become an engineer

I still want to be an engineer… someday :S.
The truth is I dunno where this leaves me on this goal. I won’t mark it as abandoned but it certainly won’t be completed for quite awhile.

Truth of the matter is it has taken me 18 months (3 uni semesters) to really find out that maths and physics is not the same as engineering. They seem similar and started out pretty much the way it was in school, but the way we’re taught and the learning atmosphere etc is totally different. I’ve always been one to marvel at science and how the world works, but the knowledge we’re taught in engineering is about how to change the existing world and service some need (to quote someone, can’t remember the name: “Scientists discover the world that is, engineers create the world that never was”). I’m more of a scientist after all :). I’m a rather proud person I admit, and leaving this course will rub off as a personal failure, but I suppose I really have to go where my heart is and it really isn’t in engineering right now. The image of hydrogen economy and working with scramjets is still alive, but I’ve learnt now it is more a romantic vision rather than a practical one :S

Bachelor of Science? Physics, Maths…
Bachelor of Arts? History, Political Science, International Relations…
perhaps a dual degree of those two?

Time to see the careers councillor I think!

Lovely 2/8 for that midsem exam! Still recovering from the freight train hit, going to find out what went wrong tomorrow :S.

Maths is by far the best subject so far… I’m thinking perhaps I should just become a mathematician lol.

Well I did send the email to the coordinator and it WAS the computer sheet. I did pass =D

Just have to work out how to cancel the supplementary exam now; lots of bureaucracy to get through.

But it was not what I thought. I did manage to pass Engineering Thermodynamics; it was Applied Mechanics which was a fail. For the life of me I dunno why considering I left that exam feeling over the moon… maybe it was bound by the 51% rule (regardless of the weighting of the final exam, you must pass it… I only needed 6% of that test to pass the course) but even then I felt optimistic.

The only thing I can think of is that I used a HB pencil instead of a 2B and maybe the computer marked sheet didn’t “see” it. I’ll send an email regarding that soon.

But then maybe I am just making excuses ;).

Needless to say, I have the supplementary exam sometime in early December. I plan to pass it with flying colours. Enough hubris; I think I have learned my lesson now.

Year one has come and gone. Time to choose the major. There is little to no competition on what it will be: Mechanical and Aerospace engineering!

The only wall I might hit is having to repeat Engineering Thermodynamics from this semester. Not too optimistic about the exam results… damn Rankine cycle powerplants :@

Boy-o they sure flog you with the Maths! Lucky I like it and understand it. Thermodynamics is a bit challenging, but it just suddenly ‘clicked’ a few weeks ago which made it a lot easier. But then that was shortlived though; now dealing with entropy… that annoying property that makes my head spin whenever I try to define it (randomness?... Joules per Kelvin – what kind of unit is that?? This cheered me up though, I recommend it http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Entropy).

Nearly finished first year of engineering; getting nearer to the day when the painful decision of what major to choose is here. So far they have all been good. I might stick with the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering double major and then dual degree with Science (if I feel I can manage the workload) and do something like IT / Computer Science. Unlike some American counterparts I have chatted with, the government here (Australia) pays for our entire degree and we only start to pay it back (and it is interest free) when we make more the $40k per year – I am certainly thankful for the HECS-HELP System.

At one point I felt engineering might not be for me, but when after doing a practical subject for Engineers Without Borders (designed a water supply and treatment system for Kandal Province, Cambodia) I now believe it’s just boredom from all theory; I am longing for practical engineering. Hope to get some vacation work to fulfil that.

That’s me out. Nice truss diagrams waiting for me :)

I am starting a Bachelor of Engineering in March. =D I am excited about it.

I have a wide choice of majors and double majors. I am eyeing the Mechanical and Aerospace double major at the moment because it sounds right up my alley and it allows me to dual with Bachelor of Science if I want to… then again I hear the workload in first year is murderous so I think I’ll just see how I go first =S.