I received my PE as a ME. Best thing I ever did, career wise.
I’m not sure of the exact timeline, I think it was like 10-12. This was Washington State.
Yes, it can be. And it’s necessary if you’re doing consulting work for the general public like say designing the mechanical systems for an office building. But the majority of mechanical engineers aren’t doing that. They’re working for a company on in-house projects under the “industrial exemption”
Certainly, Civil Engineers were in the minority at all the Fortune 500 companies I worked for during my blissfully short career, but I was never discriminated against pay-wise. Once you got in the door, everyone seemed to work off the same salary scale.
I think something like 60% of the people who take the PE exam nationwide are Civil Engineers, even though they only make up about 20%-25% of the engineering workforce.
intercst
I agree. College is about more than a trade. Certainly, getting marketable skills is very helpful. But, IMHO, a good education provides context for so many things. When one sees history repeating, one knows that history is repeating because ones knows history. I could get specific about recent events, but that will get this post flagged.
One should have a general education about history, economics, math, and science. Then one can better tell when someone is lying to you (e.g. conspiracy of science about climate change… If you know the scientific method you know that is impossible).
College teaches you to think, and exposes you to new ideas.
I also think one should be able to get vocational training for those not destined for stem or academic careers. As unions fade, apprentice training is declining. You want a plumber that has been through union training. For example. I dealt with a few guys, but my current one is union trained and very good.
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And here’s a guy who knows how. He lives on less than $2,000 a year, by living on a tiny houseboat along the Tennessee rivers, moving every 14 days so he doesn’t have to pay mortgage, property taxes, or all those other nasty “skims” we hear so much about:
Oh baloney. There’s a whole world out there that doesn’t come anywhere close to engineering. Ignoring the obvious blue collar trades of plumbing, auto repairs, and the like, the world is chock full of things where a degree is helpful. Mine was in “Speech”. I had a great career in Radio/TV. (Mrs. Goofy “Mass Communications” and was in TV/Radio.) There are ad agencies galore. Film production. Writing. Counseling/therapy. Financial advisor. Product manager. Lobbyist/political advisor. Content creator. Actor. Property manager. Recruiter. Anything in marketing. Sales rep of any kind, anywhere. Healthcare worker. Anything in public relations.
The list is almost endless, and yes, you can get into some of those professions without a degree, although it’s helpful if you find yourself in a corporate stack where they eventually want you to have one.
I have said that my first 10 years in broadcasting didn’t require it at all - but when the time came to start running things, my corporate overlords were very interested in whether I had the little piece of paper or not, and without it my career would have been stunted, so I’m glad I had it.
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My daughter wanted to study art. I didn’t encourage it, but I’m not going to tell someone what to do with their life. I only insisted she have no debt on graduation. She did.
While in school, she’d studied the Danish language, for fun, put that on a Linkdin profile and forgot about it. A year or so out of college, she got contacted to work for Apple, and enjoys working with international colleagues and the job of putting things in order.
Who knows how long she’ll stay there, but she’s saving her ‘Benyamins.’ And she makes art on the side, unsullied by capricious clients.
All goes to show, you never know. Follow your nose. It might lead somewhere good.
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True story.
Our eldest son picked Cornell as the college he wanted to go to.
He was a good student, but he had to pass one last hurdle; an interview with an alumni.
The alum scheduled a visit to our home and our son insisted that we not be there during the interview. Fair enough.
Our son said he will end the interview at 9:00PM because he was going bowling with friends. I said, in my most serious fatherly tone, DO NOT TELL HIM YOU ARE GOING BOWLING! Tell him you studying with friends.
When we saw him later that night, we asked about the interview.
He said it went well. I said you didn’t mention bowling, did you?
He said, actually, I did.
I was about to ground him for a month or two.
Yep, he said, turns out the guy was captain of the Cornell bowling team when he was a student.
Our son got his undergraduate degree from Cornell.
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Love it! Be a human and get ahead in life.
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You teach your kids a lot.
They teach you a lot, too.
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There has been debate about shift length for decades. Unfortunately attitudes haven’t kept up with knowledge and technology.
Back when I was in residency (early 90s), C. Everett Koop gave a talk at the local theater and had a Q&A session afterwards. Entertaining talk. Then someone asked him about the proposed NY legislation limiting call shifts to 24 hours with certain amount of down time , etc, etc, etc. At the time it was common for me to be doing 32-36 hours. Koop then went on a long harangue about how he never wished to not be at the patient bed side, long hours built character, yada, yada, yada. And I thought, you just talked about how you were around for widespread use of penicillin, your were supposedly a pediatric surgeon but technology/drugs hadn’t advanced enough yet so you often sat at the bedside consoling parents while their child died, the gun and knife culture (gangs) didn’t keep you up all night saving a life that later could take yours, etc., etc., etc., totally out of touch with current realities. Pretty much lost all respect for him at that point. Too many of my attendings had similar attitudes. Once while I was chief resident, md and the department head were close to blows over how I was handling the call schedule for residents. I made it semi-humane and he was still wanting old school work load. I think things might be better now but haven’t kept track.
All I know, med school gives you no idea of what residency training is like and residency training gives you no idea of what private practice is like.
With my mom being a critical care nurse, had a lot of respect for nurses. When ever I was on a late ER or ICU shift, I’d tell the. nurses, if I’m about to do something that doesn’t sound right, tell me, I might be tired and make a mental mistake. We always worked well together.
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Very true. Aside from patience, I learned much from my daughter when she was a child. Very wise, untainted by ‘wisdom.’ Makes me wonder what we knew before we all ‘grew up.’
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