College vs Real life engineering

BeardedBadger

I'm currently on coop as a test development engineer and to be honest I'm feeling lost but no one seems to care as all of my supervisors are of the opinion that you generally only know the basics from college and that you learn much more while you're actually working as an engineer so they're kind of teaching me as I go along which is great.
What do you guys think? Is college just a basic overview of engineering to give you a basic understanding and the rest you learn as you go?
I've just finished my 3rd year of electronic engineering.

I'm learning new things everyday - which can be infuriating! College just shows you know the basics and can do problem solving.

spideog7

ArseMonger1 wrote: »

I'm currently on coop as a test development engineer and to be honest I'm feeling lost but no one seems to care as all of my supervisors are of the opinion that you generally only know the basics from college and that you learn much more while you're actually working as an engineer so they're kind of teaching me as I go along which is great.
What do you guys think? Is college just a basic overview of engineering to give you a basic understanding and the rest you learn as you go?
I've just finished my 3rd year of electronic engineering.

In short yes. There's a huge range of engineering jobs available, you can't possibly be trained for all of them.

But if you're good you can learn a lot outside of lectures too, projects are a great way to get started. I don't think I ever once had a lecture where we looked at a data sheet or an app note.

That being said you need to know the basics too, ohm's law, thevinin etc are used everyday.

KeithTS

The basics are taught in college, you learn to teach yourself and are generally exposed to a lot so at least you have some idea of what tools you can use when you're out in the world. The field is so vast that they couldn't possibly get through it in duration of a degree course. It's part of the fun. By the end of college you never want to study or learn again but I've found that once I got out in the field it's exciting picking new things up, finding new devices and methods of doing things keeps it interesting.

BeardedBadger

Thanks lads, I'm actually enjoying placement because of this. Wrote learning in college is killer and I like the idea of being an educated form of a blank canvas when I finally settle into working life

Outkast_IRE

I wouldnt be taking the college learning too lightly either, to be honest i have always found you get out of it what you put into it.

Far too many just drifting along for the 4 years, doing the minimum with only the 40% in mind.

When it comes to 3rd and 4th year and you are lining up job interviews, alot of the graduate programs and employers takes results very seriously but also have a good look at your projects to see how much effort you put in when you were allowed go off and do your own thing. Its nearly always the top guys who get the most sought after jobs etc.

BeardedBadger

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

I wouldnt be taking the college learning too lightly either, to be honest i have always found you get out of it what you put into it.

Far too many just drifting along for the 4 years, doing the minimum with only the 40% in mind.

When it comes to 3rd and 4th year and you are lining up job interviews, alot of the graduate programs and employers takes results very seriously but also have a good look at your projects to see how much effort you put in when you were allowed go off and do your own thing. Its nearly always the top guys who get the most sought after jobs etc.

Sorry Outkast, I didn't mean to come across as that. My college average for 3rd year is up in the high 60s, I know college results are important and I hope graduate with a 1.1 next year (fingers crossed). I know the results are important to get in the door and get the job you want

Outkast_IRE

ArseMonger1 wrote: »

Sorry Outkast, I didn't mean to come across as that. My college average for 3rd year is up in the high 60s, I know college results are important and I hope graduate with a 1.1 next year (fingers crossed). I know the results are important to get in the door and get the job you want

Put it this way, i can tell you from experience when leaving college, good results will help get you the interview, once in the interview you have as good a chance as any to sell yourself.

godtabh

I'm just after finishing an MBA. One of the things I have come to realise after doing the MBA is that engineers are problem solvers. We solve problems and over the years you gain experience to solve harder problems.

I've just changed my LinkedIn page. I now no longer call myself and engineer but rather a problem solver. I think a change of career is next

BeardedBadger

godtabh wrote: »

I'm just after finishing an MBA. One of the things I have come to realise after doing the MBA is that engineers are problem solvers. We solve problems and over the years you gain experience to solve harder problems.

I've just changed my LinkedIn page. I now no longer call myself and engineer but rather a problem solver. I think a change of career is next

From what I hear the big evil banks are always looking for good engineers if that interests you? :P

godtabh

ArseMonger1 wrote: »

From what I hear the big evil banks are always looking for good engineers if that interests you? :P

It does but getting in there is the hard part.

I also believe they prefer Mechanical engineers for what ever reason.

I did some consulting work with a big global bank recently. It was an eye opener. The inefficiency was unreal.

BeardedBadger

godtabh wrote: »

It does but getting in there is the hard part.

I also believe they prefer Mechanical engineers for what ever reason.

I did some consulting work with a big global bank recently. It was an eye opener. The inefficiency was unreal.

AIB came to NUIG for the past two years recruiting engineering students for summer internships, from what I hear they paid better than most engineering companies did too.
AIB might be worth a shot for someone like you? Hopefully I see you there too if I ever decide on a career change :P

Turbulent Bill

godtabh wrote: »

It does but getting in there is the hard part.

I also believe they prefer Mechanical engineers for what ever reason.

I did some consulting work with a big global bank recently. It was an eye opener. The inefficiency was unreal.

The combination of problem solving and numeracy skills is like gold dust for the banks. The general impression I get is that the financial stuff is well paid but dull, potentially turning into extremely well paid and interesting if you're good. Is that your experience?

Congrats on the MBA BTW, might go for the same down the line.

godtabh

I'm about to submit an application for one of the main banks. Job spec is all analytical and PM. I'll see what happens

BeardedBadger

godtabh wrote: »

I'm about to submit an application for one of the main banks. Job spec is all analytical and PM. I'll see what happens

Best of luck. Keep us posted in case anyone is interested in a career change

godtabh

ArseMonger1 wrote: »

Best of luck. Keep us posted in case anyone is interested in a career change

I'm not holding my breath!

SF12

Have moved to a civil service role myself and have slowly realised over the last 4 years that engineers think in a certain way - and a lot of other people don't think in that way! It's easy to miss that when you are working in an engineering environment, because people are often on the same wavelength. I really didn't realise during my time in college that we are trained to think in a certain way. I've no idea how they teach us that, but they do! Problem solving is our bread and butter - it's shocking how badly other people (ie, non-engineers) react to problems - the panic, the flapping around the place, the mad, impractical solutions, the absolute lack of initiative or thinking outside the box.

Sorry, ranting a bit, but it amazes/horrifies me on a daily basis. As for the OP, don't underestimate what you learn in college, random things like sin/cos/tan, Ohm's law and Pythagoras will rear their heads at very unlikely points in your career - and you may be the only one in the room that it makes any sense to!!!;);):rolleyes::rolleyes:

Why engineers aren't running the country is beyond me....:o

BeardedBadger

SF12 wrote: »

Have moved to a civil service role myself and have slowly realised over the last 4 years that engineers think in a certain way - and a lot of other people don't think in that way! It's easy to miss that when you are working in an engineering environment, because people are often on the same wavelength. I really didn't realise during my time in college that we are trained to think in a certain way. I've no idea how they teach us that, but they do! Problem solving is our bread and butter - it's shocking how badly other people (ie, non-engineers) react to problems - the panic, the flapping around the place, the mad, impractical solutions, the absolute lack of initiative or thinking outside the box.

Sorry, ranting a bit, but it amazes/horrifies me on a daily basis. As for the OP, don't underestimate what you learn in college, random things like sin/cos/tan, Ohm's law and Pythagoras will rear their heads at very unlikely points in your career - and you may be the only one in the room that it makes any sense to!!!;);):rolleyes::rolleyes:

Why engineers aren't running the country is beyond me....:o

My original post wasn't supposed to come across like it's undervalued, I just think it's strange that as engineers we spend so much time on things that are not commonly used in working life.
One of our lecturers described it like this on our first day "engineering is a way if thinking, a lifestyle change that you can't get out of, where you learn to adapt to all kinds of problems because in the real world things won't work like they do here". He then went on to ramble about seeing vectors on the wings of planes when he's flying at which point the hangover got the better of me and I switched off

SF12

ArseMonger1 wrote: »

"engineering is a way if thinking, a lifestyle change that you can't get out of, where you learn to adapt to all kinds of problems because in the real world things won't work like they do here".

He's described it well. All that maths they throw at us must somehow teach us how to think in a certain way.
Damned if I know how they do it though:D

In all seriousness (I got distracted when replying to the OP yesterday) - I don't think college teaches you just "the basics" - I think it teaches you how to think, through giving you the basics. And yes, you mainly learn on experience after that. Experience teaches you how to know the difference between situations where it's ok to go by "rule of thumb" vs the 10 page calculation that you've been taught in college and those situations where the 10 pages are needed.For want of a better description. It's totally ok to feel lost in my opinion, it means you're open to learning, and everyone around you was in that position once too. There's nothing worse than an engineer, student or otherwise, who comes in thinking they know everything. They're the ones I'm always very wary of, personally.....

bren2001

Just to echo what was said on this thread. I sit on some of the boards with the lecturers in Engineering when EI come in to audit the course.

While of course, any specific course could teach you the fundamentals for any specific job, the goal of University is not to train you for the working world per say. Instead, it is to give you the fundamental tools to walk into any Engineering job and have the underlying essentials to be competent from day 1. However, that does not mean you have a clue what to do. The best way to do that, is to train students to think a certain way. Over the course of 4 years, students get a wide variety of different scenarios to tackle from design and build to pure maths. By the end of that, it would should be impossible not to be conditioned a certain way.

I think we have all sat in a room and been astounded by the bizzare "solutions" colleagues throw out with absolutely no logic or rational behind them. Engineers are currently undervalued and not utilized in Ireland. They should be the cornerstone of society as they are one of the few professions who can actually develop economies and social thinking (but that's a discussion for another day).

R Lahart

A bit of a generalization I know but after u get over the issue of being lost and getting to understand and hopefully master your role. The next stage of lost and overwhelmed kick in. And this is something I don't think is covered enough in uni. Ultimately engineers become glorified accounts. Minus the wages but with the added stress of running a site/line/project. Depending on ur discipline.

CatFromHue

I think if you move into a project manager/engineer or team leader role that can happen.

godtabh

R Lahart wrote: »

A bit of a generalization I know but after u get over the issue of being lost and getting to understand and hopefully master your role. The next stage of lost and overwhelmed kick in. And this is something I don't think is covered enough in uni. Ultimately engineers become glorified accounts. Minus the wages but with the added stress of running a site/line/project. Depending on ur discipline.

It is a lot more complex than being an accountant. An accounant looks at numbers and adds them up/takes them away. The numbers stay constant.

An engineer has to deal with many many variables that change over time that affects numbers (people, materials, weather, etc etc)

Dr_Bill

godtabh wrote: »

It is a lot more complex than being an accountant. An accounant looks at numbers and adds them up/takes them away. The numbers stay constant.

An engineer has to deal with many many variables that change over time that affects numbers (people, materials, weather, etc etc)

+1 to that, financial professions will typically follow procedures and processes, the rulebook is written and well defined. It has also been said to me, its possible to make more money with the stroke on a pen than with your hands but for all accounts I wouldn't change what I do.

Working in civil engineering your legacy is real its tangible and the benefits are there for all of society to enjoy be it the roads you drive on, the clean water you drink, the wind turbines that generate power for example. This is what makes it exciting and the path followed along the way to get to the end goal.

To the media projects all run smoothly and are delivered on time and on budget and nothing ever goes wrong. I must find those rose tinted glasses!

Things don't always go according to plan in engineering, these are the challenges! This is where an Engineer's skill and experience comes into play, maybe it is revising the design due to some unforeseen issue occurring on site.

Maybe you have to do something simple like a pipe crossing a road and a machine operative hits a high pressure water main cutting off the water supply to the local town and flooding the works on site. You didn't plan or foresee that... but what you going to do? Run around arm waving? blame the machine driver? All well and good, but your still faced a broken water pipe, a flooded site and a less than happy Client!

All in a days work as an Engineer on site! It's what you do next that matters to use your problem solving skills and reasoning to improvise and adapt and over come the problem. Engineering can be a very fluid profession day to day, nothing is constant, everyday is different with a new set of challenges, this is what makes it exciting!

Engineers tend to be completer finishers, they don't quit, failure is not an option, what use is a half built bridge? A "can-do" attitude is a quality that we need more of in society.