Day number two where I am starring in The Return of the Blogger Jedi...or something of the sort. :)
So what's new? Well, last week I changed my major! Yessir, that is correct.
Drumroll, please...
Ladies and gentlemen, I am now an Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering student!! I'm VERY excited for this; I pretty much go to sleep at night with a smile on my face.
Why the drastic change? Well, let me indulge. It really isn't that drastic. This year is kind of a repeat year for me, socially. Last year tanked in the bottom of the bottom of shitters for me, and this is the year where I am turning it all around. Just like that Collective Soul song goes, "Let the word out/I've got to get out/Oooh I'm feelin' better now."
Pretty much all the stuff that I'm pulling down this year, is stuff that I've already been secretly sitting on and thinking about for the past year, but was just too chicken to make a move on.
Until now.
On Thursday, October 5, there was the annual fall career fair here at UWM's College of Engineering and Applied Science. There were about 30 companies that attended overall, all set up in the first floor of the EMS (Engineering and Mathematical Sciences) building. I wasn't too-too interested in going, really, since the spring semester career fair is usually twice as large, with all the big-name companies that attend, in a push to hire on their summer workers. This time around, Kohler Co. was the only big-name prestige that I kind of wanted to check out. Not to mention, this girl Sara and I were on a last-minute project to go talk to companies to look for grants and deals for them to help pay for our trip over to Germany. So I went with a few resumes, got all dolled up, and did my power walk to the EMS building to go check things out with her.
When I got there to register, Sharon, my academic advisor (who, by the way, was my Aunt Claire's best friend and roommate at UW-Whitewater...small world, you move off to a college hoping nobody knows you but you still find someone who is aware of your entire extended family) had me write up a name tag and slap it on my chest. To go with the name tag was this little circular sticker, just a solid color. There were different stickers, made of different colors. Each color represented a different engineering major.
I got hit up with a purple sticker, for mechanical engineering. Sara had a green one, for civil engineering. I then proceeded to talk to Sharon about how things were going, how "hungry" the companies were that day, and what she was thinking of the other students that had come in.
She looked at Sara and said, "Ooooh, you'll have a lot of luck with civil! Everyone wants civil. That and industrial. These employers are nearly crawling out of their booths to hunt you guys down, they really need more of you! They look right at those stickers and say, 'Oh! Green sticker, get on over here!' 'Red sticker, red sticker, what's up and how are you?!'"
She looked at me, stamped her lips shut, and then mumbled "Mechanical...yeeeah...I don't know, there are a lot of those out there already."
Her words kind of echoed in my head and I fought off a frown, but picked up my speed again and moved on past the registration booth with Sara to go talk to companies.
And you know what? The advisor was right.
Now, I am always one to be modest, but to cut to the chase here, my credentials are pretty God damn impressive. I'm in the UWM Honors College, earning an honors degree that is entirely separate from "graduating with honors" within your major. Because oh yeah, I'm doing that too. I'm a Wingspread Fellow. I've been a class representative. I'm one of the board member/officers for the entire UWM Society of Women Engineer chapter. Hell, I've been invited to join Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society because I am at the top of the class here. You must be within the top 1/8th of your class (for us it is 61 students) in order to even be invited to join TBP.
But none of these companies seemed extremely flirty with me, so I was rather humbled.
Sara, on the other hand, talked to six or seven different companies and got offered an interview on the spot, for an internship with a civil engineering-transportation company.
I went home that night thinking about what I had just tasted with all those real-world companies. And I had realized that once again, my dad was right. He really is never wrong, even with making his predictions about my friends and what might happen with their lives. Anyway, what he had predicted in this case is that mechanical engineers have become a sort of "dime a dozen." He and I have talked about this many times, actually.
I thought more about the companies I have dealt with in the past. Volkswagen and Schneider, mostly. These companies were really, truly, looking for formal IME majors to fulfill their internship positions, and in turn to possibly hire them on, full-time, post-graduation. Volkswagen offered me the job while I stood as a mechanical engineer, but mostly because I explained to them how I liked the process manufacturing and quality analysis...this matched impeccably with the position they were trying to fill. And *BOOM* with Schneider, they fudged the fact that I was studying ME, and kept highlighting the bit that I am studying the "industrial branch under the mechanical umbrella." Actually, I befriended this guy Zach over the summertime at Schneider, that was working the very same internship I'll probably take up next summer. I wonder what he'd say if he found out I am now one of his, since he is an IME as well......
Oddly enough, this time *last year* I spent many a-nights falling asleep, evaluating what type of engineering I was going into. I found myself really getting into manufacturing and materials engineering. Just the manufacturing processes, and checking over the designs after someone else made them from scratch, seemed very attractive to me.
Last Thanksgiving I went home to talk to my extended family about all this. My favorite Unkie Tom is a mechanical engineer (and an alumni of UWM as well!), and he had little direct advice to give me when I asked him about mechanical engineers being too dime-a-dozen.
I understand why, now, though. He graduated 10 years ago, when engineering was all the new rage and employment was growing at a pretty good clip. At that time, mechanical engineers were very much needed. Fast forward 10 years, and that portion of engineering is stable.
Now, they need the managers, the control systems personnel that are all industrial and economics-savvy that will show companies how to stand a cut above their competitors. Industrial engineers, they are in dire need now.
And you can get in the door anywhere with that! Christ, you could work at Pick 'N Save headquarters as a Buyer Consulter if you wanted, using the industrial engineering degree. Not that I want to aspire to do that, but I'm just saying, this degree is pretty versatile. I looked into the career in the Department of Labor and the Better Business Bureau, and it looks like their employment outlook is good, their average salary is neck and neck with mechanical engineers, and even better, their entry-level positions are notorious for being promoted into managerial positions.
Schwing!! I'd be interested in that.
And I feel that I would be good at industrial work, too. I've found out about myself through these engineering courses that I'm best with checking designs over, and making sure they follow certain codes and ethics, rather than designing them from scratch. I mean c'mon, I grew up as a Barbie girl. I didn't tear apart my toaster, just to try to put it back together again. Or work with Daddy out in the garage on the car. So I don't feel like I even have the raw background or aptitude skills to get into the gearhead world of MEs, designing parts.
This will be a better fit for me, I am EXCITED!! The IME program here is tiny, so I plan to make an impression I suppose. I'm actually farther along in earning my IME degree than I am in earning my ME degree, which is very cool. And the classes even LOOK more interesting, when I read the titles of the classes I have yet to take.
I like being something so delicate and specialized, though; this is so cool. Much more exotic than your middle-of-the-road ME students. I can do better than that, the middle of the road.
And now I am. :)
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