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Am I cut out to be an engineer?

I don't know if i'm academic or not since I didn't attend school past 11. I used to get mainly B's and sometimes A equivalents then but the work was simple and I was always daydreaming. From that I taught myself maths GCSE in around 9 months doing roughly 2 hours a day. It was quite fun and I managed to get a B grade.

When I was a kid I played legos a lot and had virtually no guidance. I loved assembling and taking commodities apart. I was always curious how things work. Even know I walk around the house wondering what's the science behind how the computer works. We use all these commodities yet have no idea. I want to design my own or at least know how to customize them.

Solving real world problems and helping design or create somethings that are actually useful is a dream come true. I don't want to be just a clog in a business giving customer service.

While I think I have the ability to be an engineer I feel I have my own unique issues. If I have to do something boring, I need to know why it's useful or it will be a struggle to learn. Luckily maths is fun in itself but certain topics are boring to me. For GCSE biology it's basically memorizing theories. Then you just regurgitate what you read without any investigation. They even tell you the body needs x and y but don't tell you why most the time. This is quite boring. I want to know the reasoning behind things and can't blindly accept statements.

With maths there is one correct answer and I can experiment with numbers myself. I can delve off and do unrelated problems if I desire. I am the type of person that would rather learn how information was discovered and be left in a lab to experiment.

If an engineering degree consists of only memorizing formulas and facts, following a strict set of guidelines on how to design and designing specific products then i'm not sure if I want to do one. If studying will improve my problem solving skills, give me the fundamentals I need to go out there and create something useful, then I would love to study engineering.
Original post by 1amnobody
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The memorizing formulas and facts is probably true for Civil Engineering but for all the others it's pretty much problem solving instead.

You sound more like a Physics candidate to me because you're always learning a piece of theory which sets the foundations for picking up more pieces of theory and you can see why you have to know that information fairly quickly.

You also say that when you wandered around the house, you were interested in how things worked. There are more things that have had a greater influence from Physics than Engineering in your household.
Reply 2
Original post by pleasedtobeatyou
The memorizing formulas and facts is probably true for Civil Engineering but for all the others it's pretty much problem solving instead.

You sound more like a Physics candidate to me because you're always learning a piece of theory which sets the foundations for picking up more pieces of theory and you can see why you have to know that information fairly quickly.

You also say that when you wandered around the house, you were interested in how things worked. There are more things that have had a greater influence from Physics than Engineering in your household.


Thanks I never considered that before. The problem is I can't produce anything with physics alone. I don't know anyone who did it but everyone I met that did works as a programmer or something similar. Maybe I should look into applied physics. I looked and if i'm honest I would be interested in applied physics and engineering. I wouldn't do physics alone because i'm only concerned with knowledge that has practical use. As an applied physicist I don't know if I would ever discover anything useful even if I wanted to. Engineering seems to be applied maths and science in a way.
(edited 10 years ago)
Original post by 1amnobody
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Haha, it's because of the fact the Physics at University is mainly the study of quantum mechanics that I chose to do engineering myself instead of it.

My Physics teacher said that on his first day doing Physics at University, his lecturer recited a quote that Richard Feynman told his students, I'm paraphrasing here, 'As highly intelligent Physics students, you're going to be spending the next three years drawing circles on bits of paper'. This was in reference to using phasors to model the path of photons.

Anyhow, engineering is so much more than just plain theory. There's lab-work for a start where the physical side of engineering really shows itself.

I think you should apply for Physics or Engineering rather than applied Physics (although applied Physics is Engineering, no?). It's just about weighing up the option of having a course with a greater emphasis on practical work but also more mathematical content or one which is probably more interesting theory-wise.

I should also add that, like you said, unless you plan on going into research after gaining a degree in Physics, you'll almost definitely get a job in applied Physics.

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