Life as an engineer
February 17, 2011 - 2:55pm
I'm a theatre technician from the east bay in california. I've worked as a carpenter for the past couple years while I've been getting my Gen Ed. done at a local Community college. I'm only 20 and I'm bouncing around majors. When I say bouncing I don't mean jumping from one subdiscipline to another, I mean that I've jumped from computer science to art history, from music to Literature to Anthropology. My problem isn't finding a subject that fascinates me, rather I can't find anything that bores me in the slightest.
In the front seat of my car right now I have a book on quantum mechanics, one on the life and times of benjamin franklin, a beautiful book on the creation of brunelleschi's dome, another on gothic architecture, another still on game theory and it's implications in economics, a treastise on classical french composers and last but not least...one really bad sci-fi paperback. Please note that none of these have anything to do with my current classes (this is all my extracurricular fun time reading)
I realize that the day is fast approaching when i'll need to make a choice as to what field I want to pursue but I'm having trouble. So to any engineers out there (or anyone in any field that they love), please, please please tell me about your career, what it's like to be doing what your doing. I'd like to get a sense of what this world is like
I'm not an engineer yet... but it's something I want to do after I finish my first degree (I figure I'm already so close to graduating that I might as well stick with it). As for what I'm doing right now.... That would be Geography and Computer Science (GIS Concentration). It's quite facinating stuff to be honest and it does combine two fields quite nicely.
What I would say however is just pick something and stick with it. You still get "electives" do you not? Use those electives to pick something you're interested in and use them as "primer courses" then when you're finished you'll at least have some base knowledge of Art History or Literature or whatever you want then you can research more about that stuff on your own time.
For example, I like cooking. Do I need to become a Head chef, sous chef, or patissier? Not really.... I can take a few cooking courses on my own time and once I have that base knoweldge just find recipes and cook them on my own. I like my studies in Geography and can see myself doing that for the rest of my life (well.... either that or becoming a Civil or Geotech Eng. doing something similar). The cooking thing is just a hobby.