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Asked by anon-73911 on 23 Apr 2020. This question was also asked by anon-74897.
Question: Did you always want to be an engineer
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Sophie Louth answered on 23 Apr 2020:
I didn’t always want to be an engineer. I wanted to be a fisherman when I was really little, then I wanted to be a scientist and then finally I discovered engineering, and decided it sounded like good fun so that is what I am doing at the moment, but I might change my mind again and do something else in the future, you can do that!
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Katie Sparks answered on 23 Apr 2020:
No, I had no idea real idea of what engineering was and apart from my science teachers, I wasn’t aware of anyone who worked in science either (except for doctors).
I really enjoyed science, music, history and English at school. I chose to do a lot more science, as it’s hard to do that without equipment and the further you get, the more you work as part of teams. I read a lot, including history things and I play and listen to a lot of music, so this way I get to do a range of things I enjoy.
I chose to do Physics at university because it was the subject I enjoyed the most. After university, I was looking for options that made physics research happen and that turned out to be engineering.
I like to think of science as “what’s going on here?” and engineering as “how am I going to do that?”. They use a lot of the same skills and knowledge, they both solve problems, but for some reason engineering problems, to me, feel more like look for a solution to a goal, rather than a full exploration of anything.
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Claire Brockett answered on 23 Apr 2020:
When I was at school, I quite liked the idea of being an environmental scientist. When I left school, I had a job at the local hospital as a Cardiac Technician – doing a variety of different tests to see how peoples hearts were working, including ECG traces and ultrasound. As technicians, we got to go into surgery when pacemakers were being fitted, and were responsible for programming the pacemakers. I got really interested in how it all worked, so left my job to do a medical engineering degree.
During my degree, I started learning about different materials used to repair the body, and joint replacements – and that’s how I ended up here! -
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Louise France answered on 23 Apr 2020:
I actually wanted to be a physiotherapist, and then I wanted to be a doctor. However, I missed an A-level exam and that messed up my application for being a doctor. I looked at what interested me and what I was good at, and I found engineering! I don’t regret it.
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Reshma Vora answered on 23 Apr 2020:
Not specifically engineering. I loved aviation and I knew I wanted to go into that industry, engineering has a lot of options and as I came from a family of engineers, it was an obvious choice for me
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Diana Mathew answered on 24 Apr 2020:
No, as a 10 year old I wanted to be a teacher but then i got interested in Physics and Chemistry. After school the choices were either do a Science degree or Engineering. Because my brother has been a big influence in my life, i followed in his footsteps and chose engineering.
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Jeni Spragg answered on 24 Apr 2020:
I wanted to be all sorts of things, and never really a scientist or engineer. I thought I might like to be archaeologist or a pharmacist, so I suppose the common theme was that I wanted to apply science to do interesting and practical jobs.
I stumbled across chemical engineering because it was next to chemistry in all the university prospectuses. I realised that I really liked the idea of applying science to really big engineering problems, rather than small-scale science in the lab. In chemical engineering, our reactors are the size of houses, which seemed a lot more fun to me! However, it’s totally personal preference, some people really enjoy the challenging of creating and test new scientific ideas in a different kind of way, for example in a small lab.
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Kirstin Rouse answered on 25 Apr 2020:
Nope! I didn’t set out to become an engineer, it’s just where I ended up. At school, college and university I picked the subjects which I found interesting and seemed to be good at and that led me to a career in engineering. You don’t always have to know exactly what you want to do and if someone asked me today what my dream job would be in the future, I still wouldn’t be able to answer them!
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Rhys Edwards answered on 28 Apr 2020:
No. I always enjoyed learning about technology as a child, but didn’t really consider it as a career option until after decided to study engineering at university.
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David Linsell answered on 24 Jun 2020:
Always, since wearing short-trousers. Inspired by: my father; reading about the great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel; watching Professor Eric Laithwaite demonstrating Linear Induction Motors in the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.
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Oana Lazar answered on 25 Jun 2020:
Nope!! When I was in primary school I was really into Ancient Egypt, so I wanted to be an archaeologist. Later in school, I looked up to my teachers a lot so I wanted to become a teacher, like them. I then took Design and Technology: Resistant Materials for GCSE and that’s when engineering was introduced to me, but I still didn’t think of it as a career option, because I loved Computer Science at the time and thought I would become a computer scientist. I then applied for a bunch of HeadStart EDT courses over the summer and one of them happened to be about electronic engineering…and well, I guess I fell in love with it then, and also realised that I could still do Computer Science, but apply it to solve problems, and that’s where I am now!
It’s totally okay to not know what you want to do as you’re growing up, but I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make is make the decision right now, before trying out as many of the options open to you as you can. This is because I find you can sort of get “stuck” in that mindset and think that since you made that decision a couple of years ago and told everyone about it, you now can’t change your mind…but actually, it’s never too late to change your mind! Life is much more flexible than I thought when I was younger.
Comments
Fidel commented on :
When I was really young, I wanted to be a Police Constable funny enough then I wanted to be a lawyer then I finally discovered what my did (he was a petroleum engineer) and thought that would be great because he got to travel quite a lot and appeared to be getting a decent income. As I grew older, i started discovering my strengths and what I enjoyed doing and finally ended up choosing electrical & electronic engineering.