Is it normal to feel lost studying engineering in college?

Yes, it’s completely normal to feel lost. A lot of engineering curriculums are very rigorous, tough, and just stretch you to your mental and emotional limits. It’s easy to forget that school will be over as quickly as it started.

Once I began my career, it made all of that hard work and grinding through my degree so worth it. I’ve always done better when I can solve a problem, versus learning how to solve it in the classroom. Keep your head up, get the degree, and then keep going. And if you don’t like engineering, you can always pivot to another field. That’s the value in an engineering degree, it shows you are technically robust to figure out basically anything.

Yes, it is very common to feel lost at some point during college studying engineering, especially as a female student. For me, it was about 2 ½ years in that I was incredibly lost and discouraged. Others seemed to be finding their groove while I was struggling to find my purpose in engineering. I even looked to transferring schools and changing majors to become a nurse practitioner. Luckily, surrounded by all males in most of my classes, I found a wonderful group of other female students to lift my spirits. With their encouragement I decided to focus my elective courses on my personal interests which helped me gain confidence. I also began a co-op where I was able to meet women practicing engineering and gain experience in what being an engineer means. Overall my best advice would be to find a group of friends that will be encouraging, choose electives that will interest you and boost you, and if a co-op or internship is optional go for it! What a better way to try out what an engineer does then while you are still in school!

Everyone has a different experience with school and work, and I recommend that you do not let someone else’s experience dictate your path. You should look closely at the schools you are considering. Many have programs built around STEM degrees like engineering that help students find the area of study that suits them and provides extra help to get through the tougher classes. Other ideas are to look into student research, internships, co-opt opportunities, or other ways to weave work experience into your studies. Most schools have a career center and you should use it.

Something I can tell you for sure is that you cannot possibly imagine all of the engineering careers out there that could interest you. I encourage you to leverage all available resources to forge your own path.

Struggling through engineering courses is most assuredly “normal” I’m afraid. Engineering is not easy but anyone that puts their mind to it, can most definitely complete their degree and do so coming out feeling competent and well-qualified for their engineering role upon graduation. Feeling lost is often how I felt going through some of my classes and trying to tie things together to make sense just didn’t always work, however, team study sessions, friends gathering to do homework and group exam crash-sessions were all the norm for me and my friends going through our engineering courses.

No one can know everything – not at school and not on the job. Relying on your friends, peers, coworkers and mentors is critical in school as well as on the job. Learning this early will greatly affect your success in both places. When I started college, my goal (since I was in the top 5% of my high school) was to handle college courses like I had all my 12 years prior – on my own and what a mistake that was! As soon as I (swallowed up my ego & pride and) let someone know I could use some help with some questions on some homework, my world changed! Studying together with others was the best learning tool I picked up from college. Every engineering college has engineering groups, clubs, organizations and those are your best bet for help and support. We all need each other to learn and these groups are awesome for getting over the humps when things get tough, but the flip side is how great you will also feel when you share what you know and learn with others (getting them over the humps they are struggling with). It’s a definite give and take and relying on professors is not always easy given some schools have great (student-focused) instructors and other schools have instructors that are simply there to do their job and go home. Unfair, I know, and we never know what we’ll get when we enroll, unfortunately. However, your classmates are there to complete the courses similar to you and if everyone is able to teach each other how to solve one problem out of ten – that’s ten problems you now know how to solve where alone you were stuck at one. The lost feeling disappears very quickly when you have a group of friends/classmates/coworkers sharing the same experience – with something in common (getting through your engineering degree successfully), pizza, beers, leftovers & more cold pizza are great ways to get through the tough courses, together.

There were definitely days I wondered if I would ever graduate and when would all this “end” – but it does go fast and you do learn more than you realize and looking back, I would not change a single struggle given the lifelong engineering friends I have today and the lessons I learned leaning on friends! Hang in there and know that you have a whole legion of engineering women rooting for your success and standing firm when you need to lean on us!

Yes – it is normal to feel lost in some of the different classes you have to take as an engineer. I struggled with some courses in my first few years at college but once I moved into my specialty I did much better. My suggestion would be to find some friends in your classes and get together in a study group. You will often find others can help you in areas that you are struggling and also you can perhaps help them in areas where you are strong. Also this is great experience for working as an engineer where you will likely be working as a team with others who have complementary skills in different areas.

It’s perfectly OK to feel lost in classes. Here are a few important things to remember:

1. classes are almost nothing like real life in whatever field you are studying; classes are about gathering basic knowledge and tools and a large part of what you learn in class may not feature in your particular job or career in the given field;
2. whatever major you are in, there will be quite a few classes you are not going to like, that’s true for everyone and is just life; if they are required, try to get through with whatever help is needed
3. not doing well/getting lost in a class or several classes does not mean you can’t major in that field or that you are not good at it or would not love it as a career: school is not real life
4. try research to see what cutting edge exploration in a field is like, which is usually very different from what you learn in class and you may prefer it
5. don’t hesitate to get help; struggling with classes is normal and happens to many people so you should not take it personally or judge yourself harshly about the major you are in
6. try to find people to talk to outside the college/university, such as people who actually work in possible jobs you may be considering or aspiring to, so you can learn what they are really about and what skills they use, as that will both inform and motivate you.

In my experience, my third year of undergraduate education was much harder than the initial two years because the classwork was primarily focused on my specific degree choice and the courses were very hard. At that time I was concerned about my ability to complete the coursework and find a job after graduation. My study group classmates felt similar pressure due to the increased difficulty of coursework and most of us felt unsupported by our professors. In hindsight I realize that much of our experience was the natural growth progression from learning the material to becoming someone who could start to master and apply those tools to solve problems. That transition from learning to mastery is uncomfortable for everyone and there’s a large portion of that journey which must be achieved solely by the individual learning the material, which makes it feel very lonely. Additionally, during the time when the end of the educational journey is in sight and finding a job is on the horizon there is no clear set of instructions to follow that will guarantee you a good job. This naturally adds to the sense of being lost. Considering the significant life changes you experience as you transition from student to employee it’s no surprise that you might feel lost and unsupported for a portion of this journey. Often the solution is to keep moving forward, trusting that as you explore more options and develop more confidence in your knowledge that you will find the path that suits you. Although you may feel lost now things will improve as you get your bearings in those last few years of school or the first few years of a new job.

Yes, I think you should expect to feel lost at least once or so during your college career. The important thing when you feel like this is to reach out to someone. It’s important that you find a group of friends at school who are just as motivated as you are so that they can help remind you why you chose this major in the first place.

If a Professor or Teaching Assistant does not care about you (and in my experience at UCSD, they don’t care too much about undergrads due to the sheer volume of them), I recommend talking to your major counselor, your college counselor, or if your college offers the services for free, a therapist. It’s important to talk to someone if you continue to feel lost all of the time.

In my personal experience, classes got harder the closer you got to graduating (pretty normal regardless of what college you go to). Which meant that stresses piled up and more doubts about whether what I was doing is actually worth it. I had plenty of talks with my friends in my major and they all admitted at one point or another that they’ve had the same thoughts as well. But that they were able to continue with the major because they had friends who supported them and reminded them why they chose this major in the first place.

Yes, it is totally normal and okay to feel lost studying engineering during college! There’s always something that I don’t know in engineering even after working in it for 3-4 years. Enjoy the small victories – the one topic that makes sense to you or the one question you figured out! College is harder than working life because it’s more theoretical and you’re learning the fundamentals for the first time. The best predictor of how you’ll do at work is your work ethic and ability to collaborate. Your non-academic activities like internships, research lab, and student club involvement experience help a lot too – the cool projects you work on, the annoying people you learn to deal with, etc.

I’m surprised your friend didn’t get much help from the TA or Professor. Did they listen? Did she just ask one question or did she ask follow up questions when their answer didn’t make sense to her? I’d first suggest follow up questions if they listened. If they didn’t listen or she followed up but their explanations aren’t helping, then maybe there’s another TA for the same class she can ask. Better yet, she can join a study group of her classmates and ask them. Always do your own work but learn in a group! If there’s a tutoring service that’s free or an engineering club on campus like Society of Women Engineers, I suggest your friend try those too to get help. Good luck!

This could be a good question for you, and your friend, to ask current engineering students. When I was in school, I never really had a direction, but I never felt lost either. I always sought counsel on tough assignments and in exam preparation from smarter students in my classes, who became my friends – and, in some cases, my personal teaching assistants! Finding a group of students with whom you can work is a great way to get through challenging courses and confusing semesters.

I also would write up all my questions and head to my professors’ and TAs’ office hours to get those questions answered, one by one, before each exam. The professors liked it because it showed I cared, and no one else was visiting them (at my alma mater anyhow). These days students can easily send emails with a list of questions (and scans of diagrams or worked-out problems, for example) several days in advance, especially if office hours are too packed for that professor. Be sure to cc the TA, and one of them will respond. It is not the same as being there in person, but email does save you some travel time. A phone call is also great, for many types of questions. I am surprised our students don’t do that more often!

I also struggled at times. Some people can study by themselves and figure things out. That was not me. I needed to talk things out and study with a friend and/or classmate. I only had one other female in my entire mechanical engineering program and she was the smartest person in the class. I went to her a few times but other times I had two guys that I felt I could ask and get assistance. I also befriended upperclassman (male, as there were no female upperclassman students at the time). A balance of group and solo study worked for me. I think people find some topics easier while others find the same topic hard. I found thermodynamics and chemistry easier while my most difficult classes were heat transfer, engineering statistics, and the math class focused on polynomials.

My version of college was mostly of study as I did not have money to go out and work (2-3 part time jobs). I also dropped my first year dynamics class and took it during summer break at another college – I took a long lunch hour during my summer job. But at the time (1974-1978) I carried an 18-21 credit load each semester to complete my degree in four years under my partial scholarship. The Junior Fellowship program with the Federal government (Veterans Administration Office of Constructions and National Bureau of Standards) provided me with a summer job that led me to my work in energy conservation. I am now, 42 years later, a sustainability coordinator.

In terms of feeling lost in some of your college classes – I think that’s totally normal. My experience was there were some classes you understood and some you just don’t. The ones that you don’t understand, you just have to focus, study, and stay committed to getting through it. When you say your friend is struggling, does that mean she isn’t passing? Struggling to me would indicate she is just barely getting by. However, that could be contributed to by a variety of factors and doesn’t necessarily mean that you will struggle also and should not be a deterrent from studying engineering. College in general, but especially for a degree like engineering, is a weeding out process. The people who pass and graduate are the ones who applied themselves, studied hard, and were dedicated students. They sought out help when needed from professors or tutors. If you graduate with an engineering degree, you are viewed as a smart person who is dedicated to a goal of passing.

Once you are working in the engineering profession, you do apply the basic engineering principles and it starts to make sense as to why you had to learn the information they teach you in college. The classes that I struggled with in college have never been an indicator or carried over into my work. In the work world, you have a supervisor helping you understand and will correct you if needed. Engineering businesses are not going to allow their employees to struggle as that would cost the business money so that should not be a fear for your future as an engineer.

Yes, I think it can be completely normal. It may help to remember that engineering is a skill set of analytical problem-solving, not just attaining knowledge. There are many different ways to apply engineering skills, and I think it's okay if the traditional curriculum of an engineering major is not "clicking," even by junior year. Nowadays, so many jobs require a combination of engineering, life science, business, and/or liberal arts skills, such that if the full-time engineering approach isn't working or doesn't feel right, then you might have a strength in another area that is craving to be cultivated. My advice is to do the best you can in completing your engineering degree, but then find an internship, work experience, or graduate degree program in a slightly different area that complements engineering. Lastly, professors and TA's are an incredibly valuable resource while you're in college. Definitely reach out to them!

Your experience in college will vary a lot depending on where you go to school, what extracurricular activities you participate in, what your social circles are like, and anything personal going on in your life so I don't think you should expect to have the same experiences as any one other person. Engineering courses can of course be challenging but whether or not you feel "lost" I think will depend more on your personal circumstances than the academic program. That being said, there are a few things you can do to help yourself feel more secure throughout college regardless of your major. First, I highly recommend joining clubs or teams for whatever you're interested in. They could be academic clubs like a club that participates in an engineering competition or just something you love to do like a sports team! In my life I've always found that I feel the most lost when I don't have a community around me and organized clubs or sports are a great way to build a sense of community. I think that the reason you may have heard that engineering gets better in the 3rd year is exactly for this reason. By this point you will hopefully have gotten to know some of your peers and have an informal sense of community amongst those in the same specialty who you can study with and support each other throughout the program.

It's very unfortunate that your friend hasn't received help from professors or TAs, in general I think that many professors and TAs do want to help if you reach out but often won't know that you're struggling until you let them know. Finally, I would say that engineering jobs are very different from engineering school! The best way to know how you'll fit in a certain job is to do an internship with companies you'd be interested in working for. Every company and sub-field will be different from another so it's hard for me to tell you what any job you may have is like but know that internships provide you with invaluable experience that school can never provide and will give you the best idea of whether you truly want to pursue a career in engineering.

I certainly think it is "normal" to feel lost and to struggle in engineering school. It is designed to be hard. It is designed to "wash out" a large percentage of students. When I was in my first semester of engineering design class, the professor said to the class, "look to your left, look to your right: in 4 years those people won't be here." For me, the boys to my right and left weren't there at the end of that semester! I even remember standing in the hall waiting on my Hydraulics professors office hours. Another student was in his office at the time and was frustrated with the "C" he'd received on an exam. The professor looked him in the face (this was our 8th semester) and asked, "Son, have you considered Construction Management?" in his long Southern drawl... Stay strong, you can do it. You are not alone in your struggles, but if you can just pull through, it is totally worth it! You'll come out far ahead of your peers who took the easier way out.