<p>Hello, i'm a junior in HS this year and i am only now beginning to realize that i am confused. It is getting closer and closer to decision-making time, and these are by no means inconsequential decisions. Decisions pertaining to college will have implications on the rest of my life, and I am sadly just now beginning to question myself. Now, of all times. lol so I have always had this dream of being an engineer. I don't even remember when i first decided on this. Honestly, it seems like it was just something that i was naturally attracted to from a very young age. I'm intrigued by what engineering encompasses. It is the one field of study and profession that i could honestly say is both safe (there will always be a high demand for skilled engineers as far as i can tell) and exiting (challenging, but fulfilling).
I have always thought of myself as a good math and science student, which i figured would play to my advantage as an engineering hopeful. Naturally, english, history, writing, and other more humanities focused subjects took a backseat to maths and sciences, or so i thought.</p>
<p>This is what worries me: Though i give the VAST majority of my academic time to math and science subjects, these are the very subjects i struggle with the most. Meanwhile, my english, history, spanish, and other non-math/science grades flourish, even in spite of my apathy of them. </p>
<p>To further my worries, my test scores are not those typical of what i think an engineering prospect's might be. My math/science SAT and ACT scores are so-so. However, my CR, English, and Writing scores are my strong suit in my testing. </p>
<p>Should i be discouraged to pursue engineering? Might i be better suited for the humanities?</p>
<p>If so, i blame everything on my English major Father, and my librarian Grandmother.
haha
Lemme know what you think</p>
<p>I’m also stronger in humanities & the english language. However I consider myself one of those who has strengths in almost anything I try for, and you’re probably very similar in that respect. Just do what you FEEL like you should do and what you want to do. You can be good at anything and everything if you practice.
If anything I think the humanities/English background will help u…</p>
<p>Also everybody struggles with math and science. They’re great equalizers in that respect. EVERYONE needs to study for it, the degree as to how much changes from person to person… But that’s the beauty of it! Calculus is beautiful =) !</p>
<p>Yeah i figure i would regret not going after engineering in college if i were to decide not to. But i would really prefer to not flunk out of an engineering program as a result of my lack of talent in the necessary areas, you know? Flunking out of college could really ruin a dudes day, or so ive heard.</p>
<p>not really (about flunking out). I know a few people who knew that they were supposed to be Mechanical engineers while they were in high school, went to college, messed up big time in all their classes (got a 1.5), got separated, came back, and not only finished school with a 3.5, but ended up getting a really good job right out of college. Not to simply it (since im struggling with this too) but just keep to your guns and keep working on it if you really feel like this is what you want to do. Dont let any class deter you from becoming an engineer if thats what you want</p>
<p>Go with what you love to do. If it is engineering, my advice is go to a small engineering school where your GPA and SATs put you in the top half… or even top 25%. There are a huge range of jobs in engineering - only a small percentage requiring very complicated maths, so these can be easily avoided if this turns out not to be your strength. </p>
<p>In contrast, communication skills are vitally important to almost all engineering jobs as this is how you get things done within organizations, so later you will really benefit from being one of the better communicating engineers!!!</p>
<p>I don’t understand why so many people think science and/or engineering are “mysterious” professions that only a “chosen few” may pursue; there are more challenging professions out there, such as medicine, teaching, or painter (art).</p>
<p>OP, if you are interested in engineering and you think you can dedicate yourself 110% to engineering, then by all means, pursue an engineering career. Otherwise, save yourself the trouble and simply get a job where you can obtain experience.</p>
<p>Compared to other majors, science and/or engineering are relatively easy for those that are willing to cope with the workload; the real challenge in those fields (actually, any field) comes when you encounter new concepts and ideas. Beyond that, everything else is practice. It’s much easier to develop Newton’s Calculus than sculpting Michaelangelo’s Pieta.</p>
<p>Don’t stress yourself over this decision; it really does not affect your life that much (childhood is the most important stage of human life); focus on finding something that will not bore you to tears for the next 4 years.</p>
<p>OP, I walked out of high school with an average GPA, I was nothing special in my class. My math skills weren’t anything to brag about, and in fact I have quite a few friends in engineering now, and even gradated or about to that were the same. </p>
<p>Just be ready to work for your degree, it’s not like most degrees like fashion apparel or business, you actually have to work for this.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be MIT material, because most companies look for graduating students that have the mechanical knowledge, as well as the degree(obviously) but they want someone who they don’t have to baby and teach from the ground up. A lot of times it’s not about how book smart you are.</p>
<p>Inspiring! Say more please! The trend I’m reading is: you just have to be willing to work hard in school. No one understood Newton from birth except maybe Newton himself. Would I be willing to swap out a few frat house parties a week for office hours with a professor instead? Yeah, I am.</p>
<p>Enginox your madness about science and math not being difficult is just insane. Stop it! You’re giving people a false sense of security, mathematics is difficult and so is science. Just because you can be good at it if you put in enough hours doesn’t make it easy, that’s just flawed logic. What you should be saying to encourage people is to be ready to practice and work hard and truly make an effort to learn and to master the material.</p>
<p>Besides, most jobs don’t require the sort of innate talent that it takes to sculpt a masterpiece. The development of Calculus or any mathematical concept is simply incredible and ground-breaking and there is about less than maybe 5% or 10% of the population that even has the mathematical and abstract mentality to even think of such things. In addition, medicine is a science, so saying science is harder than science just doesn’t make sense. In some respects, medicine is easier. In some respects engineering is easier. Both are difficult because both require higher level thinking.</p>
<p>Just because you’ve learned or mastered calculus doesn’t mean you could’ve discovered it if you had to. That’s called hindsight bias. I think intuition is required to learn science and mathematics to its core. Yes anyone can learn how to do a derivative but how many people actually understand why and how it is the way it is and the plethora of uses such an amazingly simple tool can be used for?</p>
<p>I agree with hadsed. The conversation reminds me of some people on a running website I frequent - because they’re naturally fast, they assume that it shouldn’t be that hard for ANYBODY to become fast, with some consistent training. Guess what, I will NEVER be fast, and I wouldn’t have been fast even when I was 18! On the other hand, science and math come easily to me, but I realize that’s not the case for a lot of people. It shouldn’t be surprising that different people have natural abilities in different areas.</p>
<p>Medicine and engineering are both extremely difficult, but their differences are very polar. One is more difficult than the other in its own respect; engineering with complicated theories and medicine with extreme memorization + stressful clinical performance.</p>
<p>*I only read from hadsed down, so I may be out of context.</p>
<p>Also, something that really pulls me to engineering is the focus on innovation. That just seems like it is the coolest thing you could do with your life. Invent stuff. You advance humanity. You have the ability to make an impact on a broad scope. You know?</p>
<p>Learning the material is the easy part. Putting the effort, time, and dedication to learn said material is the difficult part. What bothers me is people promoting the idea that science or engineering is only reserved for a “chosen few”; upon hearing this, many people turn their backs towards science and engineering because they falsely believe the lack the “it” to learn it.</p>
<p>Anything one learns in undergrad and perhaps grad school is the product of years of work and sacrifice by countless scientists and engineers. No one is asked to construct a mathematical system from scratch, derive physical laws from scratch, etc. Most of what we learn has been polished and researched by others.</p>
<p>The real challenge comes when an individual is researching a new aspect of science and engineering that few people or no one at all knows about. At that point is not so much what that person knows but the amount of dedication and sacrifice they are willing to put in order to advance science.</p>
<p>Science and engineering are easy. Taking the time to learn them is not. What’s hard to understand about that?</p>
And if you lack the critical thinking skills necessary to develop experiments targeted to answer and verify/reject your hypotheses, then what? What if you’re great at visualizing things, and so civil or mechanical engineering seems easier than electrical engineering, where it’s less visualizing and more paper (math) work. Some things are more than being just about putting in the time and effort. </p>
<p>I definitely agree that learning through research is the most challenging and requires a LOT of time and effort, but you need more than just time and effort. Like I said above, if you don’t even have the skills necessary to develop experiments that would be able to accurately answer your problem/question, then you’re literally at a dead-end!</p>