<p>How creative and practical do you have to be to go into this? I have never done any practical work in my life, and I am not really that creative.</p>
<p>But I do really enjou math and physics, and mechanical physics looks very interesting.</p>
<p>I dont think you have to be particularly creative to get into mechanical engineering. When doing design problems you have to have an understanding of the theory behind the design which is what you get from your coursework (or mechanical physics as you call it). And when it comes down to it the final soltuion usually isn't something out of the norm, which makes me feel that you dont have to be all that creative to make something work.</p>
<p>Okey, cause in the ad for the programme I'm looking at it says that beeing creative is very good for a mechanical engineer.</p>
<p>But are there many desk jobs with this profession? I would really like to sit with a computer and do difficult calculations and simulations, and not do much practical work out in the field, am I able to find these jobs with a ME education?</p>
<p>According to a faculty member at my undergraduate school research tendancies are shifting towards computational research and numerical simulations. There is certainly work in this field.</p>
<p>In general, mechanical engineering is VERY broad. There is certainly a lot of hands on field work but there is definately computational work involving simulations/numerical methods etc. Jobs will have applications in both areas and engineers will always be needed in both, especially as advances in computational power are increased allowing for more sophisticated models to be made.</p>
<p>You don't necessarily have to be creative to be a mechanical engineer (or any engineer). There are usually general guidelines to approaching a problem, and you sort of just follow the procedures until you arrive at some solution. You can use your creative juices here and there to tweak the solution a bit to yield something more desirable.</p>