My Major

D., Jason. "Engineering Logo" 05/03/2012 via Deviant Art.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported

It’s not rocket science.  Well, it could be, but that is probably not the kind of engineering I will be dong.  Even still, exploring what engineers have to say about their discipline will help give me a sense of what direction I want my college education to go.

Ask any engineer what their job is and their answer will boil down to the simple idea of solving problems.  Students in the college of engineering acquire knowledge about the science and mathematics that people have discovered so far in the hope to further their discoveries and make discoveries of their own.  The discoveries will in turn become ideas, designs, and products that benefit the daily life of humankind.

With a degree in hand, engineers go out into the world and get jobs improving technology in areas such as medicine, aeronautical, and research (just to name a few).  They also help the lives of impoverished people by improving clean water filters, farming equipment, and so much more.

With no idea of what I wanted to study in college, I did know three things.  1: I was good at math.  2: I was good at science.  3: I had (and still do have) a hunger and desire to better the lives of the people I share this planet with.  With this knowledge, I found myself in the college of engineering looking for specific area of this major that I want to pursue.

Currently, the top Engineering companies ranked by the Engineering News-Record are AECOM and Jacobs, and many of the companies on the top ranked list are centered in California and Texas.  In addition, many of the top engineers are a part the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).  However, among many students in the engineering field, you have really arrived when you have a job at NASA.

To experience more about what each field of engineering is like, it is interesting to look at what engineers are researching and writing about.  Here are the top engineering scholarly journals.

• IEEECommunications Surveys & Tutorials (published online)
• NatureNanotechnology (published in engineering journals)
• IEEE Journal ofSolid-State Circuits (published in engineering journals)

Reflection

It is inspiring to see how others came to choose their majors.  Although very different majors, the people I read about decided their studies for the same two reasons as me.  A: Choosing a major that had many options since I had very little direction yet (as expressed in Betsy Volk's blog).  And B: Choosing a major because you were inspired by the philosophy behind each discipline (as expressed in Jon Wirzfeld's blog).

Reading about others' passions and dreams makes me all the more excited about mine.  It is the realization that this is truly the time when I am becoming my own person, making my own goals, my own ideals, and my own things to strive for.  It is also encouraging, the idea that everyone else has these aspirations, and I am not alone in the desire of (through these college years) creating the best future possible.