At the early stages of your life, you may have said, “When I grow up, I want to become an engineer,” for a reason that probably you have just heard from your parents: engineers make good money. It was an easy decision for you to make since there is no maturity to it yet, not knowing the impact of that decision in your life.
Chances are, you have never really thought about what career to choose until you are at that stage where you are already forced to choose, like during enrolment.
Some hold on to the fact that they have worked on an excellent Lego masterpiece when they were children, or have made an electronic device even without working knowledge, which makes them think they can be an engineer with that kind of background.
Sorry to break the ice for you but that is not it.
So how do you know that you really want to become an engineer?
That realization starts when you already have a taste of engineering. Either researching about it, asking engineers what it is like to be an engineer, or taking a class, say math and physics, which involves the basic engineering principles.
If it didn’t feel like you were forced to do it and more importantly you liked what you have learned, that’s the first sign. You should feel excited even when there are struggles and confusion along the way.
But that is only the first sign.
For contrast, you don’t want to be a masterchef just because you liked how the food you cooked had tasted the first time. It has to be followed with curiosity, say, what else can you do with garlic and pepper the next time you will cook a meal?
That’s another key sign: you become curious of what’s going on in engineering. It gets you interested. It makes you think a lot. You have a lot of what ifs especially when it comes to developing and proving things.
It doesn’t have to be your cup of tea, i.e. when you are bad at math, but it is the eagerness that you display that is more important because that will definitely save you in learning engineering. Everything can be learned, after all, if you are only willing to do the work needed to learn.
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For example, when you want to be a civil engineer and there is news that a building collapsed because of poor foundation, you become interested in doing your own investigation on why structures fall down. Or maybe when there is a new stadium, it got you thinking how stadiums are built.
There is an inherent attitude to feed yourself with more knowledge related to the profession you want. It isn’t exactly homework, but you do it anyway as if it is an academic requirement.
It is very easy to say, “I want to become an engineer someday,” but it is very hard to prove.
It’s shameful that people – kids excluded, of course – say this despite that they do not know a single thing about math and physics. They do not even know what the buttons are in a calculator and how they are used. They don’t even know Nikola Tesla and his contributions.
That is called being ignorant, or for some, showing off.
Engineering indeed belongs to the ‘cool courses,’ which is why some choose to become an engineer. But notice those who have a poor foundation about their career choice eventually shift courses. Because as we said before, wanting to become an engineer is one thing, training to become an engineer is another. Only those who have the will and real ambition survive engineering school.
While it is true, in some parts, that engineers make good money, it isimportant that those who really dream to become an engineer recognize what they are doing in engineering. That they should develop passion towards what they do. That they are not going into the profession for the money, because the odds are that they won’t survive for long and just find themselves pursuing their real passions.
How about you? Do you already know that you really want to become an engineer?
