What is the best path to pursue: electrical or mechanical engineering?

[Intuitive_1]

Thanks ahead of time for thoughts and I hope they don't delete my thread as I'm sure this is probably a normal question. I live in the NYC metro area here on the NJ side of the river. This question is about my path of pursuit being electrical or mechanical engineering. They are both interesting materials to myself but my background & work experience follows suite with mechanical.

I've been reading/studying exhaustively on these thoughts. I am in my mid 20's or so and already have education behind me along with some work experience. The highest I had was and Assoc. in Mech. Drafting from 2010 that seems like it's not going to pay off as I'm currently unemployed and have never utilized the degree so I'm obviously concerned that either of the engineering disciplines may turn out the same way for myself. At this point in life it is not within reason for me to stop entirely and knock out an engineering degree. Work/Pay is proven while education is not. That's just the way it is here in 2014. I can make money or I can pay money for something that might not show any yield later. Anyways, being unemployed and my most recent working industry not showing any desirable/fun results or work being equivalent to pay I have decided to go ahead and pursue the engineering realm as it is also somewhat of interest to myself.

I think I want electrical engineering but I need to tell you what I angle I consider this from. When I think of working in electrical engineering realm, I am thinking of things like the electronic systems of robotics, also electronic circuits that control fuel injectors and other sensors on auto engines, and say perhaps making electronic things for mechanically functioning things. I feel with my previous mechanical experience, I could probably just bypass the mech. engineering deg. at this point and just pick that knowledge up as I have opportunity in the future. I bet they have something called an engineering handbook that a lot of engineers refer to anyways instead of actually knowing the stuff, hehe.

The people at the schools that I speak to aren't giving me very many good thoughts and I'm not sure why they think I don't see this. It's coming more from a sales/systematic angle when I speak to them. My current research suggest that elec. engineering would have a slightly higher wage level typically but not by much. I want to be clear and say that I do not wish to make things such as cellphones, laptops, tvs, camcorders, cameras video game systems or such an I do not want to get mixed up on this at the front of the ball-game. An engineering school here in NJ has already accepted me but naturally they would accept someone with good grades and such. They are just not doing a very good job in their system though and unfortunately I can't rely on it. The acceptance letter from the school was also drafted very poorly although it is a very reasonable school with ABET accreditation, NJIT is the name.

* If you respond to my thread, I will be trying to edit this first posting with line breaks or something for responses, or you could also private message me don't forget. Thanks for time.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I'm sorry you are not finding help at the moment. Is there any additional information you can share with us?

 

[Intuitive_1]

Sure, I have a brain spoof for you guys.

The thought has occurred to me that a person knocks out a 4 year degree only to work for a company in perhaps a not so like-able job. Can't a person just form their own product and make the rough prototype and just pay engineers to go back through it and tweak it in from an engineering standpoint? It occurs to me that people choose engineering because it is of interest and seems fun to them, when in reality, they complete their degrees and probably most times do not end up having a fun/enjoyable job. This is the way the other educations I have received went, I chose something I liked, and then nothing interesting showed for employment in that field.

I also found out that since being out of school now for 4 years and now trying to go back and get a bachelors, that some of the knowledge has slipped away which tells me that if no one could employ me immediately in engineering, then that means the degree may also become a waste of knowledge.