. I also got number one in the world on various xbox arcade games such as TrialsHD, etc. BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME EVER. DON'T PLAY VIDEO GAMES FOR MORE THAN 5 HOURS A WEEK! (PLEASE!)

Wow. I'm glad that all we had were Tetris and Super Mario Bros. when I was in college.

 

[dsking]

I'm a junior in Mechanical Engineering and one big thing I wish I knew is that I can learn a lot from looking at many different sources. When I was a freshman I read the textbook, went to lecture, and did problems only, but now I use google, talk to people (professors, other students, TAs), and anything else I can think of. You may be hearing this a lot, but learn to use ALL of the resources you can find.

Also, as mentioned before, join organizations (IEEE, Robotics Club, whatever interests you). I would say that meeting people is just as important as making good grades.

 

[Dougggggg]

Btw, excellent post twofish-quant. Very insightful!

1) Don't take more than 5 courses a semester IMO!
2) Try to have a life outside of school and never neglect friends or family
3) Play as little video games as possible. I was in a top 10 in the world raiding guild in world of warcraft and spent over 200+ days played time over 6 years playing world of warcraft, BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME EVER. I also got number one in the world on various xbox arcade games such as TrialsHD, etc. BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME EVER. DON'T PLAY VIDEO GAMES FOR MORE THAN 5 HOURS A WEEK! (PLEASE!)

This. I used to compete in Halo tournaments across the country and it seriously hurt my high school GPA and caused me to not get accepted to the school I wanted to go to. In the end, I see it slightly as a blessing because I really like the school I ended up going to, despite it not being very well known.

Important things I wish I would have known, thinking a little into the future is fine and can be helpful, don't live there. Enjoy moments and work hard on things going on now. Hate to use this cheesy line but don't put off until tomorrow what you could finish today. You never know what could come up tomorrow. Yet, somehow at the same time, don't let chances to be with friends go, just for time to get ahead on work. This balance, that I am still trying to figure out myself, is so essential.

 

[sweetpotato]

A lot of this has already been said, but here goes:

1) Try to be a good person first, and a good student/engineer second. Never neglect your family and friends. There is plenty of time in the day to study hard and also socialize with the important people in your life.

2) That said, don't spend all your time partying, drinking, playing video games, etc. If your friends never respect the fact that you need to study/get good grades and pressure you to blow off school/work all the time, get some new friends.

3) Try to have good relationships with your professors without kissing their a**. Even if a professor treats you unfairly, always keep calm and be respectful. You're at college to learn from your professors, not the other way around. Learning to work well with all sorts of people will serve you well in the world after college.

 

[turbo]

Examine your study habits, including your note-taking. I realized quickly when I started engineering school that I wasn't going to be able to cruise through and get all A's like in HS. My note-taking was sporadic and sloppy in HS, plus you can't mark up books that don't belong to you. In college, you will buy your own books, and I found it very helpful to mark up the books to highlight concepts that were stressed by the instructors, and make concise notes in the margins. When instructors stress concepts and techniques, you can expect those to be covered in quizzes and exams. You should learn whatever you can from your texts, even if it's not covered well in lectures, but being prepared to answer questions about concepts that are stressed in class is a great way to take some "grade pressure" off.

Good luck!

 

[lurky]

I'm going to echo the "no video games" comments. Video games these days are just another form of gambling addiction, IMO. You can still find some more old-fashioned type games that either have natural endings to them (and that don't take weeks to get to) or are repetitive enough so that you don't play for too long in a single sitting, but those are not nearly as popular and in your face as the big MMORPGs. Stay away from the big MMORPGs; they are absolutely designed to suck you in and keep you playing, no matter what the cost to you.

 

[Mathnomalous]

Yeah, do limit video game time. Stick to games like SimCity or Civilization; if you play a FPS like Halo series, try not to waste too much time in multi-player; and avoid MMOs like the plague.

 

[l'Hôpital]

You can always try a time-less classic like Pokemon. In general, many of the handhelds are good since it's something you can play on your way to class. Depending on the game, they usually aren't too addicting (e.g you get bored of tapping A in Pokemon). If you have a smart phone, you can usually play these games for free through emulators and whatnot.

 

[Dougggggg]

This has turned into the don't play video games thread lol.

 

[hadsed]

Don't be so scared of looking like an idiot.

 

[nocturne-e]

Thanks for all your replies; I really appreciate the insight.

I will say though that 1. I'm a girl so that rules out some of the things mentioned and 2. I don't play nor even like video games (which is a plus! ha ha) But it can be applied in other areas (my personal weakness if facebook; I do need to limit time spent on that site.)


One thing that I've been kind of depressed about lately is the thought that I will not have a life outside of school. I'm assuming from these posts that this is a common misconception? I absolutely hate this year because I'm so bogged down in my classes. Go to school all day, come home study all night - what kind of life is that? Is it safe to assume that though the classes do not get easier in and of themselves, it is easier to manage as compared to an AP ridden HS schedule?


Also, do any women engineers have any specific female related advice?

 

[ehilge]

One thing that I've been kind of depressed about lately is the thought that I will not have a life outside of school. I'm assuming from these posts that this is a common misconception?

To avoid studies taking over everything, I try to have some activities with friends that you do consistently every week, particularly, anything that gets you up and moving around. For a couple of semesters I had a group of friends I would play volleyball with and another group I join for ultimate frisbee. Even a game night or something like that is beneficial though if that's more your speed. If your 'fun' activities are consistent and with other people you're more likely to get away from your studies to do them.

I have another rule about not doing homework on Friday after lectures that I stick to even through finals. Its refreshing to have one stress free evening to relax a bit regardless of workload.

Last thing is time management. Plan your homework, even if you have to start a week in advance, so you don't stay up all night studying. You've probably heard this, but sleep is when your brain organizes and logs everything you did during the day, It needs about 8 hrs to complete this task, so aim for that number if you can. I really believe, given that you used your time wisely and aren't entirely inept on the material, that that 8th hour of sleep can be more beneficial than another hour of studying for an exam. Not to mention, its much MUCH easier to pay attention in class and be productive when you're fully rested.

Sorry, I can't help with the woman engineer advice, I'll let someone with a bit more, errr... first hand experience take that one :)

Well I'm finished with my ramble now, best of luck with your studies!

 

[sweetpotato]

As a female engineer, my female-specific piece of advice is not to worry about being female. In your math/science/engineering classes, try to cultivate friends and "study buddies" who are nice people, no matter what their gender. Don't try to hang out only with female engineers and avoid the male ones.

IMO there is surprisingly little awkwardness between female engineers and male engineers. The only people that have made me feel uncomfortable about being a female engineer have all been women who are not engineering majors. Typical conversation: "Hey, I'm Sarah, I'm a History major, how about you?" "I'm an electrical engineering major" "Oh, wow.. *awkward pause* girl power, huh?"

 

[lisab]

As a female engineer, my female-specific piece of advice is not to worry about being female. In your math/science/engineering classes, try to cultivate friends and "study buddies" who are nice people, no matter what their gender. Don't try to hang out only with female engineers and avoid the male ones.

IMO there is surprisingly little awkwardness between female engineers and male engineers. The only people that have made me feel uncomfortable about being a female engineer have all been women who are not engineering majors. Typical conversation: "Hey, I'm Sarah, I'm a History major, how about you?" "I'm an electrical engineering major" "Oh, wow.. *awkward pause* girl power, huh?"

+1

Exactly my experiences as a female physics major! I never had a problem with STEM people, but it can be quite awkward socially outside of that small circle.

The biggest problems I had in school had to do with time management, paying my rent and tuition, car trouble, schedule conflicts at work, understanding E&M...none of those problems would have been easier to deal with, had I been male!

 

[Thermalne]

I wish I had known how to better format my first two years of college towards my degree.

Basically, take Chemistry I&II and basic intro to engineering and engineering statics courses!

 

[Astronuc]

The biggest problems I had in school had to do with time management, paying my rent and tuition, car trouble, schedule conflicts at work, understanding E&M...none of those problems would have been easier to deal with, had I been male!

Yep - I can vouch for that - although I was fortunate in not having to deal with conflicting schedules between work and school.

 

[nocturne-e]

IMO there is surprisingly little awkwardness between female engineers and male engineers. The only people that have made me feel uncomfortable about being a female engineer have all been women who are not engineering majors. Typical conversation: "Hey, I'm Sarah, I'm a History major, how about you?" "I'm an electrical engineering major" "Oh, wow.. *awkward pause* girl power, huh?"

That's interesting though I figured it would probably be like that. Out of a physics class of 26 it's just two of us girls and I've had no problems with it. I get along with the guys in there so it's all good. It's just that everyone else makes a big deal over it so it's good to know that there isn't much of a problem if at all generally.

In my English class I told this girl that I was going EE and she just gave me a blank stare like she couldn't believe it. (She's kind of a ditz though so I wasn't surprised!)