Some feedback I’ve gotten since my last post was that I didn’t exactly give a glowing review of SE. Don’t get me wrong, I do ABSOLUTELY love what I’m studying. But I refuse to sugarcoat things and I want you guys to 100% know what you’re gonna expect before you get in, and that involves looking at both highs and lows.
When you first step into Engineering with a specialisation in mind, it immediately becomes apparent that the majority of courses you will be doing has no relation whatsoever to your intended spec. You still need to do decently well in subjects you may have very little interest in. While ENGGEN 131 is useful for every specialisation (no bias here), CHEMMAT 121, perhaps not so much. This is also apparent within specialisations as well, as some have what you could call sub-specialisations, like Civil and Engsci.
Of course, the intent for this is to give students a taster for a wide range of subjects and expose us to areas we may not know we are interested in. But let’s be honest here… I won’t ever want to build another truss and nor should anyone ever trust a bridge that I had any involvement in whatsoever.
Which brings us to one of the more confusing aspects of Engineering is ENGGEN 299. It’s a compulsory course(?) that you take on an entirely different campus at an entirely different university either for an hour every week during semester, or for four full days during semester break. You learn the basics of welding, drilling, and other workshop stuff. And if you’re like me, who gets repetitive strain injury sitting at a computer or carrying groceries, want to hide until this whole ordeal is over and hope I never have to wield another hacksaw ever again.
I’m still not exactly sure what or who this course is for. I’m supposed to use my newfound welding skills in my future blogging career for… what, exactly? Blog about welding?
Here are some of the “objects” I “made” during this intensive workshop:
If I learned anything after all that (literal) exercise, is that I can say with absolute certainty I do not have any passion for welding whatsoever.