Career advice for one of my kids

[DayVee B]

Both my sons graduated with Mechanical Engineering degrees. One of them struggled through in 5 years and really had to work at it. He loved the hands-on kind of things from when he took shop classes in high school. Fours years out of university and he love's his job as a quality control engineer where he does a lot of hands-on testing and he even gets to travel to Europe. The other son it came very easily for him and he slept through most of his classes and still graduated Magna Cum Laude while also being a 4-year college athlete. Less than one year out and he works in aerospace and prefers more the theoretical design stuff. Everybody's different so your son just has to figure out what he wants to do and like most things, he may have to slog through a bunch of crap to reach his final goal.

There are so many different engineering paths. But usually you still have to grind it out through just to get the degree whether it's mechanical, electrical, construction, civil... See if your son can get hooked in with a good study group. I know that's what really helped my one son.

 

[427Vette]

After reading this entire thread I am so glad I was to stupid to go to engineering school. However I am glad some people are.

 

[RobbieB]

Both my sons graduated with Mechanical Engineering degrees. One of them struggled through in 5 years and really had to work at it. He loved the hands-on kind of things from when he took shop classes in high school. Fours years out of university and he love's his job as a quality control engineer where he does a lot of hands-on testing and he even gets to travel to Europe. The other son it came very easily for him and he slept through most of his classes and still graduated Magna Cum Laude while also being a 4-year college athlete. Less than one year out and he works in aerospace and prefers more the theoretical design stuff. Everybody's different so your son just has to figure out what he wants to do and like most things, he may have to slog through a bunch of crap to reach his final goal.

There are so many different engineering paths. But usually you still have to grind it out through just to get the degree whether it's mechanical, electrical, construction, civil... See if your son can get hooked in with a good study group. I know that's what really helped my one son.

Yeah, slog through the crap. Nobody does this advanced math anymore except the people that program computers to do the advanced math.

It's just for the "deeper dig", like fourier transforms teach you that a square wave is composed of sine waves at the fundamental plus every odd harmonic out to infinity.

So, what does that mean?

It means that any kind of "spark" is going to generate RF noise that will need to be considered in high frequency designs.

 

[Gumby]

Changing majors is not the end of the world. My 4 year roommate at USNA suffered through our first two years as a Mechanical Engineering major, then he switched to Physical Science. He graduated, did his required time in the Navy and then went to work for in the defense industry. He did very well for himself and is now an executive at one of the largest defense contractors. Retired once, got bored and went back.