Is there life for engineering students?
Just kidding.
My D just completed her freshmen year with 14 and 18 credits per semester but mostly with 200 level classes due to AP credits. She did struggle in a couple 200 level classes and ended up with B/B+ which are above average. She was in one of the learning community and took a leader position in an engineering club building a wind turbine for a local public school. That got her a lot of interactions with other engineering students and adviser faculties. Even with 18 credits and some tough courses, it did not look overwhelming to her. She even dedicates two evenings every week with her fellowship group at church. So it is totally up to you how to schedule your week. You can be very busy or just lay back as an engineering student.
@Seirsly @Niquii77 @DrGoogle @billcsho if you don’t mind, can you tell me what colleges/universities you or you children attend? thank you!
@solveforx, mine is at UCSD, I forgot to add my daughter never had a quarter with more than 16 units, sometimes she took 12. She may graduate one quarter later because she is kind of picky with what classes she enrolls.
@DrGoogle sounds fun! I’ve always wanted to go to school in cali. I am thinking on transferring next year to one of the UC’s or Cal Poly
@solveforx My D is attending UMich.
@solveforx I go to Purdue.
@Seirsly awesome! I really wanted to go to Purdue
I’m going to UMD for computer engineering. I understand that it has always been a hard major but i’ve always used that moreso as a bragging right than recognizing that the bragging right comes with the hard work and focus I’m going to need .
With computer engineering, I fear that a 40 hour homework workload will break me. I wonder if there is any time at all in the week to go to basketball games, play a game of chess, or just let loose and enjoy the campus and new community. I think I’d be very miserable if there were no time whatsoever in the day and every day was a mind-numbing grind to learn more and more. I’m hoping that if I were to manage myself correctly, I’d have more time to enjoy things and take breaks.
Somebody please shed some more light on engineering as a teenager.
Post #28, take fewer classes to lighten your workload a bit. You get more time to study. My kid alternate work hard and not working hard every other quarter. For example, last quarter she worked pretty hard, so this quarter she took it easy. Then there is summer break. After that when she comes back for Fall that would be a work hard quarter.
But honestly I studied all the time when I was in engineering school. But I did the easy stuff when I wanted to relax and the hard stuff when I could super focused. The computer engineering labs were kind of relaxing. I think the computer science class was the most time consuming.
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With computer engineering, I fear that a 40 hour homework workload will break me. I wonder if there is any time at all in the week to go to basketball games, play a game of chess, or just let loose and enjoy the campus and new community. I think I’d be very miserable if there were no time whatsoever in the day and every day was a mind-numbing grind to learn more and more. I’m hoping that if I were to manage myself correctly, I’d have more time to enjoy things and take breaks.
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I’ve taken between 16-18 credit hours every semester, have a 3.93/4.00 GPA in Civil Engineering, and I had time for friends, gaming, clubs, boyfriend, etc. I’ve enjoyed my time at college. If you are good at managing your time, you’ll be fine. But you have to be realistic. Work first, then play.
Thanks for the good responses.