Is being an engineer really hard?

Dear Future Engineer

What a great question, I too would often find myself asking the same question.  So you are not alone in your thinking.  Step one is to have faith in yourself.  I was often paralyzed by my own fears of not knowing enough or having the right skill sets, or being able to grasp really hard concepts whether they be in mathematics, science or physics.  But what I did to shift my mindset was to look at from a different perspective.  Engineering allows things imagined to become tangible realities.  The wonder I had about the world I live in and being able to contribute to meaningful change is happening all around us, led by engineers.  When I changed my thinking to look at learning as allowing myself the ability to create, and innovate and make the world a better place, classes that help provide the foundation for that no longer seem insurmountable but just part of the journey to opening my mind to the amazing things you can accomplish.  The field of engineering is so broad and encompasses so many different aspects, that you should not waste another moment worried that you can’t do it.   Another thing I have learned along the way in school and in my career is, people are here to help you in your journey, more so than you realize.  Engineers love sharing their knowledge with others and offering help in any way they can, and you just need to reach out and ask, as I am sure you will be very surprised at the overwhelming amount of support out there for you.  Stay the course, be positive, and if you have doubt, ask for help and perhaps look at the challenge of learning differently.  Good Luck Future Engineer, You’ve got this!!

Being an engineer is all relative - meaning that it is what you think is hard, depends on what areas of academia you enjoy and what area of engineering you want to explore.  Be open to ideas meaning you may pick one discipline and find out its not for you - thats okay.  Try different things and see where you fit.  In your lifetime you may switch careers, jobs or disciplines many times its okay.  It like your tastes - when you are younger you might like apples sauce but now you do not care for it.  If you are changing you are growing.  When I was in high school - i didn't even want to attend college, and then i ended up going and loving it, taking extended courses in engineering and getting certifications.  I just decided to keep on going.  I also found that find someone (3rd party non-bias opinion with no stake in the game) to help mentor you in the area of interest helps in making decision or giving direction.  I would say that having digital skills is great and very much needed in our world and Engineers and technicians are among the most in demand jobs in the world. “The whole of our infrastructure, from sewers to power supplies and communication, everything that wasn’t invented by God is invented by an engineer.”  A day in the life of an engineer is different each day but some components are the same; communicating, problem solving, analyzing, and planning.  We need people with this skills to capitalize  on the advancements of technology.  Without engineers who know how to utilize technology,  we wouldn’t be able to develop driverless cars and in  broader terms, the future of transportation.  Generations need to drive technology  to lead the way and become digital disruptors.  For the advancement of technology, engineering and the world.

Path to engineering
School (Pre-University)
Computer Science
Math
Data and Technology
University
Bachelors/Masters of Engineering
Internships
Seek out companies offering internship opportunities so you can earn while you learn
Can be leveraged into full-time employment
Professional Qualifications
Certifications
Training Courses

Why do I recommend Engineering
Work that offers an engaging and rewarding experience 
Being part of a creative process
Designing solutions to meet customer needs
Testing and improving technology
Range of roles and responsibilities
Working in a multidisciplinary team

How to Get Invovled
Join an engineering/robotics club
Compete in robotics challenges / team challenges
Meet new people with like-minded goals
Begin designing and creating your own projects at home
For Computer Science - Write and publish code projects to Github
Visit local science and technology museums/exhibits
NYC Liberty Science Center


What Verizon does for Students
Verizon Leadership Development Program
Summer Intern program
Co-Op Intern Program
Paid Internships
Employing our Vets

Dear Aspiring Engineer:

First things first - take a deep breath in and now let it out. Is Engineering hard? Well hard is relative. Anything new you try is hard it seems difficult at first, but as you learn and practice it becomes easier and easier.

Engineers are problem solvers first and foremost. Most problems are solved yes with math, maybe some physics, chemistry, and other STEM fields – but most importantly problems are solved with IMAGINATION. Everything else can be learned, and as engineers you rarely are working alone. We work in teams and leverage the strengths and talents of those around us. We learn and use software to help execute calculations and modeling. Some of us are better at doing complex estimates in our heads, others of us are better at translating “engineer speak” to “normal people language.” There is no one-size-fits-all-type of engineer. Most engineers you talk to will still have their college textbooks for reference and in the real world we have to rely on looking things up all of the time – so you are in good company there.

You are ready to take on the world – just take it one step at a time. Build a solid foundation in High School – take your core classes and find what you love. There are so many types of engineering out there and new specialties are being added all the time. Engineers solve problems – you sound like a problem solver to me. Don’t get scared off by what seems hard – we need you and your talent in this field.

Being an engineer can be difficult at times because it's our job to solve tough problems. That said, like anything else in life, engineering takes practice. You didn't automatically dive in a pool and know how to swim or jump on a bike and know how to ride it, it took a lot of practice and perfection to get it right. Engineering is the same. Things get easier with practice and the math and physics gets easier with time. That said engineers are not asked to do math in their heads, they have calculators and computer programs that help them solve tough problems, and engineering is a team sport. There's a lot of collaboration and helping each other through the tough problems we solve. Engineers frequently use textbooks, internet research, and other resources to aid with their work so on the job, almost nothing is off the top of your head. I think the only time I had to know things off the top of my head was during an exam and even then, most of my exams in college allowed a notecard with equations. While engineering is about solving hard problems, it is almost never done in a vacuum without resources and others to bounce ideas off of.

Becoming an engineer is not the easiest field to get into but if you put your mind to it I would not consider it "hard". First, you need to understand what you are getting into. Yes, any discipline of engineering will require science and math skills but you will learn those over your schooling. The nice thing however is while you might be required to memorize things in school for an exam you don't need to do that for most engineering roles.

People don't expect you to know everything off the top of your head. In most work environments, everything is a team effort. You work as a team to accomplish a problem and everyone has their own set of assets they bring to the table. You can also research something you don't know by looking at old textbooks, using google, or reaching out to colleagues.

At the same time engineering courses in college are meant to challenge you. You will definitely not have as much free time as some of your friends who will be studying liberal arts majors. However, the payoff when you graduate will be worth the extra effort you need to put in during college. Engineering courses are meant to challenge your critical thinking and problem-solving skills which are crucial to becoming an engineer. It may seem "hard" at the time but by putting in some effort and getting a good group of friends to form a study group you can get through it! Also taking as many science and math classes in high school will help prepare you for the college courses and make those courses much easier.

As an Industrial Engineer by degree, I can say that I found school way harder than “real life.” In my opinion, going through school to be an engineer is meant to be hard so that the real world application of being an engineer seems easy. Many sports coaches have a mantra that says, “train hard to win easy.” The biggest thing my college career taught me was problem solving skills. I felt in over my head many times, but in hindsight, I know that the skills I learned from those times made my real world career (23 years now) seem much easier.

College WILL be hard, but with fortitude, perseverance, and strong study skills, you WILL be successful.

I want to say “it’s not hard” when you are doing what you love to do (be that school or work)! Experience quickly becomes what you know and no new engineer knows everything, so do not worry about not knowing “everything” because no one ever does. The best STEM professionals in any field BECAME that way through continual learning and experience, they were not born that way. What you can do is absorb everything you can by UNDERSTANDING what you learn and then things will become easier for you. If you just memorize items to pass a test, you will not “learn” the basics or theories, principles, procedures and will struggle in the long run. We do math all the time, but we also have calculators, computers, templates, and fellow co-workers that are always available to assist/help when working through some tough situations/solutions. It is smart to start planning for Math and Science courses as early as possible, which will definitely help you with the college-level courses. The amount of math, science, physics truly depends on the type of engineering study you choose. But as I mentioned, if you spend time learning the concepts (instead of just memorizing for tests), you will do GREAT and go far in both your education and career. Stay the course! You already have a great start to an awesome career. I’ll be cheering you on!

Life is not a closed book exam. When you are at work, there are many resources and training opportunities available to you. You don't have to remember formulas or methods off the top of your head. Depending on the engineering work that you do, there are also many other aspects to the job, not just solving equations. Part of an engineer's job could be to gather information to understand the problem space, and to research different potential solutions and applications. Engineering also involves collaborating with other professionals and other trades. School teaches you fundamentals, and most importantly, teaches you to be resourceful, to respect deadlines, and to seek out help when you need it. In practice, junior engineers work under the supervision of more senior engineers. Learning is a lifelong journey. Books and other resources are always available.

To be a good engineer, it is important to understand the high level concepts and then be able to apply them. No one is expected to keep everything in their head, so the ability to look things up is a perfect set up for being an engineer. As you go through your math and physics classes you get exposed to a lot of ideas. You remember those you use again and again, and when something more unique comes up, you look it up. That is exactly how engineering works. You will learn things in your classes; some things will be used again and again so they will become second nature, but the more obscure things everyone has to look up. But you have seen it once so you know it is there to look up. I think it is like learning to type on a keyboard, some letters you know without ever looking, but the less used letters you may have to look to see where they are. You know it's there, you just have to look to find it. So is engineering hard? As long as you go to and engage in class, do the homework, ask questions when things aren't clear, you will do great. Some classes will seem hard compared to others, but we do the hard things so the normal things seem easy.

Personally I have always liked math and did not like or do well in physics. The amount of math I perform on a daily basis is minimal. I believe that the amount of math an engineer does depends on the type of engineering field one is in.

I have always felt that an engineer needs to be able to think a certain way. They need to understand or consider how a particular action or scenario (what they are working on) will impact or affect other things (how things are connected). It involves being able to see and recognize the bigger picture of something while working on a smaller piece part of it. An engineer also needs to be able to learn and retain what they have learned so that they can continuously use that knowledge, expanding it further, while learning more. You do not need to have all of the knowledge at the top of your head, but you must be able to understand what specific information you need, where to get that information, and understand how to use/apply that information. If a person has the thought process, they can look up the specific details that don’t need to be memorized.

I am a very senior engineering professor and center director and I don’t do any math at all. In fact, I haven’t had to do math since my 1st year in grad school, and even then it was just in a class, not in my actual research. Math is a tool for certain types of engineering, but that does not mean that all or even most of daily engineering work requires using math and “knowing it off top of your head.” A lot of engineering uses software packages that do the math for you. The same is true for analytics and data science. Engineering education and training requires learning enough math so you understand the underlying principles, but doing engineering work rarely involves hands-on math. Engineering is so, so much more than math. Also, most classes are nothing at all like real-world work. To understand that, it is best to go visit university labs and companies and do summer internships and volunteer jobs, so you can see what the real world is really like. And even then, remember that what you see now is not the same as what it will be like when you get out into the job market: engineering (including computing) is one of the fastest-changing and growing and evolving areas of knowledge and use. So by getting into it, you can shape its future.

If you like math and science, then these subjects should be doable in high school and college. Engineers solve problems so it is a very interesting profession. Moreover, as an engineer, I did not have to memorize a lot of information like in subjects like biology or history, although I still liked these subjects. In solving problems, you apply solutions and you can look up knowledge for various solutions. It is really logic rather than memory.

The math and physics you need in engineering depends on the discipline. The highest math and physics needed are in the fields of electrical engineering and engineering physics. There is less math needed in mechanical, industrial, civil and environmental engineering. It would be a good idea to ask some engineers in different fields what they do and how their studies were like before you decide which discipline to select. Also, it is good to develop self confidence and persistence to achieve your goals.

I am a biomedical engineer with a degree in electrical engineering and graduate studies in engineering applied to medicine. I never had a boring day!

Dear writer, you must remove the word "hard" from your vocabulary. When people ask if something is "hard" to do, they mean: Does it take a lot of work? Will it take a lot of practice? Will it consume a lot of time? The answer is anything rewarding or worth pursuing will always take a lot of work, practice, and will be time consuming. However, those are all cheap costs for the abundant fruit of its labor. Anything at the beginning of its path seems endless, but keep going. Fortunately, there is a network of mentors and colleagues that are more than willing to guide you through the process, and receive you on the other end. Best of luck on your journey. You're already ahead.