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How Can You Develop Yourself Into A Good Engineer? - Education - Nairaland

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How Can You Develop Yourself Into A Good Engineer? by Nobody: 7:52pm On Oct 27, 2014
As an engineer, you are not being necessarily trained to know what you need to do in a work environment. You are being trained how to think and how to solve problems that you haven't encountered before.

Your education is only as valuable as you make it. I went to a fairly unknown state school with a decent engineering program for the region. Nationally, the program isn't very good but it isn't bad. I worked at my own pace and worked extremely hard to master fundamental concepts and sometimes was average or below average on tests in these classes. However, I was learning a much deeper level than my classmates and when it came time to take more applied design classes, I had an easier time with them and was easily at the top of the class because I knew my fundamentals better. I then graduated and managed to get into a top 15 program for Material Science (department is top 5 in Chemical Engineering) and was able to compete with people from top 5 chemical engineering schools because I knew the fundamentals and knew how to learn advanced concepts in a way that made sense to me. When I got to grad school, I also realized exactly how much of the fundamentals I was missing and wish I had stopped to understand better in undergrad.
To summarize:
Don't accept good enough in terms of understanding. Yes, there is a point when that 12-hour homework assignment just needs to be handed in so you can sleep, but spend the time to understand what's really going on.
Ask questions. Don't accept "hand-wavy" answers and find out what lies deeper. Questioning things in school will lead you to question, "Is there a better way" when you're doing your job and this is what all great engineers have asked before revolutionizing their field.
Understand the material in your own way. Don't let other people tell you how to understand it and repeat your understanding differently than how you learned it to make sure you really got it.
Learn to work efficiently. Be deliberate and if you truly have the fundamentals, you'll make fewer mistakes and take less time.

Also some more specific advice:
Take more math than you are required to. This is especially true if you're considering grad school. Math gets all kinds of crazy at that level and the more fundamental math you've seen, the better off you'll be.
As David Trauffer said, make sure you have a programming class under your belt. It doesn't even matter what language but preferably it should be a class for engineers so that you aren't just making dumb codes and probably a high-level language (like Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, or Python) so you don't get buried in syntax. If you love it, consider taking more programming classes in languages like C or Fortran (you wouldn't believe how many people still use Fortran). Also, I've heard it's not as useful in industry but academia revolves around LabVIEW so it's a good "language" to know (not really a language, but whatever).
Do as much undergraduate research as you can. Many professors love good undergrad researchers because they're basically free work. I recommend small groups because not only do you get experience, but you also get a reference out of it. In a small group, you'll make a bigger impression on your professor. He also has influential contacts and can help you out a lot. REUs at different universities are also fantastic because it gets you contacts outside your university and depending on where you are, can alow you to have a much better university on your resume for at least something.
Take any internships you can get. It doesn't matter if you don't think you know enough to help the company. Summer interns aren't supposed to be doing real work, they're usually there to be cheap labor and do jobs other people don't want to do so you're probably overqualified if anything. You get experience and great bullets for your resume. Companies often use student internships as recruiting tools, so it dramatically increases your chances of being hired there later.
If you have to take thermodynamics, don't worry if you hate it. Most people do and never understand it very well. I have taken two semesters of undergraduate thermo and a semester of grad thermo and I'm currently TAing thermodynamics and I might be on the verge of mastering some of the material. A professor of mine told me that you never really know thermo until you teach it anyway so don't sweat it if you don't get it but try to absorb as much of the fundamentals as possible even if you can't solve the problems.

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Re: How Can You Develop Yourself Into A Good Engineer? by Abbey2sam(m): 7:58pm On Oct 27, 2014
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