<p>I am an enrolling at Cal this fall into the department of Civil Engineering and have two questions regarding engineering career choice:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I still have a few small doubts on my major and have been thinking on changing it perhaps. I was thinking about changing to a dual in MechE and BioE but I have decided to continue with a major in Civil and do either a minor or a dual major with Bioengineering. Would you recommend this combination? Why or why not? Also if I want to do graduate school in bioengineering (but I still want the civil engineering diploma)?</p></li>
<li><p>Bioengineering vs. Biomedical Engineering at Berkeley. Is it the same or is bioengineering to broad. I specifically wanted Biomedical Engineering as I want to be involved in the medical research but truly how different are they?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I once asked my linguistics professor, after having become very fond of linguistics, whether or not I should consider a double-major in linguistics in addition to my original major. “What’s your major?” the great Dr. Nancy asked me. I said, “Civil engineering. What do you think?”</p>
<p>Nancy said, “It’s a lousy idea, unless you think you can teach bridges to talk.”</p>
<p>Haaaaa. (Truly, though, hysterical woman… used to warm up the crowd for Seinfeld.)</p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend combining civil engineering and bioengineering mainly because… what’re you going to do with it? There’s not really any reason other than masochism or indecision to do such a thing to yourself.</p>
<p>Ever heard the phrase, “Jack of all trades, master of none”? Adults in the real world don’t particularly view double majors as being something that are incredibly valuable. It kind of makes you look like you don’t really know what you want to do when you grow up. If you happen to take a lot of fun classes and end up getting a second major along the way, then that’s fine, but don’t divide your time between several different majors if you don’t have an actual goal for using them as a career goal. I mean, they divided these subjects into different departments for a reason in the first place.</p>