Well engineering is, by its nature, the opposite of people oriented. It's machine/system/product oriented, and it kind of has to be. From what I have seen out in the workforce at the several jobs I've had, the engineer is the person on the team with all the technical knowledge to tell the dreamers and thinkers that what they want can't work with [insert a condition or thing].
Like in my masters, as an HCI person, we remind them that people will be using whatever is being made and what sort of people it would be, and then maybe talk to the people and find out that what the engineer thinks they want is actually not what the engineer suggested making...
Service-work and engineering work rarely overlap, and when they do you have to be really really good at the engineering part. I frankly wasn't (I mean some of the engineering I was good at, but things like Thermo and aerodyamics and basically half of Aero was a mystery even as I graduated).
I will warn you that the school you're going to and the advisers are not the sorts to tell you to change direction when they see warning signs that you really don't want to do a thing. It's a problem with technical-oriented colleges; they just want to produce as much degrees as possible.
If helping other people makes you happy, makes you feel accomplished then you shouldn't ignore that. And if the rest of your classes just make you stressed out and unhappy? That's really not good. There's a normal level of it just being hard, yes, but that's... really not what is going on here.
I know you've mentioned non-profit work to me a couple of times, but you know there are many positions/job roles in that kind of situation. And maybe talking to people who do non-profit work and finding out what other roles there are can maybe help guide you to something that can go somewhere. You do not have to be The Engineer in a prosthetics non-profit. You could be ANY role.
I'm not telling you this because I doubt you can complete your degree. You probably can complete it at the rate you are going. Really, all it takes is stubbornness.
But do I think you would get a job you like, a life you like? No.
You should talk to some of the noglstp people about their friends who are not technically oriented and what they do. They usually have great networks because organizations that help marginalized groups on that campus tend not to just be filled with the technical kids.
It's not too late to change directions a bit. It's really never too late to do that, actually. But don't go blindly down a path because you "should" or simply because you have started it. Part of college isn't just getting a degree it is learning who you are as a grownup.
Take care of you, too, and not just other people, k?
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Like in my masters, as an HCI person, we remind them that people will be using whatever is being made and what sort of people it would be, and then maybe talk to the people and find out that what the engineer thinks they want is actually not what the engineer suggested making...
Service-work and engineering work rarely overlap, and when they do you have to be really really good at the engineering part. I frankly wasn't (I mean some of the engineering I was good at, but things like Thermo and aerodyamics and basically half of Aero was a mystery even as I graduated).
I will warn you that the school you're going to and the advisers are not the sorts to tell you to change direction when they see warning signs that you really don't want to do a thing. It's a problem with technical-oriented colleges; they just want to produce as much degrees as possible.
If helping other people makes you happy, makes you feel accomplished then you shouldn't ignore that. And if the rest of your classes just make you stressed out and unhappy? That's really not good. There's a normal level of it just being hard, yes, but that's... really not what is going on here.
I know you've mentioned non-profit work to me a couple of times, but you know there are many positions/job roles in that kind of situation. And maybe talking to people who do non-profit work and finding out what other roles there are can maybe help guide you to something that can go somewhere. You do not have to be The Engineer in a prosthetics non-profit. You could be ANY role.
I'm not telling you this because I doubt you can complete your degree. You probably can complete it at the rate you are going. Really, all it takes is stubbornness.
But do I think you would get a job you like, a life you like? No.
You should talk to some of the noglstp people about their friends who are not technically oriented and what they do. They usually have great networks because organizations that help marginalized groups on that campus tend not to just be filled with the technical kids.
It's not too late to change directions a bit. It's really never too late to do that, actually. But don't go blindly down a path because you "should" or simply because you have started it. Part of college isn't just getting a degree it is learning who you are as a grownup.
Take care of you, too, and not just other people, k?