engineering as a career

When I was in high school, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do.  I thought something in health care would suit me so my mom set me up to talk with physical therapists, speech therapists, physician assistants, and pharmacists.  I thought pharmacy sounded like something I might like so I started off college in pre-pharmacy.  I selected a large university to attend because I did not want to have to transfer after two years or if I decided to change majors.  After my first year of college, people started telling me how competitive it was to get into pharmacy school and only those close to 4.0 GPAs were considered.  I had a pretty good GPA, but it was not all that close to 4.0.  I started to worry about my chances in pharmacy so I started looking into other options for degrees. 

My father is a mechanical engineer and he suggested environmental engineering to me as he had met a female environmental engineer on one of his projects at a paper mill.  I went and spoke with a counselor in engineering.  They suggested either civil or chemical engineering if I wanted to pursue environmental.  At the time, I really did not know what an environmental engineer did nor did I know the difference between civil and chemical engineering, although I had heard the chemical engineering classes were much harder than civil engineering classes.  I chose civil engineering, which I was glad that I did a few years later because the few classes I took in chemical engineering were not enjoyable to me.

Even after going through college and getting my first job, I was still a little weary about whether I was going to enjoy civil engineering.  After working in civil engineering now for 16 years, I can say that I really do enjoy the work that I do.  Civil engineering is quite broad and has allowed me to have exposure to many opportunities.  I work on a variety of different projects, have a lot of interaction with clients and the public, and most importantly, I never get bored.  If you enjoy math, solving problems, and working on a team, then chances are you will probably like engineering.