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Project management, whoa yeah! (3rd yr ME stdnt)

I'm three years into my mechanical engineering degree at oregon state university and got into their co-op internship program. For the last two months I've been working for a local aerospace cnc job shop in project management. You working engineers have a great life, school isn't anything like this. I'm not academically gifted and somehow settled out to 3.5+ territory (probably from a lot of tenacious bashing of head against the wall) but the real world is just great. Ambiguity, creativity, interpersonal collaboration and even politics, man it's great.

Let's face it, math is boring, solving problems on the fly in tempo with key company and customer players at the drop of a hat is the real deal. Honestly I dreaded going to my internship for the first month but it is getting easier as I de-calibrate my estudious mind and re-adapt.

I just thought I'd write something for the engineering students out there who were like me two years ago, fighting the educrats during the first two years, wondering if it is worth it.

Looks like it really is true: you use 2% of your knowlege in your career, but 110% of the organizational and time management skills that are side effects of engineering school survival. Look$ like the job market isn't quite in the tank like it was 3-4 years ago. Let's hope it stays this way for the next two years. :)

Reply to
quinnj
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Now just get used to having all that fun for less than an uneducated UAW riveter's salary and you're in for a happy life.

Don Kansas City

Reply to
Don A. Gilmore

I learned more in the first 6 months on the job than I did in the first 3 years of engineering school. That's the aerospace market. No one's going to ask you to solve using Mohr's circle. That they want is a 98% solution, on schedule.

The background is very important in terms of how to think and approach the problems. The really good courses, IME, were all in grad school.

Reply to
Harry Andreas

I agree that the real learning is in the beginning of the career, after the degree. The class I'm finding myself using the most in this internship is the graphic design class when we learned Pro/E. Aerospace seems to favor Catia, which (imo) has a much quicker user interface. Ironically, the GD&T stuff was totally skimmed over in this class, like a fraction of one lecture and a couple homework problems, and it is the one thing I needed most from my education at this point, other than the ability to drive the CAD package. Everything I'm working on has annotations in modern GT&T style. I really like it actually, it seems like a clear system of tolerancing.

UAW riveters make more than $55k? Those punks. We've still got a somewhat reasonable housing market out here. Hope it's still like that in two years. :)

Reply to
quinnj

Can you imagine if the engineers of the world banded together and formed unions? Hmmm...

Don Kansas City

Reply to
eromlignod

Correction: > Airframers< favor Catia. Many other segments of the aerospace market favor ProE.

GD&T is one area where most new engineers come out of school totally lacking. It's good that the CAD packages help with it so much, otherwise I'd be spending a lot more time checking FNG's drawings.

Reply to
Harry Andreas

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