<p>Okay, so I'm in my second semester as a freshman at Michigan State University. I didn't go to college for any kind of "experiences" or "life long friendships" or to get trashed every weekend and sleep with frat guys.
I went because I want a degree that'll get me a job that gives me independence and freedom to leave Michigan if I want to. I feel like most people are really passionate about their majors, either they just LOVE teaching or they just LOVE helping people which is why they chose nursing.
I don't really get excited about anything. I'm fairly confident I'll be happy in practically ANY job, as long as it isn't too stressful, I get some vacation time, and I have friendly coworkers. </p>
<p>So, I chose Engineering because I like math and hoped I would get excited about robots and programming and all the other engineering type stuff. Okay, so I'm not excited about it but I'm about 90% sure I wouldn't be excited if I switched to a Business major or something.
My first semester I did pretty good. I studied a lot, worked almost 30 hours a week, and managed a 3.7 GPA. This semester I have harder classes and I expect my average to drop to about a 3.2-3.4, which is still something I'm happy with. </p>
<p>Does anyone else feel this lack of excitement and motivation? I don't like school and I'm ready to be done. I'm not excited about a career, but excited about having a job I enjoy that allows me to do more important things in life like be a mother and cook dinner every night. Why do I feel like this? Am I even going to be able to get a job in the engineering field that is laid back and nonstressful? </p>
<p>I feel like if I were to drop out of college, I may be able to get a job paying $14/hour but I would never be able to do the things I enjoy because money would always be tight. Should I just suck it up and get through the next 3 years of college, graduate, and hopefully find a 60k a year job that makes me happy?</p>
<p>I think perhaps you are just noticing the people who are excited about their subjects, because they talk about it, but not noticing the rest of the people just not talking about it like that. Maybe take a poll or something to assure yourself that most people don’t get all excited. Your grades show that you must not be miserable. I think you should just keep moving forward. Unless you have something else that you actually are excited about, and it is reasonable, then there is no point to drop out. You probably will not be “excited” at a $14/hr job.</p>
<p>Yes, suck it up… Unless you placed out of most of them, you are still taking the basic pre-engineering science/math classes. It will get more interesting. Seek out support from others. Join a female engineering club or start one. Engineering is one of the best undergrad educations to be had. It opens so many doors. Most of the engineers I know are happy in their careers. I can’t say that about the physicians and lawyers I know. School is school, you will not be excited all of the time. I read a study conducted by the university of Texas. They were trying to understand why so many women were dropping out of engineering. They found that for some reason women felt they were not doing as well as the men, even when they were doing just as well. They concluded that the feedback that was given in typical engineering programs was not as supportive as what seemed to be required. So start your own support group, do problem sets with friends, find something to enjoy about the experience and please stay the course. You will not regret it. </p>
<p>A large part of college is arguably the experience itself… This experience is what motivates you, keeps you focused, inspired, happy, and allows you to find (through experience) your interests. I find that students on here often blow off the “college experience” as something that is meaningless or irrelevant, but I think that’s a big mistake. A good experience in college can have a lifelong impact on you… it can make the difference between being completely dissatisfied and dropping out of college altogether, to completely re-inventing yourself after high school. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Absolutely not. College was a blast for me. I wasn’t necessarily the party type, but I always found fun things to do with friends, and found the campus environment where I was at to be inspiring… which helped keep me motivated.</p>
<p>I suggest if you are not finding the same satisifaction where you are at to perhaps look at another school that better fits your personality/interests. If that’s not a possibility, then I would encourage you to either find other ways of enjoying college more (friends?, clubs?, hobbies?), or perhaps change majors to a less stressful one. Engineering is stressful no matter how you slice it… however, if you’re in the right environment, that stress is much more tolerable.</p>
<p>Maybe nobody warned you that the engineering curriculum is a grind and takes stamina. Spring semester is worse than fall. You will look around, see people not working as hard as you, and having way more fun. And you will start to doubt your choices. Engineering is a straight path to the middle class, but not an easy one.</p>
<p>But something happens about junior year - you start to realize that all of that extra work is making you smarter. All that work that didn’t seem to have any real-life usefulness pops up in real-life applications. It will eventually make sense.</p>
<p>The career itself has its own ups and downs. One day you will be filling out non-conformance paperwork (about that TPS report …) for purple wire when you clearly requested violet. The next day you get a call from NASA letting you know your project is performing brilliantly. To get to the standout moments you will need to work through a seemingly infinite number of mundane ones.</p>
<p>Maybe watch Mae Jemison’s TED talk for inspiration. To parrot the others, find something else to do besides engineering, some way to recharge and express yourself. For me, it was riding bicycles and playing indoor soccer. Find what works for you. You clearly have the capacity, now find the persistence. It will eventually work out.</p>
<p>Meh, I did engineering for the same reason and I was no more interested in CS than I was in any of 5 or 6 other subjects but I majored in it for the money. It’s paid off and I don’t regret it.</p>
<p>I started a lot like you. I went into CCNYs engineering program purely for the money. I tried to rationalize the decision by saying it’s a better idea than going to art school for a hand drawn animation degree, or to a small liberal arts school for creative writing.</p>
<p>I flunked calculus 1 and chemistry. In hindsight I should studied more. But that was such a foreign concept to me, studying on a daily basis for something (in my perspective) so dull and uninspiring. People apparently have and can study something just for the high job. My second semester, by far, is much more engaging for me. I don’t think I will be getting a civil engineering degree, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>Also, if you’re a girl, I hear engineering employers can be quite sexist. Well, not sexist in, “make me a sandwich,” but in that they think you as weaker or less competent, almost to a state of worry or over protection. That’s the gist I got from reddit, anyway. :p</p>
<p>Money is a good thing, though. If it’s enough motivation for you, go right ahead. After all, I’ve heard that even students who LOVE engineering can have a quarterly crisis.</p>
<p>@megganw Take a step back and try to see things with some perspective. The first year of engineering school can certainly be challenging, but I would recommend finishing the semester strong. You chose engineering for a reason and I doubt you would feel as challenged or fulfilled switching to another major, and certainly not if you drop out. I recommend reaching out to friends and upperclassmen in your major. Feel free to send me a personal message if you like.</p>
<p>College engineering programs are a real grind. For someone who isn’t in to it, it can be a lot worse. You should enjoy doing engineering if you plan to make it your profession. Remember that you could be working at your career for 30 years or more. As a professional engineer, you will have good days and not so good days; just the nature of any job. Those bad days can be h*** if you don’t enjoy what you are doing.</p>
<p>You should try and change your attitude. One way to do that would be to get involved in some kind of undergraduate research or project work. Classes can be a little dry and dull, Project work can be much more exciting. Try a smaller project as the big ones tend to have upperclassmen doing all the fun stuff and the freshmen the less attractive parts. Smaller ones tend get every one involved more or less equally.</p>
<p>Also, go out and make those friendships that will last a lifetime. Do stuff together and have fun. Go hiking, go to a ball game, the movies, etc. It has been several decades since I graduated and I still keep in touch with my college buddies. We’ve watched each others’ careers, marriages and kids grow and flourish. We still joke about some of the things we did in college and the other people we met. My wife is the same way. She is going on a business trip in a few weeks and has added a weekend on to it to spend time with an old college roommate. Friends like that are part of what life is all about.</p>
<p>As silly as it seems, those “career tests” which rate your various plusses and minuses and what you enjoy/don’t seem to hold some truth, I think…</p>
<p>A suggestion that worked for myself and many friends of mine: Think about what you like to do in your free time. If the answer is even something as seemingly vague like “watch tv shows” or “hang out with friends”, that might still be a telltale still about things to think about that you might like doing all the time for a career. For example, what kind of TV shows do you like? Crime? Political? Mythbusters? They all fit somewhere… trust me, I’ve done a lot of thinking about this, too!</p>
<p>My friend realized he caught himself reading through photography magazines at Barnes and Noble all the time over the other magazines, took the hint and a number of courses later found himself as a photography major who is about to get his degree and is very happy with himself. I, on the other hand, was a journalism major (i love to write) but found myself being really interested taking apart car dashboards and setting up sound systems when I should have been writing a paper to see what I was capable of. Super exciting? No, not really, but really interesting to me, yes. What i know I’ll be able to work on and think about when I’m out the school door on the other end will make me really like my job. I find it really interesting, but not mind-blowing amazing, and I’ve realized that that’s not the result I’ll get unless I’m skydiving or blowing up cars or something giving me an adrenaline rush.</p>
<p>I took this test in high school as an assignment (Meyers Briggs test), and to this day it’s still right. It guessed engineering for me among other options, and that’s where I gravitated after a couple years of hard thought of “What do i like to do in my free time?” - Give it a shot:</p>
<p>I don’t much anymore but I used to play Civilization a lot. What’s your take? </p>
<p>Be careful when you leave Michigan. You don’t like Michigan, there are plenty of places you’re gonna like a whole lot less. </p>
<p>To contradict most posters here, I don’t think you need to be extremely excited about what you study. I can’t tell you if there are long-term implications from that, but just getting through college is not so hard even if you’re not ecstatic about what you study. If you hate it so much you can’t motivate yourself to study at all that’s a problem, which might be one if you’re projecting your GPA to drop by .5 (meaning your current semester GPA would be about 2.7), but only you can say, not us. </p>
<p>I had plenty of classes I was not excited about at all, and a few I was excited about. I think I added it all up once and only about 1/4 of the classes I took was I actually interested in the material. And some of that wasn’t even engineering, I took and enjoyed Philosophy and Economics classes much more than most of my engineering classes. </p>
<p>Put it this way, if every bachelor’s degree left you with the same employment prospects, how many people do you think would major in engineering? Not many. It is not abnormal to do it for the money, don’t let yourself feel that it is. </p>
You’re cleverer than most of us were at your age. </p>