Why Engineering?

“Engineering is the closest thing to Magic that exists in the world” - Elon Musk

Ah. So I see you, too, are enthusiastic about engineering. Welcome, my friend. You and I have a lot in common. But the difference is I have already joined engineering and I guess you are planning whether to do the same or not. Am I right?

If yes, by the end of this blog you will be able to find out whether you are eligible to join engineering or not, and why so. Also, you will have a clear understanding of how to make college life during engineering effective and productive.

Don’t skip if you are already an engineering student. There is some useful content for you as well my friend.

Don’t be a confused engineer

Many engineering students who choose to engineer don't even know why they choose it. Some choose because they didn't have any options and some choose to parents' pressure. We will guide you through this blog to help you make a good decision. Are you ready?

1) What is engineering?

Engineering is a branch of science and technology that deals with designing, creating, building, and improving solutions to various problems in our surroundings or environment. It deals with the ideas of innovation, advancement, and development in nearly all the domains that keep evolving with time. So who can be an engineer?

2) Who are engineers?

Anyone who can define the problems, collect information from existing data or conduct a survey and design possible solutions to them in our society is an engineer. They either imagine, design, and build new solutions or modify existing solutions to make them better.

They have great imagination, decision-making, and critical thinking power. They listen and observe carefully the things and problems around them. They always have a different perspective of viewing people and the world than normal people.

3) What do engineers do?

They design and build buildings, bridges, and infrastructures, they build apps and software, they make bio-medical devices, they design electric and electronic devices and they make every tools and technique that we use in our daily life to live a lazy(easy) and happy life.

You seat on a sofa is designed by an engineer, drink water in a bottle designed by an engineer, and you talk to a person 1000 km away from you on a phone, wirelessly, designed by an engineer.

To become an official engineer, you need to do a bachelor's in engineering which is a 4 years course. But your skills make you a real engineer rather than a degree.

How is the content you learned in the last 10 years of schooling even helping you? I don’t think much of it helped you solve real problems.

Let us find out some pre-skills needed for engineering.

4) What skills do you need before going for engineering?

Most people say that you need to be good at mathematics, physics, probability, etc to do engineering. But I don't think so. All you need is to have enthusiasm and passion for the field of engineering you want to get in. Of course, you need to have basic knowledge of mathematics but still, you don't necessarily need to be perfect at it.

The ones who love designing big buildings and towers can go for architecture engineering, those who love coding can go for Computer Science, and the ones who love chemistry can go for chemical engineering. There is no limit to domains in engineering that can suit you.

“As engineers, we were going to be in a position to change the world – not just study it.” - Henry Petroski

You can choose the one that excites you the most.

Note: Be careful before you choose while choosing a department. Some could not find the difference between electrical and electronics engineering. Some can’t recognize similarities between electronics and computer engineering, aerospace and aeronautics engineering. Please watch the syllabus in universities before you get in.

But again engineers are made by real-life skills, not those useless course books that have nothing to do with real-life applications. If you fail in mathematics in engineering it is totally fine. Everyone fails in some subjects there.

The conclusion is that if you can withstand failing in subjects and love trying again and again until you make something that you dream of, if you have passion and enthusiasm in any one of the engineering fields if you love solving and designing real-life problems you must go for engineering.

Now then you know everything to start with, let us find out why should you do engineering.

5) Why should you do engineering?

To create, design, and build ideas and solutions that can change the world. To make the world more advanced and innovative through new tools and techniques. To apply multiple interests of fields in ideas to build something of own. To learn multiple skills and be multi-talented. To learn problem-solving, critical thinking, aggressive listening, and observing. To learn teamwork and challenge problems around you, you should do engineering.

So think once again, why do you want to be an engineer?

6) Engineers are everywhere. Engineers can do anything.

Engineers are versatile to work in any field. Engineers have versatility in their blood. They are never tired of finding the solution to a problem that doesn’t even fall under their domain. They try everything. Learn everything. This is what makes them different from others.

The Harvard Business Review has a list of the 100 best-performing CEOs on the planet. Approximately ⅓ of them majored in engineering and only 11% from business school. Engineers are sometimes seen to be performing better than MBA. Some famous names of engineers are Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Mark Zuckerberg.

The engineers never match problem statements with their bachelor's or master's degree syllabi. They just solve it anyhow, any way possible.

“The engineer has been, and is, a maker of history.” — James Kip Finch, American engineer and educator

7) Challenges in an engineering student's life

“The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.” —Thomas J. Watson, a pioneer in the development computing equipment for IBM

You might face some hard times during your bachelor's since engineering is considered the hardest course in the world.

With 50+ weird subjects that rarely have anything to do with lower-level education courses, 100s of assignments and practicals, multiple projects, life’s first back exam, and not-so-successful results, engineering will give you a memorable experience. Besides these course things, engineers are popular for doing 100s of extracurricular activities every semester.

And this combination of hard but still very exciting moments makes you an engineer capable of taking jobs from non-related domains as well. Engineers perform best everywhere.

8) Scopes in engineering (In the context of Nepal)

Since engineers are multitalented, jobs for them are never limited. But to get core engineer field jobs you must have skills related to that engineering field. At that time, your grade and marks won't help a lot ( except for some government jobs). So start learning applicable skills from google, youtube, etc instead of focusing on books to pass exams. Work with teams on some real-life projects. Build something or work on other projects to add to a resume.

“The ideal engineer is a composite … He is not a scientist, he is not a mathematician, he is not a sociologist or a writer; but he may use the knowledge and techniques of any or all of these disciplines in solving engineering problems.” —Nathan W. Dougherty, American civil engineer

Since Nepal is a developing country, Civil engineers are in the highest demand currently and will be for a few upcoming years. But computers and electronics are at the top worldwide. Engineers are needed in construction projects, bridges, and buildings, in bio-medical to design equipment, in-app and software development, in automobile companies, and many more.

A person working in Engineering in Nepal typically earns around 68,100 NPR per month. Salaries range from 21,600 NPR (lowest average) to 144,000 NPR (highest average, the actual maximum salary is higher) according to salaryexplorer.com in 2022.

Some of the better choices to work are NCELL, NTC, and Loksewa ( government). But an exam is taken every few years in each of those to onboard engineers.

9) Is engineering only for boys?

No, as we discussed earlier anyone who can solve problems, have imagination power, and passion to create, design, and build things can do engineering. Girls engineers are doing very great in every field. From tech to civil engineering, from hacking to DevOps girls are doing better than boys in many places. In fact in architecture, there are more girls than boys in nearly all colleges.

Since girls are already good at critical thinking and handling situations, girls are very much required in engineering fields.

“ To engineer a better society, we need people from different genders, races, and backgrounds to solve our problems.” - Jamie Clark

10) Take Full Advantage of college

This will be the last place where everyone will work for or with you for free and with fun. So make friends, do projects, organize and participate in free events, utilize college halls, and take free advice from seniors.

Most of the future co-founders of your company will be from college. So make teams, and friends and get involved in as many activities as possible that can teach you something. Work for free for seniors. The more you will work hard the more they will teach you and give access to core works.

Work for free to learn skills that will give you money in bulk in the future.

11) Bonus: How to make college life in engineering more effective?

In the first year of engineering, energy and enthusiasm are at their peak in students. Lots of events, workshops, and competitions happen in college. Student love participating in nearly all. But this energy doesn't remain the same in all 4 years.

It decreases slowly due to either academic pressure or back exams or some other reasons. The ones who maintain the same energy throughout engineering do great after their bachelor's also.

When you are in the first year it is common to have an interest in every domain, you wish to learn all, learn all at a time. You start machine learning, python, java, flutter, etc all at a time. After completing 100s of courses online you find out you are not able to build something out of any of those.

This is because while trying to learn all at a time, you lose the flow, can’t focus, and get lost and disturbed in between. You leave some courses due to a change of mind and forget some due to not being able to apply to real projects.

Keep in mind that you must plan well before starting to learn skills. Make targets and a small deadline for no more than 2-3 skills in one semester. Those two can be related to each other or not. For example, learning Python and Django in 2 months is fine since Django is a Python library.

Most important thing is to learn by doing and learn from the road map. If you keep doing courses you will find out that many new topics are coming in between the course you don't even know.

So, choose the field, like whether you wanna learn web development first or Machine learning first, what language and software are required to be an expert in one of that, find a road map on the internet or ask seniors, complete that first and do your own project to apply it in parallel.

Start learning new skills only after you are able to make something out of what you learned already. Without a road map, you will end up completing many courses and not being able to apply any in real life.

Never take gaps, learning 3D designing for 3 months and then taking 2 years gap will lead to forgetting all. Find your passion skills and keep doing those regularly.

So, what do you think of doing engineering? Does it interest you?

Take a final decision instead of getting confused. Also, when the time comes to make your career decision don’t let your parents or relatives decide it. It’s you who will live your life and passion. Take information from everyone but decide on your own.

I don’t know what you will choose but all I can say is that engineering will be your best experience for a lifetime if you are fascinated after reading this blog.