<p>I found the first two years of civil engineering courses unexciting. At various points, I felt like I was just grinding forward to a goal I wasn’t even sure about. Junior year rolled around and suddenly I could take an upper division engineering elective or two that wasn’t predetermined.</p>
<p>Everyone gets to take physics, chemistry, the calculus series, statics, dynamics, thermo, etc. but eventually you get to start taking courses that help steer your career. It just seems like such a long wait because you have to plod through the prerequisites first. It’s painful, but I recommend waiting it out. Worst case scenario? You end up with an engineering bachelors and your career path heads a different direction. Engineering degrees are valuable - it’s really quite funny how many folks defer to my opinion merely because I’m an engineer. (Note: I personally hold doctors in the same regard.) It will open doors for you.</p>
<p>I got involved with our SWE and ASCE chapters in my junior year. We had a very scary male prof that was the SWE sponsor, but he took notice of two of us and sent us on to a wonderful leadership conference (which then gave me the confidence/ability to go for the presidency of ASCE and VP of SWE my senior year). Getting to know the faculty helped me land an internship my junior year. The internship was great- in that it helped me realize what I didn’t want to do, it paid well and gave me something for my resume. So get involved!</p>
<p>Where I work, we have all sorts of engineers. We have the nerdy, hyper-detailed folks. We have the creative problem solvers. We have the big picture management types. Don’t think that you have to have a pocket protector to be an engineer, and I mean that figuratively not literally. We really do need all kinds in our ranks. Folks that build models are able to see things differently, and that’s a valuable strength to have.</p>
<p>Try going to a professional society (i.e. ASCE) meeting. They love it when students come to their meetings, and engineers are really quite interested in talking about their careers :)</p>
<p>(I chose water as my concentration, and ended up with a B.S. In civil and an environmental PE.)</p>