• Question: At what age did you begin engineering?

    Asked by branflakes123 to Al, Emma, Ivanka, James, Omar on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: James Vokes

      James Vokes answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      I don’t think you wake up one day and start engineering. I think you just have a passion for certain subjects and you want to apply them. So you may realise one day you are really interested in chemicals you become a chemical engineer. Cars, so you become a design engineer.

      I didn’t know I was going to be an engineer until I got the job. I’m a terrible role model for those people who want to be an engineer from the get go. I just wanted to learn more and then I ran out of money and asked “Who’ll pay me to do stuff using the knowledge I have?” and very luckily Thales came along.

    • Photo: Ivanka Brown

      Ivanka Brown answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      I think in order to answer this you probably have to look at what engineering is. Google tells me “The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems.”

      hm – I guess that means that I became an engineer during my first job in engineering when they started making what I was designing. My first paid engineering job was when I was 20 in between my 2nd and 3rd year of university.

    • Photo: Al Bartlett

      Al Bartlett answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Hello Branflakes123,

      My first real engineering job was when i left school at 16 to start a Modern Apprenticeship in Mechanical Engineering. I moved from my home in Essex to Brimingham to learn about engineering with a big company that used to make boilers and structural steel pieces for Nuclear Power Stations. It was a brilliant time for me and i think it was the best decision i could have made.

      Feel free to ask anything else, I hopw this helps.

    • Photo: Omar Mustufvi

      Omar Mustufvi answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      I would say I started engineering when I was 8 years old and had a box of Meccano in front of me.

    • Photo: Emma Bould

      Emma Bould answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      I think I was about 4 (when I was tall enough to reach the screwdrivers in my dad’s workshop).

      But I finished my degree when I was 21, my first engineering job was when I was at University at 19…. so i’m not really sure when I started engineering exactly!

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