<p>Major: Aerospace w/minor in Astrophysics.
School: A top ten in AE</p>
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<li>The hardest course I’ve taken so far is electronics/instrumentation. It has been the hardest because it involves no math and is strictly a technician level overview of a couple different EE intro/mid level courses/topics (electric circuits, digital logic, analog & digital electronics). By contrast, I loved my EE circuits class (elective), give me a Laplace transform or transfer function any day. In short, it is a brain dump memorization, 500 pages of type written notes from the “teacher” with gaps in nearly all the details for us to figure out. By contrast, I found it much easier to remember material in Ochem (elective) because the teacher was phenomenal at helping us connect the dots so we could piece together a synthesis problem from a set of rules. Again, to put things in perspective, I’ve found computational astrophysics easier than this electronics class. The MechE’s get the same material split over two semesters, making for a more manageable experience, so hopefully whatever school you end up at will do that as well.</li>
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<p>Don’t get me wrong though, at my last internship with an R&D company, this class would have been directly applicable. For example, they used an off the shelf SMPS for one of their prototype sensor units, now I know the difference between that and a linear power supply and why we had some noise issues. The side I worked on was the “finished” products/test plan and mostly all in software. Would have been nice to understand more of the hardware at the time.</p>
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<li><p>The biggest challenge for me personally has been keeping to a normal sleep schedule and regular routine overall this first semester of nothing but upper level coursework. Even when I was a stay at home parent, the lower division coursework was easy enough to divide into small chunks so it typically didn’t matter if I spent 3x2 hour sessions getting an assignment done or 1x6 hour session. That made it easier to manage my time. Now, some of my assignments require a long train of thought, where if I were to break it up into chunks adds 30 minutes-1 hour each time because I have to remember what I was doing. This effect is heavily exacerbated with lack of sleep, poor nutrition, and lack of exercise. As well, I used to able to brute force my way through a homework set on little sleep, now I see huge diminishing returns by trying to push through; often passing in and out of consciousness when doing some of the problem sets. This does not lend itself well for retention come test time.</p></li>
<li><p>I believe that with increasing advancements in science, comes increased standards of living for a wider population. While there are several intriguing frontiers of science, the one that captures my imagination the most is the exploration of space and the evolving understanding of our universe. To that end, I broke down some major roles played in that endeavor; the physicists, the engineers, the management of the prior two, and the policy makers. I don’t have the right mindset to be a principal investigator, so that ruled out pure physics, and I definitely don’t have what it takes to be a politician, so that ruled out running for congress. When backtracking the career of folks at NASA or other big players in the aerospace industry, the common thread outside of military service seemed to be engineering. Thus, I chose aerospace engineering, what I thought at the time to be the most relevant to meet my goals. Reflecting back I wish now that I had chosen electrical engineering with a minor in CS as it is by far the most desired major within the aerospace industry.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes I was always an A student in Math/Physics, but I was not a genius. A lot of people mistake the lower division math courses required for engineering/physics as “engineering,” but make no mistake, math is just a tool to solve a problem, not the problem itself. Further, no engineer or physics major (except those who are doubling in math!) will dare say they’re “good at math” to a math major because we know how to solve a differential equation. Math majors have to prove why calculus works, they are on a whole other level when it comes to math. I know it is pedantic, but be thankful that a firm grasp of algebra and trigonometry is most of what you need to succeed in engineering. </p></li>
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<p>The only engineering students I’ve met with atrocious writing skills happened to be a few international students. Not all international students are terrible writers, and not all english-as-a-first language students write in iambic pentameter. Regardless of skill level, I highly recommend taking Gen-Eds that force you to write at length beyond freshman English. I wrote a ton for my Greek & Roman literature class, as well as for Post-Civil War US History, Political Science, even classes such as History of Jazz, Macroeconomics, and a 1 credit Health class. The most beneficial class I took from an engineering perspective was Technical Writing. My school requires it for all engineers, but I would have taken it regardless. It directly related to my last internship (I wrote a 96 page technical manual) and also expanded my own thoughts on why technical writing is important in any profession.</p>
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<li>Don’t ever believe you get to rest on your laurels. While it is true, “the harder you work early on, the easier it’ll be later,” that doesn’t mean that it is “easy” later, just not impossible! I had straight A’s prior to junior year, including a couple junior level courses I was able to take early (aerospace structures, high speed aerodynamics), but realize that once you are taking nothing but upper level engineering (or physics) courses your going to be confronted with classes that won’t have textbooks or that have textbooks with no practice problems. Further, your professors will stop hand holding you through example problems in class and in fact may spend an entire hour lecturing on something completely irrelevant to the task at hand on your assigned homework. This is just how it is for STEM majors. But fear not! The real benefit of crushing your coursework early on is that you’ll identify many of the other top students in your major. Obviously you have to be resourceful yourself, but these students are the ones you want to check your work with as well as test scores to figure out if you’re doing well in the class. When you need to pick a lab partner or find a group for a project, these are the ones you want on your bench.</li>
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