A little advice for an indecicive college student?

I am currently going to UTD (University of Texas as Dallas) majoring in Electrical Engineering. I just finished my Sophomore year yesterday. I have always had a passion for engineering and Electronics, but after this semester i am reconsidering. The more that I think about it, engineering seems a little "dirty" to me. I love mathematics because they are so pure and exact, whereas applied physics and engineering are at best estimates. Whenever anything is applied to the real world there has to be what is essentially a decimal approximation, and this really bugs me. It seems like a minor complaint but if a lifetime of engineering is ahead of me I am not sure that I am going to enjoy it. So here is what I am undecided about. I am considering changing my major to Mathematics. The only problem here is that there is little or no jobs outside of teaching that I know of. So what would you do? Should I follow my passion of math, or the practicality of EE? I do enjoy electronics quite a bit, I am just not sure that I would enjoy working with tables and estimates all day.

Have you thought about studying physics? If you like math, you will surely get plenty of it studying physics, plus get an appreciation for 'why and how" things work. However, jobs for physicists are limited, too.

Suggest you take some business classes, too.

Whatever you do try like hell to get a job, internship, or coop, in whatever you think you might want to do. I was in pre-med for 2 years and got a job in a hospital. After 3 months I was NOT in pre-med. I'm grateful for the eye opening experience I got at the hospital. It might have saved me from spending years getting into a field where I might have not enjoyed it.

College is an expensive and time consuming undertaking. If you don't "know" what you want to do yet don't force it. You'll find your path eventually.

Hm, good point. I'm on the road to a computer engineering major, and I personally enjoy the electrical engineering, as well as computer science aspects of it.

I dont agree with there being few jobs out there for mathematicians. Most major corporations and government organizations do a lot of statistical analyses and also do a lot of simulations and modeling. All of these require mathematicians

In addition, software companies need mathematics majors to try to optimize everything from rendering to memory management.

Hmm, I wasn't aware of those jobs. That is defiantly a good thing to hear. Thanks, Cornkid. As for physics, I had to take a few basic physics classes, and I am not all that fond of it. Thanks for the suggestion though.

It is hard nowadays trying to decide on a career path because things are so fluid and dynamic now. There are so many more different kinds of jobs that it makes finding one you like challenging. The best advice I can give is to make sure you like whatever you end up doing. Life is too short to be miserable in a job even if it pays well. Money is a part of the equation but so is your long term happiness which directly affects you health, family life etc. The college years are a time to explore your career options. Talk to your professors and teaching assistants. Does your university offer services to help with career planning? If it's math you like then explore that avenue. Good luck!

There's much more to physics than final velocities; ask js.

whatever you do, don't go to law school.

mccavazos,

I used to have a similar attitude about approximations, too. I gave my teacher all kinds of grief for saying that an op amp could be used as an integrator, to find the integral of a time based function. I wanted to derive all things from first principles--none of this weak-assed approximation crap. And if something was only "like" something else within certain bounds, well that just wasn't good enough.

But, I came to see, and experience only confirmed this for me, that the very best engineers and physicists are effing MASTERS of approximation, not because it is weak and wussy and soft-headed, but because it is absolutely BAD-***. This is where the term "Fermi calculation" came from, akin to "Back of the envelope" calculation. Fermi had the mental accuity and penetrating intellect to be able to see through the experiement to the theory and determine what was really significant, and thus approximate, accurately, the result.

You might try looking on this stuff in EE in a similar spirit. Anyone can apply a rule of thumb or an approximation or look up something in a design handbook, but fewer people can understand WHY the approximation is valid, and under what circumstances it is no longer valid, or even have the ability to create their own rules of thumb as needed.

But failing this, I would say that you sound to me like someone who will only be truly happy in mathematics. If your heart longs for the precise and exact proof; if Wieirstauss is your personal hero; if you get immense satisfaction out of solving mathematical proofs and deriving formulae that can be relied on, not just "approximately" but completely and absolutely (assuming the axioms), well then, you are a mathematician and there's no getting around it.

Do what you love, and the money will usually follow. It may be the harder, more uncertain road, but it's the one you're less likely to regret later.

Good luck!

Insurance companies still employ actuaries. And pay them VERY well after they pass their exams. And yes, statistical analysis is a huge field. Many companies use people with math degrees for data analysis work. Our marketing department for instance. But for that, you have to like the data and trend analysis.

greenLED said:

There's much more to physics than final velocities; ask js.

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LOL! Too true. Too true. I think there's something called "mass" and maybe penguins and quarks, also? Physicists are just boys with very expensive toys and bad hair. hehe.

Oddjob,

Very well said. Right on the money. BTW, I really liked your other avatar! I miss it. I mean this one:



Bring it back! Bring it back! Time to rotate it in again!

If your passion is mathematic, by all means follow it. Might even be a Fields Medal in it down the line (not that this is too important).

Thanks for all of the Information. I believe that i am going to give another semester to EE, as the two degrees closely parallel each other (besides a few classes) for the first few semesters.

I went the other way. I started out in math, moved to physics and ended up an EE.
After my junior year in math I looked to see what last years grads where doing. Most were teachers, even the hot shots. I checked with a few master grads and they were teaching also, a noble profession, but not for me. I ended up just loving physics when I took physics II. At the time I only knew of one physics grad with a cool job. However when it got to engineering quite a few had a cool job. Later I did run into a few physics grads that had cool jobs, but they where all master grads. One thing about math is few jobs are like graduate classes. Not many companies want to pay you to spend days (or weeks) solving cool math problems.

Advice? Sure! Learn how to spell! Indecicive??

People judge you by your spelling and grammar.

Math also includes cryptography, which is certainly a growing field these days.

You sound like a typical college sophomore to me, with an idealistic approach and a love of getting THE right answer. It's a wonderful time of life. Luckily if you're in EE at UTD you're bright and have a gazillion great options, all of which will provide a livable income level. Because of this, I think you're taking a view that's too long-term.

Don't try to choose what you want to do forever. You don't have to! Just decide what you want to do next.

Don't forget that life outside of academia is messy. It just is. I grew up with a dean for a dad, an organic chemist for a mom, and had nearly nil view outside academia until I sorta kinda tailed off of college some too-many years after any normal 4-year program. I know what you mean about math. It's beautiful and exact. Science is exact. Even philosophy strives for that level of precision. Engineering is about "close enough".

When I got a job I got one real hard lesson about what matters in the "real world," though. I kept getting virtually yelled at by my friend & mentor who was very understanding but unyielding that if I kept trying to get THE right answer then the firm wouldn't make any money with me. What they were interested in was the good-enough answer so they could ship the product and start making money from it. I guess I did an okay job at it, but it took me years to get used to "good enough" being the right way. I still fight it in many things that come up in life in general.

Having children has also been a great thing for changing my propensity. Not that I'm suggesting that for you at this time at all; merely another anecdote. There's just so much about raising them that trains that 80% is really the goal to shoot for. Everything from trying to teach them to behave, to cleaning their playroom. If I'm too much of a taskmaster then they just misbehave because nobody likes losing their free will. If I try to get the playroom totally spotless then it takes way too long for me to be able to do it often enough.

So I'm going to recommend you go with bitslammer's and other's advice that you try an internship. My twist is that you might not even like the "real world" which is fine too. If you want to stay (for now, at least) in the realm of truly exact then you can stay in academia and become a professor. Of course, these days it's about "publish or perish" which kinda sorta brings you straight back to the dirty "just get it out the door" demands of life outside academics.

Well, I hope this doesn't come across as depressing. I gotta say that I've discovered messy to be at least as fun. There's lots to learn outside school and my family and job teach me that every day.

You could always try to tune your mind in some zen way that the engineering approach really isn't dirty but rather it is in fact about arriving at THE right answer, just that there are more variables (such as real-world constraints) than usually involved in a mathematics problem. Well, I guess now that I've said it that way it just sounds dirty/messy. Maybe you can come up with some more clever way around it.

Good luck!

Thank you Peter, that helps a lot. I didn't think about the "publish of perish" thing. I think rushing a proof would bug me just as much. I may take a semester "off" well, devote it to basic classes and just think about it.

I second that.


It you like math, become a real estate appraiser. BOATLOADS of cash if done correctly. I've come upon an appraisal system that I am thinking of patenting. It's allowing my friend to make about 650k per year, and everyone under him makes at least double a typical appraiser's salary.

MicroE said:

Advice? Sure! Learn how to spell! Indecicive??

People judge you by your spelling and grammar.

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finish the EE degree, and go get a Masters in math after that, if you're still liking it.

an engineering degree is nice to have on the resume'.