electrical or mechanical???
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Re: electrical or mechanical???
Re: electrical or mechanical??? -- sambha	Post Reply	Top of thread	Forum

Posted by: zekeman ® 09/24/2005, 12:05:06 Author Profile Mail author Edit

If you can, do both. Some schools allow double degrees. Along the way you will generally favor one of the disciplines, but, if not, there are great oportunities for the double discipline. By the way, if money is your interest, then go into medicine; if not, then stick to your greatest interests and strengths. Finally, your academic achievements will be important for your first few jobs. Afterward, your industrial achievements will be of much greater importance.

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Re: electrical or mechanical???
Re: electrical or mechanical??? -- sambha	Post Reply	Top of thread	Forum

Posted by: randykimball ® 09/24/2005, 01:54:52 Author Profile Mail author Edit

Let me ask you a question back and it will answer your question. Which are you most talented at? Any engineer working in a field in which he/she is both educated AND talented will end up making more money than an engineer that decided on a disipline only because of what that disipline does and pays. The talented engineer will exceed the pay scale. The non-talented engineer will get fired or receive the "junk" projects. The non-talented engineer will most likely never or barely ever meet the standard payscale for that displine of engineering. If you have true talent and are where you can use it, you will excel. Engineers with educations and little or no natural talent are a dime a dozen, and often end up flipping hamburgers or delivering pizza. ALWAYS go where your talent exists, then get the education and experience that supports those talents... this is the way to stand out in a crowd and become a winner. Otherwise you are setting yourself up to fail, you will always be competing against engineers in your wrongly chosen field who have the proper talent and will make you look and feel like a jerk. If you work outside your talents, you will NEVER become your own full asset. This is where I think MANY are failing these days, follow your talent and compassion so that your career can be a joy and you can feel fulfilled... this is the key to being the most motivated to best create, design, improve, troubleshoot, and invent. .. this is the way to love your job and feel like you get paid for playing... (that is how I feel about my job).. and when you love your job AND are talented at it you will become very good at it.. this results in much stronger odds for better pay. If your talents are not in engineering, DON'T become one, you will never be happy nor become as good at it. Be sure you have the talent and mind set first. Are you logical, ... do you tend to analyze everything, ... do you troubleshoot naturally, ... do you easily follow a process of binary search to a logical clear cut answer to problems automatically in seconds, ... are you naturally good with math, ... do you have trouble spelling because the language is not logically assembled, ... do your friends constantly bring you things to fix because you seem to understand how to fix almost anything, ... do you find yourself constantly saying to yourself "what were they thinking, that won't work" when watching TV or movies, ... do you just have to disassemble things because you've got to know how they work, or were designed, or were made, ... and when you put things back together, do they always work and often better? These are signs of possible talent in an engineering field. The more of these you can relate to the more likely you have talent in the right directions. However, if you find yourself puzzled why somethings work and often can't figure out how, ... can't change your own oil, ... have to hire or recruit help to fix things around house, ... have trouble wiring your VCR or DVD or computer, ... or your friends make sure not to let you fix things, ... you disassemble things and often can't reassemble them or they often never work again,....... hummmm, ..... you should seek other ways to make a living. Make it your first and most important task to figure out what your talents are, ... then and only then follow them and you WILL win. AND ... be careful, because those without strong mechanical talents never seem to understand that they do not have much mechanical talent (don't take your own word about mechanical talents). Ask someone you know that is "gifted" in a suspected talent if they honestly think you have the same talent... only they will know the difference, and if they are truly "gifted" they will be quick to set you straight if you aren't. There is a story of a room with a curtain dividing it into two sections. People were seated at one end and on the otherside of the curtain someone was playing a musical instrument. The people were impressed with the music and were ask if they thought the person playing the music was well trained. All agreed that they surely were well trained because the music was played very well. When the curtain was pulled a woman with a fine education in music was introduced as the one providing the music. Then, the same selection of music was again played on the same instrument from behind the curtain. All eyes were moist, hearts leaped, heads nodded yes, and all the people looked around with amazement at the quality and emotion felt in the music. When ask what they thought, they all spoke of how this was surely some famous person and were eager to meet him/her. The curtain was pulled and there stood a 12 year old girl with no more than a few months training but plenty of natural talent. ... this is what I am talking about.... -randy- The worst suggestion of your lifetime may be the catalyst to the grandest idea of the century, never let suggestions go unsaid nor fail to listen to them. Modified by randykimball at Sat, Sep 24, 2005, 03:21:28

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Re: electrical or mechanical???
Re: electrical or mechanical??? -- sambha	Post Reply	Top of thread	Forum

Posted by: swearingen ® 09/24/2005, 00:38:32 Author Profile Mail author Edit

My question is which do you like better? The pay in each varies widely with what you do and how you do it. If you really enjoy what you do, however, the pay will come. My advice is to not make a decision such as this based on pay. As for which goes more into design, it again depends on what type of company you work for. Research the companies you interview with and talk to the people that would be your contemporaries during your visit. The line between mechanical and electrical engineering can be blurred sometimes (control systems, etc.), but if you like mechanics courses, or if you like signals courses better, the decision should be obvious. I'm not sure what you mean by your college reputation. If you're getting letters of recommendation from your professors, then your reputation in their eyes would matter. Otherwise, unless you've been thrown in jail or something, I don't see how it would matter much. Good luck!

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