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Anon is an engineer
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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Two things. 1. If you hated it maybe it was the wrong choice, 2. You can walk in the spring commencement if you want to, that’s what I did for grad school.
I love engineering, I hated University. The framework of school is not for everyone and reading 300 pages of complex stuff every week for 4 years is boring to death and it isn't for me, and for a lot of people.
School of all levels caters to one type of learning, and not everyone is good with that style.
I experienced a wide array of learning types. Some profs rely on student-led learning from book readings and assignments, some relied on in-person lectures, some worked through examples in class and had similar examples on homework along with challenge problems that extend the examples in new ways, one had us use mathcad to build a model of increasing complexity with each lecture.
Saying university caters to one type is an absurd reduction. Unless that one type is “learning”.
Engineering is a skilled trade with a long list of topics that have to be covered. You don’t have to be an engineer, you could do a two year tech school or just DIY and roll your own, prove yourself through your work to get into engineering-like jobs.
Good for you. My experience is that the program was geared towards people that would continue to masters and PhDs.
I had an exam every two weeks, hundreds of pages every week to read and the professors weren't really available for us, and teaching assistant didn't really give a shit.
The labs were mostly just math labs, with really specific applications.
My only real project was the end of program project that lasted a bit short of 2 years. And the professors that were supposed to help us and support us told us that the project would fail for a good part of a year and a half. And when the project was a success and gave exposure to the school, the same professors that gave us shit for almost the entirety of the project took the credit for a successful project.
If you wanted to do hands on engineering, you had to join extra curricular teams.
My opinion on the matter is certainly tainted by my awful experience, but I did a program to become a technician in my field before going to engineering school and it was much more appropriate for my learning style.
Yup. If you enjoy the work but hate the school environment, you'll probably like being an engineer.
I'm a software engineer, so it's quite a bit different than other types of engineering, and I hated formal education but I absolutely love my job, even after many years.
Just use git.
Does it matter if you hate the work if it's the only thing you can find that pays more than subsistence wages?
Do any of our lives matter in this hell?
Depends if who you work for. If you work for bad management prepare for some goon to tell you what you should be doing, be wrong about what they tell you, not know what they want, and to demand it sooner than you tell them it will take. They will then change their mind and still expect it to take less time. They will be constantly frustrated with you and you will hate it.
Good management will find work with clear value to customers and you will feel valued and be given *mostly adequate time to do your work. You will put in your hours and be paid. You'll still be jerked around by typical corporate politics, but it's everywhere so buckle up. Better than ditch digging unless that's what you want.
Good management should insulate engineers from most of the corporate politics. My manager, for example, knows we get surprises, so they add in extra time to whatever estimate we give, and he tells stakeholders that this is a firm estimate, which they'll inevitably push back on and they'll concede down to something a little higher than our initial estimate (i.e. handle the corporate politics).
Depends on the person, depends on the University.
From what I've seen (very old anecdote here, take with salt) some engineering colleges will do everything within the ethics/honor code to obstruct your path to 2nd year. Then they do it again for 3rd. The result are brutally hard classes that are designed to weed students out more than teaching the subject at hand. Even on its best day, school doesn't mirror the real world, but neither does semester after semester of arbitrary hurdles for a degree. The workplace simply has entirely different, but far more palatable, bullshit on offer. IMO, it's completely valid to hate school but love your job afterwards.