<p>
The idea of that might not be boring, but perfectionism is never fun in practice. It’s just an obsession with detail, which is what EE in general is. </p>
<p>If you’re the type of person who is obsessive and can learn to dedicate your life to EE projects, you’d probably enjoy it. For people with average attention spans, it is a very miserable place to be (unless you can find a really easy job that pays well).</p>
<p>
Look at it two ways - what kind of problems do you want to solve, and what kind of systems/products do you want to work with? The former will point you towards a methodological major like EE or ME while the latter will point you towards a technological major like Aero or NucE. You can also look at it in terms of basic sciences - some favor physics, others chemistry, a few favor both, etc.</p>
<p>
Then be exceptional. No one (well, few) WANTS dull jobs, but the great exciting positions in EVERY field only go to the top few. Graduate with a high GPA and the right experience and you can practically write your own ticket. Graduate in the middle of the pack and you can expect a decent if unexciting job. Graduate at the bottom and be prepared to interview a LOT just to get a crappy engineering job.</p>
<p>Of course, “be on top and all will be well” is advice that sounds better than it actually is. By definition, only a small fraction can be the best, and it’s fair to wonder what will happen if you’re not part of that small fraction.</p>
<p>(Engineers don’t have it too bad FWIW, although you might not have that dream job you want.)</p>
<p>First, engineering degrees require a large number of courses taught in sequence. There is little opportunity to space out difficult classes or arrange a soft landing freshman year, compounding the problem of poor K-12 preparation.</p>
<p>Second, engineering courses tend to be unforgiving in the sense that a small mistake or conceptual misunderstanding can have significant adverse consequences. Even students with high aptitude or good preparation need to invest time and effort to solve detail-oriented problems.</p>
<p>
Which I answered. A middle-of-the-road engineering grad is generally going to get middle-of-the-road engineering jobs, and there are NO large fields where middle-of-the-road is going to be tremendously exciting. If this is not okay, you have two options: being exceptional, or living with disappointment. There really is no roadmap for a mediocre engineering student to get an interesting and well-paying job - it can happen, but they are isolated incidents with unique paths.</p>
<p>And yes, this means that the majority of engineers (like the majority of people) will have relatively unexciting jobs… but they will be well-paying jobs with full benefits that allow you the time and money to go and do lots of other exciting things. AND while they may not knock your socks off, most engineers I know DO like their jobs.</p>
<p>Mathematics and projects that are non-linear / for which there are no “clear guidelines” (i.e they can take a very variable amount of time depending on how you plan and execute them, whether you get stuck somewhere etc.). Also all concepts that you cannot comprehend without struggling (most of them require background knowledge e.g. in mathematics, which you may lack and thus it becomes difficult to understand what the new material is about).</p>
<p>The problem in mathematics as well as physics as well as engineering knowledge is that more advanced concepts build on the more simple and previous concepts. Miss something in the simple and previous concepts and you’ll be having gaps in your understanding, which may make adapting new concepts that utilize or are (logically) linked to those simpler concepts very difficult, if not impossible. Studying engineering and science is a rigorously incremental learning process.</p>
<p>Also, motivation tends to affect the perceived easiness/hardness. If the stuff really interests you, then you will be reading about it and possibly practicing it so much that it doesn’t feel like work at all.</p>
<p>What makes engineering so difficult is the fact that the classes are so damn hard and time consuming! Let’s put in this way, I was taking a full-course load as a psychology major and I basically did nothing the whole semester. I basically just sat around and watched TV all day, and then I would just casually brush up on the material right before the tests and I would still get A’s and B’s. However, when I switched to engineering I had to start taking a lot of really difficult classes in the hard sciences and maths. Those classes will really keep you busy man because they are so exact and difficult to learn. Plus, in most of the classes the concepts build on each other. </p>
<p>So let’s say that you slacked off for two weeks in psychology and just didn’t do anything. Now in psychology, that wouldn’t really matter that much because many of the concepts are different from each other and don’t really build upon each other. However, in the hard sciences and maths(chemistry, thermodynamics, calculus, linear algebra, etc) then that’s enough to fail you for the entire semester because every concept that you learn is so dependent upon one another. So if you screw up and don’t study for two weeks, you have to go back and relearn everything that you missed as well as the new concepts that the professors are now teaching you. </p>
<p>Engineering is hard man. You have to be committed to complete an engineering degree.</p>
<p>@darkaeroga</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you want to design missiles and rockets then why are not in aeronautical engineering? That’s more what of aeronautical engineers do. I mean you probably could be an aeronautical engineer with an ME degree, however. In fact, I would actually recommend getting an ME degree over a degree in aeronautical engineering because it would give you more career options, especially in this brutal economy. </p></li>
<li><p>I would recommend taking your math classes and physics classes if you can, at a local community college in your area, if that is at all possible. I find that the math classes at the community college are 10 times easier than they are at a university. The Universities often try to weed people out with their math classes and go Social Darwinist with it (may the strongest survive!) In addition, the Universities often hire professors based more upon their intellectual prowess than their actual teaching ability. The Universities often care more about whether the professors can provide awesome research for the colleges that get the colleges prestige, more than they care about whether the professor can actually explain ideas clearly and reach out to the students. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>However if you do find a decent community college in your area to take the classes, then talk to your University and get a transient form to be a transient student. This means that you can take classes at both the University you are at and a community college. If you don’t do it this way, your college might not count the credits! So make sure you do it this way!</p>
<p>Jnelsonmarka, but wouldn’t that leave gaps in the beginning maths sequences, considering they are easier. I won’t have the problem solving skills that the first sequences teach. I also most likely will have Calc BC credits to skip calc, but I would rather not, simply for the sake of learning. I am planning to dual major in Physics and another Engineering, with both being my interest at my state university. I just want to know how I can manage getting the best grades. You guys have shown me it is not an impossibility, but I really need to know what to do when I get to that point. I would say I am relatively smart (5 on AP Chem and 780 on sat chem), but thats nothing compared to college courses and kids with extremely high qualifications when things are graded on a curve.</p>
<p>@darkaeroga</p>
<p>It’s not like the classes are REALLY watered down or anything. I mean, you still learn the same basic concepts that you would learn at a University. It’s just that the community colleges make the classes easier. For instance, at Universities, they often won’t write the formulas that you have to know on the board for you to help you out, they won’t give you multiple choice tests, and they often won’t give you study guides. However, at the community colleges they often WILL do these things to help you. You still wind up learning the concepts that you need, it’s just a whole lot easier. Plus, it’s easier to make an A in the classes.</p>
<p>Yeah, it’s pretty clear that for first year university classes, there is more to it than simply trying to teach the material. They cultivate a certain kind of unhelpfulness that will hurt if you’re used to having good teachers.</p>
<p>@NeoDymium</p>
<p>Yep. This was definitely the case for me. Which is why I’m taking the rest of my math classes back at my old community college. The teachers are much more helpful there.</p>
<p>Then what do you guys think about honor courses since they are more self selective?</p>
<p>It is important to be able to self study and self help. I do agree that it is great to have a helpful or skilled educator who has a vested interest in your learning, at first. This past semester I had exposure in my physics, engineering, and math classes to that “cultivation of unhelpfulness,” and as much as it sucked, I really feel a lot more confident in my ability to do the lifting where the professor does not (though preferably not every class!). However, I know I would have probably been crushed if I came in first semester to that kind of environment.</p>
<p>Less weed-out, but significantly more difficult and more academia focused. In my experience, taking an honors class is often quite analogous to taking a class at MIT (high level competition and they push you as hard as possible to make you a better academic).</p>
<p>Honors are great if you truly are a superstar, otherwise I see little point to it other than perceived prestige. I have two friends in honors classes that come begging to me for help and they get B’s. I always ask them what the point is and they both tell me it looks better to grad schools. We’ll see.</p>
<p>Some classes can be hard, but every degree is doable if you are truly interested in the subject. Why? because you will be more likely to take more time to study and to learn more about your area</p>
<p>“Engineering routinely has high GPAs,” - Was that a typo? I’ve seen lots of examples just the opposite. I think at CO School of Mines, they tell parents that average freshman GPA is under 2.8. And those kids are NOT slackers - the work work is hard, with lots of it. Most of the Engineering majors at Mines are around 140 credits vs 120 for other majors elsewhere.</p>
<p>
No, it was not a typo, and please consider the difference between “routine” and “universal”.</p>
<p>
And I submit to you that this disparity is more about the school than the general field of engineering. Mines has always been strict with grading, and is a dedicated technical school. Even there, Latin honors start at 3.5 GPA and last I heard made up about 10% of each graduating class. Not as many as most other schools, but I would still not consider the top 10% to be unattainable.</p>
<p>
120 credits is the general minimum for a college degree. Most engineering majors are in the 130-140 credits range everywhere. This by itself is not usually a big part of the problem with GPA - when I see students struggling, it is not normally the courseload that stands out, it is the parties and the football games.</p>
<p>To be honest, most of my recent research has been at Mines and other tough engineering schools. Another example I know is Harvey Mudd, known for low gpas. Supposedly only a few students have graduated with 4.0 ever. Due to Mudd’s reputation that’s usually only an issue if the students are interested in med school. </p>
<p>Often Engineering GPAs go up during the 4 years. (Mine went down, but that was not typical. It was a reflection of me being able to test out of physics 1 and 2 with AP credit). Most of the angst over engineering grading on CC threads is from shocked parents of freshman. </p>
<p>“Most engineering majors are in the 130-140 credits range everywhere” - Yes, that is part of my point. It means that frugal students who want to get out in 4 years have to carry a lot of credits. (My CU Econ kid I think only needed 120 credits.) Juggling more courses makes it harder to keep good grades in all.</p>