• Question: When did you realise that you wanted to be an engineer

    Asked by ChristabelRS on 22 Nov 2021. This question was also asked by sofiac.
    • Photo: Neel Pun

      Neel Pun answered on 22 Nov 2021: last edited 22 Nov 2021 9:54 am

      During my school & college days, I was always interested in science and in how things worked. I liked trying to fix things and make them work better. I used to fix computers for my family and friends. My uncle was always happy to see his broken computer working. He used to call me his problem solver. I enjoyed finding out how things worked, and engineering allows me to use that drive to solve problems and improve people’s lives

    • Photo: Femi Olushola

      Femi Olushola answered on 22 Nov 2021:

      I was really little when I realised I wanted to understand how things worked. I was especially interested in how electricity and electronics worked and how they made places become so much more alive.

    • Photo: Jack Bedell-Pearce

      Jack Bedell-Pearce answered on 22 Nov 2021:

      I never made a conscious decision to become an engineer, and it certainly wasn’t something I wanted to become when I was a child. The problem was, I didn’t really understand what it was to be “an engineer” – I always assumed it was someone with a maths or physics degree working on complicated diagrams and models.

      All I was interested in was playing video games, upgrading my PC (to play better video games) and figuring out how to connect computers together over a local area network (LAN) to…. you guessed it, play video games with my friends! What I didn’t realise is that all that experience of mucking around with computers was giving me loads of experience. I was very lucky that something I was passionate about would eventually become not only my job, but a company I’d co-found with another person who was as passionate about IT.

    • Photo: Steve Bowes-Phipps

      Steve Bowes-Phipps answered on 22 Nov 2021:

      I wanted to be an engineer up to the age of 15 (to follow my Dad) – then I wanted to be a computer programmer (coder), then I ended up learning engineering as a Data Centre Manager, wishing I’d taken some kind of engineering course when I was younger! Never too late though…

    • Photo: kristina kerwin

      kristina kerwin answered on 22 Nov 2021:

      Great question! I was always a hands-on person. As a child, I used to take things apart to see how they work and put them back together (which didn’t always work:)). I used to always watch my parents when they did DIY. My favourite toy was my dad’s toolbox and Mechano. When I was 9 I set up an electric pedal on the hand-operated antique sewing machine and since then I was tinkering for the next 25 years, but not professionally. My engineering career didn’t start till I was 37 when I finally realised that engineering is what I am good at. I used to have a desk-based 9-5 office job, but I used to always help fix things around the office and people who didn’t know me would often mistake me for an engineer, so eventually, I decided to requalify and become one, to finally do something I really enjoyed doing. I think deep inside I always knew I was an engineer, but I didn’t raise that till later on in life.

    • Photo: Amber Villegas - Williamson

      Amber Villegas - Williamson answered on 22 Nov 2021:

      I don’t think I ever had a moment where I realised I wanted to be an engineer, in school I wanted to be a pathologist (I blame the X-Files). I did however love science and would choose anything in school that involved science. One time I had a disagreement with my physics teacher about flip-flop gates and spent my whole lunch hour trying to prove him wrong, instead of being angry or upset he encouraged me to try and when all the evidence showed he was correct my mind was blown! He was the one who put me forward to do the first ever A-Level in Electronics in the school which was a remote A-Level and the teacher was based in Wales (sounds great until you realise that when I did remote learning we were still using dial up modems!). One thing led to another and now I travel the world helping Data Centres improve their operations and avoid potential future issues.

    • Photo: Mo Shivji

      Mo Shivji answered on 22 Nov 2021:

      When I started an electromics CSE/O-Level course at secondary school and enjoyed the maths and physics behind it,

    • Photo: John Odejobi

      John Odejobi answered on 22 Nov 2021: last edited 22 Nov 2021 1:10 pm

      When I opened up a transistor Radio and I found electronics components against “not human” as imagined… Lol. I picked interest in how my dad was able to fix faults on so many devices/machines. These led to my interest in becoming an Electrical/Electronics Engineer.

    • Photo: Richard Clifford

      Richard Clifford answered on 23 Nov 2021:

      To be honest I didn’t know what I wanted to do at school and college, but I have always enjoyed sport, football in particular, and always used/messed around with technology.

      My interest in technology / engineering drove my selection of courses at College and then University because I recognised it was something I was interested in, had plenty of options and career paths. To be honest I was moving in a direction, but also still unsure of what I wanted to do and so I wanted to keep my options open, learning what I did and didn’t like as I went along.

      I took my first job out of University in IT Security, it was and still is an exciting industry. This was a with a local small family run business. The smaller business gave me an excellent understanding of business in general, and I would highly recommend this approach as it gives you exposure to all elements how business works. But this also made me realise I wanted to be in a different area, whilst exciting, I wanted the opportunity to make a difference to improving energy efficiency and that is what led me to Keysource and the Data Centre Engineering world.

    • Photo: Jeico Castro

      Jeico Castro answered on 23 Nov 2021: last edited 23 Nov 2021 12:33 pm

      I have to be honest and say I didn’t really know what I wanted to be even after I finished college. IT was a strong point in all the subjects I took and university was not an option due to the hike in price so I decided to do an apprenticeship where I could learn whilst on the job and get paid doing it and it just snowballed from there. It was difficult to begin with having to learn and get experience but as I did so, I became more and more vital to the company I worked for and I suppose that is when I realised working in IT suited my strong point to think logically and with the determination to have a successful career, I decided to keep on with it I have to say it was worth it!

    • Photo: Paul Jones

      Paul Jones answered on 23 Nov 2021:

      Hi,

      I sort of just fell into it you could say. After school was finished I went to university and studied economics, but I found that very boring. I always liked to tinker on my motorbikes and I loved all things mechanical. When I look back the most important thing I can think of is that I always wanted to learn, with the right motivation you can do anything…

    • Photo: Antoni De Vincenzo

      Antoni De Vincenzo answered on 29 Nov 2021:

      I realised when I started to become more involved in the installation process and building of new data centres

Comments

  • Photo: Ally

    Ally commented on :

    It was sort of an accident that I became an engineer! I really liked Chemistry at school, and wanted to do something exciting and help the environment. I got my job as a Chemist but found out that the most exciting projects were looking for engineers to work on them, so I started to learn about engineering to be able to work on interesting things!