<p>It's me again, and whoever helped me in my previous thread, I thank you for your time.</p>
<p>So I made a thread before about my fear of chemistry and that I was worried whether it would get in the way of becoming a Civil Engineer or not, and if it was used much in the career. However, that's not really my concern anymore (well technically it is).</p>
<p>I've decided that I just can't really handle chemistry because it just doesn't click with my brain. I've put hours and hours each day into trying to understand the concept to solve the problems, but I just can't solve them. I'm also apparently incapable of completing my labs on time during the actual class, and have much difficulty solving the post-lab questions (which says something academically).</p>
<p>Therefore, I'm thinking of two alternatives, which I would like all of your opinions on. I will either:</p>
<p>1) Just drop the idea of becoming an engineer altogether, or
2) If I do better in Physics, then I might try to get a BS in Physics and then attempt going to graduate school for engineering (I'll probably end up having to take a bunch of classes, right?).</p>
<p>For the second alternative, would I end up having to take chemistry again, even though I'm in grad school? Specifically, I'm aiming to become a structural engineer but it's not definite yet.</p>
<p>If I drop engineering altogether, I have no idea what I'm going to major in but I'm currently a lower sophomore, which means I have to declare my major next semester. I'll probably just put a major in English or something. Who knows?</p>
<p>I'd like all your opinions, whether or not you're an engineer (or a student for that matter). I just want as many opinions as I can get.</p>
<p>This may be a dumb question, but have you asked others for help? Have you gone to office hours? Studied with friends? Looked at review books (such as Schaum’s)?</p>
<p>Sometimes, looking at a problem from a different point of view helps.</p>
<p>I’ll be completely honest - Yes, I have spent time during my professor’s office hours (multiple times ranging from 10-15 hours per week). I haven’t really made any friends in the class…I met two people but one girl is just very self-kept and the other I JUST met the other day but he can’t really explain it. He just gets it lol</p>
<p>For review books, I’ve glanced over a couple but that’s about it…I know I should definitely read the text book to understand it better, but it’s more of the idea that I don’t get. I don’t get what’s happening and why it happens. When I asked my professor “how do you know that” or “why,” he just said it’s something you have to memorize. Things that we have to memorize nowadays all have their ways of being obtained, and usually learning that is how I understand it (or at least that’s how it’s been for all of calculus so far).</p>
<p>I’ll look into the book that you suggested and check it out, but I doubt I’ll have much luck :(</p>
<p>I don’t mind giving you some of my intuitions [don’t have a better diction for that-<em>-]. You may PM me for one or two specific questions (not problem set, my chemistry was a year ago -</em>- so I can’t really solve them for you…) and I will try to offer an answer at my best.</p>
<p>The policy here is no homework discussion openly. PM is fine</p>
<p>Ever thought about being a quant on wall street? A BS in physics would allow you to work as an engineer (if you have some basic engineering classes down) in fields like semiconductor and optics. If you get into Civil Engineering grad school no chemistry is required. And if that doesn’t work out, just get a MS in Financial Math and become a quant. No chemistry required.</p>
<p>^ You need a Ph.D. or an elite math or physics degree (Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford) to even be considered for a quant positon. These days, real quant positions are just as hard to get as tenure track jobs in the humanities. </p>
<p>Being a quant programmer requires an MS in Financial Math and these jobs are also hard to come by. Just saying. Being a quant ain’t that easy no mo.</p>
<p>Read the book and do practice problems.
Read EVERY WORD from the chapter. I know that this sucks for history or english, but for science or computer science, there aren’t as many words to read. This will give you all the info/concepts you need to know before doing practice problems.</p>
<p>Read example example problem and find the logic in them. Do problems like them in the exercises after reading the practice problems. Usually the book is all I need to understand it, but if there is something that I don’t understand, the professor will explain it in class.</p>
<p>lol I greatly appreciate it but I just don’t understand chemistry in general. I’m doing half reactions and trying to find the concentration of ions and I don’t understand a single bit of it. This is the beginning stuff too…</p>
<p>@LastThreeYears and @ IndianPwnerDude</p>
<p>Yeah, I looked it up earlier today when I was on a computer at school and I saw that it it’s not easy to get that sort of job…quantitative analyst right? I’m not sure if I would want to do that anyways…but thanks for the suggestion. I’m also relieved to know that there isn’t any chemistry in graduate school for CE :)</p>
<p>@skbryan</p>
<p>Usually I find the logic (for calculus so far I have, and usually throughout high school physics I found the logic as well) but for chemistry there’s a lot of “just memorize that” which doesn’t really help me. Also, I tried asking my professor to give an abstract scenario along with the problem, but it doesn’t really help because when it comes to the actual calculations, I just can’t answer the question, “so how do I find that? What goes with what?” Then when I think I got it and know what I “want to get,” I end up doing it the wrong way. It’s just one of those subjects that doesn’t appear to “click” with my brain, but most people would probably end up saying that I’m just using that as an excuse because I don’t want to study. I’m definitely trying.</p>
<p>I don’t want to let this class prevent me from becoming a CE, so that’s why I thought the way around it was maybe to either major in Physics or Math, and then go on to graduate school to become a CE. I’m assuming there will be more classes that I’ll have to take to cover the CE classes, but in the end I didn’t deal with chemistry, which will drop my GPA greatly if I keep the class. The only bad thing is that I’ll have (what my school calls) two withdrawals. Basically it’s the late drop thing. I’ll have one for the lecture and one for the lab class. I’m not sure but one of the instructors said that it’s better to have a late drop/withdrawal than to have a C.</p>