• Question: how did you get into engineering ?

    Asked by bobbielou12 to Paige, Martin, Joanne, Emily, Amit on 14 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Amit Pujari

      Amit Pujari answered on 9 Mar 2012:

      I was sure that I wanted to study engineering (but I was not sure of which kind).

      I always liked to know ‘how things work?’, ‘how to make things?’ ‘How to design things?’ and that is what engineering is about (in a sense)! Science is about understanding things which already exist in nature while engineering is about ‘creating/designing things’ based on science we know, making them better! In school years, I had interest in science modules but I was surprised to discover that you can create/design amazing things with engineering skills. Something which does not exist naturally but engineered by you. Something interesting, something innovative, something useful! Hence I decided to opt for engineering.

      Luckily I got good enough grades and a place at the University and I jumped on the course for undergrad!

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 9 Mar 2012:

      Well, when I was young I went through various phases of what I wanted to be when I grew up… at first it was a dolphin trainer (lol!), then it was a writer, then it was a doctor. I always loved biology and medicine, and looking at images of cells in my biology textbook.

      When I was in high school, I went to a summer camp at Rose Hulman, a small engineering college in Indiana. There, a women engineering student came to talk to us about what she did in her career. She designed artificial (mechanical) hearts. She traveled around the United States helping surgeons implant the artificial heart she helped to design inside of people who needed new hearts! Basically, what she did sounded WAY cool… I wanted to do exactly what she did. That is why I decided that I wanted to go into Biomedical Engineering. Biomedical Engineers often help design artificial limps, artificial hearts, and other artificial organ transplants.

    • Photo: Emily Bullen

      Emily Bullen answered on 11 Mar 2012:

      Well, I’ve always liked science,  and I’ve never been very good at remembering things without understanding them. I particularly liked biology and chemistry, and learning about the explanations for every day things. 
      My dad was an engineer, and he encouraged me to do engineering, so I decided to study chemical engineering, as I liked chemistry…
      As it turns out this wasn’t such a good reason as there’s very  little chemistry in chemical engineering, but as it happens I love what I do! 
      I guess I was quite lucky to end up liking it, it’s a subject that most people don’t know about, and I love spreading the word!

    • Photo: Joanne Davies

      Joanne Davies answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Hello there bobbielou12.

      It’s quite a long and very intriguing story, but basically I did lots of other things before I eventually decided what I really wanted to do.

      I went to university to study Engineering and I chose my course because I found most of the subjects fascinating. I learned how to make things, what materials to use, how to communicate ideas effectively, how to draw and I even learned that science is a lot easier than people think.

      Since I graduated, I’ve never looked back.
      It’s the best thing I ever did with my career.

    • Photo: Martin Wallace

      Martin Wallace answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      I always found construction toys really interesting and have always been really interested in how things work. I started engineering at university because I found Maths and Physics were my strongest subjects, and they seemed to fit together very well in an engineering course.

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