<p>Which engineering major requires the least socialization (e.g. no presentations) in school and at work?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>I only had to do one or two presentations throughout school and I do some in work. ChemE.</p>
<p>My presentations for work have been mostly to colleagues and peers in a non-formal round table, and is more of a discussion than a presentation. Lately, however, they have become more formal because of my career path taking me into consulting.</p>
<p>So, I would venture to say that school has very little presentation opportunities for engineers. However, once out you may have to do more depending on what you want to do.</p>
<p>If you shy away from these things I would suggest Toastmasters to get over the fear. Not getting in front of others will greatly hinder your career.</p>
<p>Only 1 or 2? I had 10 that I can think of right now (that’s for engineering courses only). And that’s not including team projects/assignments that didn’t have presentations, which were plentiful. This was for civil engineering.</p>
<p>I’m working in construction management, and while I don’t have any presentations, I do have plenty of meetings, and my job requires constant interaction with everybody.</p>
<p>You probably would not get very far in your career without being at least somewhat social. My suggestion is to try to get over your distaste for social interaction so that when you are done with school, it doesn’t hamper your career.</p>
<p>As far as which major is the least social, I would have to say that in my experience, ECE majors or CS majors tend to keep to themselves more than most others.</p>
<p>Develop yourself just to the point where it doesn’t pull you down and work on your strengths. I don’t know if you mean social in terms of communicating, inter-personal skills or out-going etc. Technical people need to at least be able to communicate, managers need very good inter-personal skills, sales people need to be the out going and confident type.</p>
<p>If you want a good job you either</p>
<p>A) Know someone which means you may not be qualified but still get it anyway. Think networking, back-stabbing, charming your way to the top etc.
B) Have some skill that people are willing to pay you for regardless of personality. examples: heart surgeon, top programmer/software engineer, athlete etc
C) Start your own business and be your own boss.</p>
<p>You can get by with less than stellar “social” skills depending on what your strengths are…</p>
<p>Social interaction is very important to an engineer. From weekly/daily meetings to design reviews to career networking. You’ll have to present to others what you’ve done basically weekly.</p>
<p>It is much better to develop these during college than later in your career.</p>
<p>Besides, social people are much more enjoyable to be around. You’ll have more fun in life, because really, in the end, life is really about the people involved in it.</p>
<p>
Not true. ECE and CS majors have the most social interaction. They have to work in teams, spend after hours together. They have to work with marketing people, customers, vendors,…They have to present ideas, convince clients to win contracts. A lot of time they travel with marketing people to impress people.</p>
<p>coolweather, I never said that the job didn’t require social skills, as all engineering jobs really require social skills, but the schoolmates I had in those majors were, in general, the least social of all the engineers I was friends with, and that spans the GPA spectrum and across numerous people. Sure they need the skills, but in my experience, it is easier (and more common) for them to get by without them in college than in something like mechanical engineering.</p>
<p>Structural engineering, at least for consultants, requires a lot of social skills. We are constantly trying to come up with solutions to problems or ideas for building designs, which means discussions with architects, owners, contractors, and other engineers. We also spend a lot of time educating clients about the realities of the job. Like why we have to design a building for high seismic loads when we’ve never had an earthquake in our area! We have to be very diplomatic and have good listening skills, too - what does the owner REALLY want and need? This is the kind of stuff you don’t learn in school, but is vital to succeeding.</p>
<p>boneh3ad - Probably because the schedule for your major is different from the schedules of ECE and CS majors. I worked in the library in college and I found that ME, EE, ChemE majors spent a lot of time to study or do problem sets there. ECE and CS majors spent most of their time in programming lab at very odd hours and you don’t see them much during the normal hours. But they do have a lot of fun together. My roommate was an EE major and I had less social time with him than with my ECE/CS majors.</p>
<p>Most any type of engineering involves a good amount of team work, and thus socialization is a necessity. Besides, if you want to land a good job having good social skills is a must. Otherwise, you won’t get past the interview with the company.</p>
<p>Being hired is a mix of tech talent and being someone that your co-workers want to spend 10 hours a day with week in and week out.</p>
<p>Work on the social quotient, just as you would work on any year-long project. Make a plan; carry it out. There will be setbacks, but you will grow yourself in positive ways. Not everyone is naturally sociable; for a surprisingly large number, it is a learned skill.</p>
<p>to generalize what i’ve heard from many people farther in their careers, including engineers, your first promotion comes from your skill or intelligence, your second comes from how well you work with people and how friendly you are. after that, it’s mostly networking. obviously this is a generalization, but being able to collaborate with people is important.</p>
<p>do all engineering programs require a senior project and do those projects usually require presentation?</p>
<p>JV, have you thought about taking a public speaking class? Seriously, you’re most likely going to HAVE to make presentations at some point. You shouldn’t feel paralyzed by the thought of that! (yeah, easy for me to say - that’s why I decided not to get a PhD, because the thought of the oral exam terrified me!)</p>
<p>I cannot get myself to do it.
Too much pressure: cost of class, waste of a semester if I bomb the speech, the thought of being graded on the speech, percentage of weight given to the project… It is just to much for me.</p>
<p>You gotta take some risks sometime. Timidity is never rewarded in life. Fortune favors the bold.</p>
<p>If you never try, you’ll never fail.</p>
<p>Besides, it’s not like public speaking classes are graded on the basis of one speech. And Engineering classes aren’t graded on a single presentation you give.</p>
<p>And if you can’t handle the pressure of doing something that you’re not completely comfortable with, well tough, out the window go 95% of the jobs you qualify for. And that’s not even including the missed opportunities that you could have had.</p>
<p>Seriously. Learn to speak in front of an audience, it will be one of the most useful skills you ever learn.</p>
<p>I would say that pretty much every engineering major at every accredited program, and most unaccredited programs, all have a capstone project of some sort or another, and most of those will require you to have multiple presentations throughout the course of the semester. If the program is good, though, you will have done so many presentations in other classes by then that it will just be like second nature and you won’t even have to think twice about making your speech. Earlier classes will generally not have that much weight on the presentations, so it isn’t a lot of pressure.</p>
<p>By the time you get to senior design, presentations will be like second nature.</p>
<p>College is about challenging yourself. You have a safety net and you can make mistakes. You’re not going to grow if you don’t push yourself. I’m an engineer and not the most enthusiastic about public speaking. I’m pretty good with small groups, though, so I became a student ambassador at my school. Sitting on a panel about student life and fielding questions from prospective students and parents came easy. Giving campus tours was a challenge. I can do it, and am getting pretty good. I’ll never really, really enjoy it, though.</p>