<p>I am a high school sophomore looking at my options. Since I was little I thought about how things worked and how to make things like crossbows and cannons. Engineering was a natural choice for me. I am intelligent enough to pursue an engineering degree and I am willing to sacrifice my private life for studying. The thing that is making it hard for me to pick a degree is that I don't want to work in a cubicle everyday.</p>
<p>I can't go to the same job and sit in some office and crunch numbers for the rest of my life. I'd like to go where the action happen. I'd like to actually have change. So really what I am asking is what engineering major will lead to a job that doesn't focus on a cubicle career. </p>
<p>Right now I am looking a lot of stuff up about civil engineering. If I become a civil engineer will I get to visit my construction sites and meet with clients or other things like that? Or will I just sit in an office? </p>
<p>I’m sure there are jobs like what you’re looking for in most fields. And I definitely understand what you’re talking about. </p>
<p>So yea, Civil, you could be out, Mechanical, Environmental, Aerospace… Like I said, pretty much anyone will have a lot of desk jobs and then some on site jobs. </p>
<p>Perhaps consider Petroleum Engineering. I went to listen to a petroleum engineer speak about his experiences and it seemed pretty exciting. He did a lot of on site work overseas. Plus, I hear it pays well.</p>
<p>So there’s an idea, although I would suggest picking based more on your interests 'cause if you look hard enough, you should find what you’re looking for.</p>
You may spend anywhere from 0% to 100% of your time on site. I was a civil engineering major in college and chose to go into construction management and spend approximately 65% of my time out on the construction site, with the remaining 35% in the field office inside the site. I am rarely in my home office (I don’t even have a security pass to get into it). </p>
<p>A friend of mine, who was also a civil engineering major in college, is in structural engineering and spend 95% of her time in the office. On the other hand, she has colleagues that spend a significant percentage of their time on construction sites as well.</p>
<p>When my S was a hs senior, he was able to job shadow engineers in a couple of different fields. He was always interested in EE (and he did eventually graduate ECE), but he shadowed a structural/civil engineer as well. In his case, this was part of his hs’s “senior transition project.”</p>
<p>But perhaps you could set something like this up individually. Contact friends of your parents in engineering jobs, or parents of your classmates, or through other methods of networking. I would imagine there would be several who would allow you to job shadow them for a week/one day a week… something like that.</p>
<p>When my S shadowed that particular structural engineer, a lot of the time was on a construction site; some was doing some kind of clean-up of their CAD files.</p>
<p>Definitely structural or anything construction related. Environmental or chemical could if it is for a water treatment plant or something of that nature.</p>
<p>I don’t think a career as a ‘site engineer’ exists. I’m working an an environmental engineer and spend about 70% of my time in the field but thats because I’ve just started. As you progress, you’ll spend more and more time in the office, after i’d say 5-7 years you’ll have almost no fieldwork. This is because you’ll get raises as you move up its better use of the company’s money to have you designing or writing reports from your office. At least thats how in works in environmental engineering…</p>