• Question: What advice woud you give to someone wishing to go into engineering?

    Asked by laceyc to Amit, Emily, Joanne, Martin, Paige on 16 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by shivani.
    • Photo: Martin Wallace

      Martin Wallace answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      I would say look into what interests you about engineering. Is it the industry you want to work in? – for example you might really want to work with racing cars; Is it the fact that you like designing things that look nice? – in which case product design engineering might be the way forward.
      The best advice I would give is that if you do know what you want to do, work towards it as best you can. If you have a burning ambition to work in nuclear power, find out as much as you can and work hard to study a relevant course. If however you’re not sure which industry to go in, study a more general course and keep your options open. It is very possible to go into any engineering industry with a general engineering degree.
      Additionally it is very useful to engineers to understand how all the disciplines fit together. A Mechanical engineer might not need to understand everything about electronics, but if they were working on the structure of a robot, it would help to be able to understand enough to have discussions with the electronic engineers.

    • Photo: Amit Pujari

      Amit Pujari answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Engineering is interesting and fun. But engineering is also a big area.

      If you like to know ‘how things work’, ‘how to design or build things’, ‘how to improve existing things by new design, idea, concept’, etc. then engineering might be a right choice for you.

      But which kind of engineer you want to be is the next question.
      See what interests you the most? If you like cars, aeroplanes then may be you want to consider mechanical engineering. If you are interested in biology/medicine as well as engineering, then biomedical engineering may be right choice for you. If you are interested in chemical formulae etc. then chemical engineering might be an option, if you like computers, programming etc. then computer engineering can be your choice.

      But you also need to be careful, as Martin says, liking for cars for their design does not necessarily mean you would like building them. So think on what you are really interested in.
      Frankly, when I started for my undergrad, I had no idea what my career will look like. It is often difficult to decide (precisely everything) early on. But even if you know where your general and strong interests are that should be enough. There can be plenty of time later to decide what you want to specialise in.

    • Photo: Joanne Davies

      Joanne Davies answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Do your best at everything laceyc and that way you will end up with the most choices and opportunities. You can make any important decisions later on. 🙂

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Choose a line of education or research that interests you!!! You should be passionate about your wrok, not looking for its financial benefits necessarily. If one type of enginering doesnt work for you, try another! Work hard and have fun!!!!

    • Photo: Emily Bullen

      Emily Bullen answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Go for it!!
      It will be hard work at times, but it’s all worth it in the end. I would also tell you to always try and remember to think about how you will end up using what you learn. As we have said before, and engineering degree is about learning a way of thinking, and how to approach things you haven’t worked on before. It’s not about learning a bunch of equations off by heart (although you may well end up doing that a bit…)
      You definitely have the right attitude for engineering! 🙂

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