Is part of the appeal in engineering for anyone else the difficulty of it? I like that I’m working my brain overtime. I like that people think I’m intelligent for all of my A’s. And I really like that I’m taking classes no one in my family could ever take. I especially like how hard the classes make me think. It just makes me motivated and kind of happy.
I was just wondering if anyone else felt the same?
The appeal is having a a resonably dependable job market and dependably higher paying job.
@PrimeMeridian
Yea, that too. Especially the job market.
And, unlike other high-paying professions, a engineering career can be achieved with only an undergraduate degree.
Plus, an engineering degree enables you to work in a broad range of fields. Engineers can work in finance, marketing, teaching, theater, whatever. But finance, marketing, education, drama grads can’t work as engineers.
The appeal for me is 100% that I enjoy learning about specific topics that interest me. Whether or not, I “WOWed” people by intelligence made little to no difference in my complete satisfaction of undergraduate education. Most certainly I never considered whether or not my parents or other family could do what I do because I know I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am without them.
In short, for me it is all because of my love of the field and hope that I can make difference in the area I specialize in. It’s about using talents that I have to make a contribution, no matter how small it is. However, it may be easier to see beyond the satisfaction of making A’s and feeling intelligent once you are in graduate school.
This. Most people who go in to engineering are in it for the money.
We’d see a lot more physics and math majors if challenge and passion could pay off student loans.
Hmmm… I’d say that a lot of the students that go into engineering purely for the money end up transferring to easier majors. The odds of surviving the tough/set academics are better when there is aptitude, persistence and passion for problem solving,
My heroes as a kid were the astronauts. The space age was just beginning and these guys were many people’s heroes. My path just kind of morphed into wanting to be an engineer and work for NASA. I wasn’t thinking about how difficult it was or how much money I could make or how “safe” a career path it was. It just seemed cool. As I grew older, all those other factors became more important. But the one thing that keeps me going is the challenge and the fact that, even after 40 years as an engineer, I am continually learning new things.
This is probably correct for most students who are only in it for the money but do not have much inherent interest in the subject; they will find studying engineering too difficult and/or uninteresting to continue.
However, the usually good job and career prospects for engineering does mean that those who are attracted to engineering due to inherent interest are not deterred from it the way that some students attracted to subjects with generally worse job and career prospects may be deterred from choosing those subjects as their majors. (Though sometimes students’ assumptions about job and career prospects associated with majors are not accurate.)