<p>Hey guys, I have a question. I was wondering if experience in civil engineering would help in other branches of engineering, particularly in chemical or electrical engineering. I am a high school student who is now taking a civil engineering summer class, but am unsure whether it is useful at all because I am more interested in chemical or electrical engineering. Am I just wasting my summer by taking the class if I am uninterested in pursuing a career in civil engineering/architecture?</p>
<p>If taking the civil engineering class actually helps you later on in life (side job, desperate job, etc.) then you aren’t wasting your summer. This not not be the case if you skipped out on the chance to do something that would have helped your future more so such as taking chemical or electrical engineering classes instead.</p>
<p>I highly doubt it. It may not even be very helpful even if you were going into civil engineering. What kind of class is it? Is it through your high school or at a college?</p>
<p>It’s at a college, NYU Poly Tech</p>
<p>It depends on what class you took. As a civil engineering student, I highly doubt it will help you at all with ChE or EE. I took EE classes as well and they are very different from CE classes. From my knowledge, civil and electric engineers take different classes since 1st year.</p>
<p>Gah, well how much science does civil engineering actually utilize? I feel like its just mostly planning and drawing</p>
<p>It uses a lot of science to do the planning and drawing. Civil Engineers don’t just draw, they have to know when something is going to fail and when it’s going to be safe. Civil Engineers take a materials class of sorts, that studied materials at a atomic level. I could see this being directly applicable to Chemical Engineering. Also Mechanics of Materials which talks about materials reactions to loads, which could also be applicable. I took classes in high school that utilized computer programming and I found it helpful with the design aspect. Even if it’s a different field, it still go my brain thinking like an engineer.</p>
<p>Civil engineers learn about the materials used for structures and different forces acting on the structures. The point is to make sure the structures don’t fail.
So there are plenty of mechanics involved, not just drawing.</p>
<p>Is this an actual college course or a course for high school students taken at Polytech? It sounds like it’s more of an introduction to civil engineering / architecture kind of a class designed to tell students about the field.</p>