What do different engineers do? Should I be majoring in a field of engineering?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>I will be starting college as a bio major but I am considering a switch to a field of engineering. I can't decide because there are so many types of engineering and I have very little to no idea of what each of them do (as in what they will be doing as a career). </p>

<p>Things to consider:
-I find physics (applications/problems/calculations) horrendously dull but physics theory very fascinating.
-I dislike drawing designs on paper or designing with CAD (this is one of the major reasons that made me not want to consider engineering). Another turn off of engineering (mechanical engineering?) is the thought of having to build stuff. When I hear the word "engineering" my brain immediately thinks of drawing/building/designing stuff and tinkering, which is what made me not even want to think of engineering.
-After reading short descriptions of the fields of engineering, I found biosystem, environmental, and computer engineering interesting. But I am not sure if I'll have to design/draw/build</p>

<p>I understand that I am very uninformed about engineering because I've always avoided hearing/learning about engineering (I've always established designing/building as things I will not enjoy doing). I'm finally opening up to the possibility of majoring in a type of engineering but first I'd like to ask 1.) what do they do? and 2.) given the facts about me above, is it suited for me?</p>

2

<p>I don’t understand why you are wanting to make yourself want to study engineering? But yes, we draw, design, & build.</p>

3

<p>Not really make myself study it, just wanted to more info in it and see if it’s something I think I can do since I have a very limited idea of whey they do</p>

4

<p>Northwestern has a lot of good videos on the different majors that would help: </p>

<p>[McCormick</a> Video Gallery | Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science](<a href=“http://video.mccormick.northwestern.edu/]McCormick”>http://video.mccormick.northwestern.edu/)</p>

5

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/964837-engineering-faq-thread.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/964837-engineering-faq-thread.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>You have made strong judgments regarding physics, CAD, etc. and I would suggest that you assess the information used to reach those conclusions and decide whether you can trust the results or not.</p>

6

<p>HS students often have no clue what engineering is all about because they have little or no academic exposure. So you need to do some research. Here are a few websites designed for people like you -
[Explore</a> Engineering - TryEngineering](<a href=“http://www.tryengineering.org/explore.php]Explore”>http://www.tryengineering.org/explore.php)
[url=&lt;a href=“http://www.discoverengineering.org/]Discover”&gt;http://www.discoverengineering.org/]Discover</a> Engineering<a href=“might%20be%20more%20useful%20for%20younger%20kids”>/url</a>
Students with a strong interest in biology are often attracted to biomedical engineering or biotechnology…</p>

7

<p>Engineers are interested in developing technology and the human infrastructure. Everything human-built that you see can be basically broken down into some sort of “engineered procedure” that made that object what it is and that some engineering team/company has designed. That’s the main driving force. Whereas scientists are motivated by finding truths and seeking new knowledge or formulating new phenomena, engineers want to develop and implement solutions that really make our lives better and easier and to do that they study science’s findings (mainly physics) as well as perform experiments on natural resources (or as in modern times, with already manufactured parts and materials).</p>

<p>The grounding of all sorts of engineering is mechanical design, electrical design and construction design. And general systems design (designing any type of “system”). Mostly everything else (except software and chemicals) is built on top of these broad terms.</p>