Friday 14 December 2012

Wait...you're studying what?

This is a guest blog post by Niko Temofeew. He is currently a Sophomore studying Biomedical Engineering at Saint Louis University. This is what he had to say about people reacting to what he majored in and why he chose to go into engineering.

It was the summer before I started college. I was working two jobs to save money and to get some experience. I worked at a pediatrician's office as a medical assistant. For the longest time I wanted to be a doctor like my dad. After working in the office though, I realized the office setting was a little too slow for me. I needed something that fascinated me more. It was a month before school started that I ran into Biomedical Engineering and what it was all about (little did I know there was much more to it).

Fast forward to move-in day. All kinds of name-games and ice-breakers to get everyone on your floor to be social and talk to each other. Of course, like any college ice-breaker, whoever was running the show would say something like, "Okay we are going to start with your name, where you're from, your major, and something unique about yourself!" Someone started and the information flowed. "Hi my name is Jim, I'm from Boston, Massachusetts, I am majoring in Accounting and…what was the last one? Oh yea, and I was a stunt double in a Hollywood movie when I was 15." People continued to announce their names and other information with some cracking jokes while others were quite and nervous.

Finally it was my turn. I recited my name, hometown, major, and "unique fact." However, to my surprise it was my major that riled up a response. I received a few odd looks and even an "Oh wow…" I wasn't quite sure how to take this so I ignored it. But it continued to happen whenever people heard of my major. They said it was "the hardest major on campus." As I soon came to realize, it was pretty tough. After two semesters we lost 20% of our original class of 60.

Though I didn't understand before hand, I now understand that engineering of any kind is difficult and is definitely not for everyone. But I chose it for a reason and I'm sticking to it. I've made it this far (about to finish my third semester) and don't plan on looking back. So bring on the math, physics, engineering, and biology because its what I am interested in. If engineering is what you're interested in, don't let predispositions scare you away because you may regret it.

If you want to be a guest blogger like Niko Temofeew just message me on the facebook page for details

34 comments:

  1. What if your failing aha

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  2. ALRIGHT Niko Temofeew!! A fellow SLU Engineering student!! Awesome!! I feel your pain, I always get weird/shocking looks when I tell people I'm in Computer Engineering. Isn't SLU just peachy lol.

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  3. Medical electronic engineering... Most people don't have a clue where electronics and medicine cross, one woman thought I wanted to work in a chemist.

    Even better, was the last days of my mechanical engineering college course, everyone was insistent on felt tip tattooing each other: Guy asks me what course I'm on. Mechanical engineering. Right.
    Writes 'will fix mopeds for sex', on my arm.
    S'like, no dude... That's a mechanic. X)

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  4. "Software Design/Engineering and Game Development" - Oh that sounds fun and easy? "Yeah? You should try it before commenting"

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  5. optical electronics/lasertech-engineering. hard stuff, but totally worth it!
    playing with light is fun!

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  6. Similar happened to me. I was about to quit after the first year, but I continued becaue I was made for it. Now I am a ver proud Telecom Engineer. Good luck with your studies. We are Engineers to change the world ;)

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  7. I'm a junior of my computer engineering major and a Mathematics Minor and I'm starting to realize how hard these classes are. In my networks and Systems and my Linear Algebra classes (some of the core classes), about half of the people dropped the class while I remained in there and stuck through the end.

    Whenever I tell people my major, I usually get some odd looks especially people from drastically different majors.

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  8. People make the funniest expressions when I say 'PhD in Electronics' lol....

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  9. We engineers need to stick together good story good motivation :-)
    Any electro mechanical engineers?

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    1. I graduated earlier this year with BSEs in both mechanical and electrical

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  10. When you say, Faculty of Electrical engineering, first reaction is:'Ohh, that's hard :O' :D I say:'Not if you like it!' :D

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  11. I get the same reaction to my major chemE. "That's one of the toughest majors"... yeah I know. I like to do this little thing called "challenge myself". Haha.

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  12. Interesting, when i say i'm studying mechanical engineering, most people say 'wow, that's a tough course' or something simmilar. I sometimes say yes or kinda, but more and more i say that it's not true. Okay, it's not easy, but it isn't particularly hard either. I love the damn course, which makes it easy (though that is more than ofset by my laziness), but i'm also te type of person that has a lot less problems with reciting 30 pages of logical equations, than reading and memorizing 100 or 200 (let alone more) pages of written data (law mostly comes to mind here, medicine also falls into a simmilar category). So, numbers and equations FTW! :)

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  13. When I say chemical engineering, almost everyone says "wow" while showing an amazed face, although they don't even know what CE is about... Poor mortals, they think that I am like a super intelligent asian level person...

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  14. Yeah my parents do that.
    "Fix it, you're an engineer."
    "Well then pay me an engineers salary."

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  15. Everyone I know outside of work or people I know from uni always try the classic - "Can you take a look at my laptop?"
    -No I get paid to write and debug clean, efficient software, and in any instance where I would be on support, I get paid a great deal to do it, so if you want to pay me(lots) to tell you to either defrag, stop torrenting porn/downloading obscure web tools/dodgey freeware, and, giving out your IP address to any piece of code that requests, or do a destructive restore, then fack aff and get an ICT or systems support guy :P

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  16. A few people I knew in college majored in engineering and were always having to study really hard and do a ton of work compared to other majors. With more professions relying on technology these days it seems like a good major to put your focus into though.

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  17. Automotive engineering students get this:

    "Wow, so you fix engines and stuff? Can you fix my car?"

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  18. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks! Remember to follow/subscribe to our blog :)

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  19. Great blog! Keep sharing! :-)

    ~Gerie, Civil Engineer

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  20. Engineering courses by the very nature of what you would be expected to work with are hard. If they were easy a lot more people would do them.
    It's quite amusing some of the comments I have read over the various topics without realising it some of the contributors are quite anal about what they are studying. They seem to be inferring a great deal of self importance.
    To be truly respected by people you need to be casual and speak in layman's term.
    I may be well qualified in electrical engineering, but when people ask what my job consists of I always reply "twiddling a few wires".
    To be respected by your colleagues you need to just get on with the job in hand and not recite a copy of peace and war about what was done to resolve the issue.
    When I fill out a handover note, if the issue resolution cannot be described in under ten words there's something seriously wrong.

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  21. lolz .. thats so true ..

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  22. Hey Niko, I applied to several colleges, picking biomedical engineering. I'd like to talk to someone w/ experience in that major and how's it like. If you see this, reply to me so I can leave you my email :o or some way to get into contact >.>

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