I majored in mechanical engineering for my undergraduate degree. The following are lessons learned from my experience in school and my first few years in industry after graduation. I’ve tried to generalize my thoughts with the hope that people of various disciplines walk away with tips they can pursue further.

Learn what you enjoy and what you don’t

Learning what you don’t enjoy doing is equally, if not more important than knowing what you do enjoy doing. I found it easier to drill into what I enjoyed doing, by excluding what I did not enjoy. Early on, I only had vague terms for what I enjoyed doing, and I was having a hard time drilling down into what exactly I did enjoy. Listing out tasks and responsibilities I preferred to not do helped me identify the parts I did enjoy.

Sign up for classes that peak your interest but are outside of your graduation requirements. Alternatively, or perhaps to help you determine which class you may want to take, check out sites that provide free access to online courses, like edX and MIT OpenCourseWare. These resources come without the commitment of paying for a class, or the stress of needing to decide whether or not to drop a class before the deadline passes. Use internships as part of your exploration, and this exploration will continue throughout your career once you enter the workforce - you’ll continue to learn what parts of each job you enjoy and do more of, along with parts you’d like to step away from.

Do side projects - these can be as small or as large as you want, and include these in a portfolio of your work along with class projects. Show that you’re a passionate learner, and present projects along with the skills you used and developed - it shows that you’re motivated and itching to learn. I approach side projects in one of two ways:

  1. Knowing what skill you want to practice and develop a project around that, or
  2. Having a project you’d like to accomplish, or a problem you’d like to solve, and discover what skills are required, and get exposed to them and practice

After graduation, don’t be afraid of changing jobs - you’ll likely change jobs every 2-5 years - this is what I’m surrounded by in the San Francisco Bay Area. You won’t be doing the same thing for the next 20 years - don’t be afraid of getting stuck, and work to ensure you don’t get stuck somewhere you don’t want to be. Continue learning and be your own advocate. Someone’s recent advice to me included: do what interests you now. As in, at this moment, what do you enjoy doing? When this answer changes, that’s when you transition and pivot, but don’t try to predict what your career trajectory should look like. Your education is merely a starting point, and it doesn’t define your career.

News flash: you won’t learn everything you need to know in school. I’ve learned so much on the job, and I don’t see that changing. Continue learning after you’ve graduated - it’s good for your brain, I’m sure you’ll discover new things you’d like to learn about, and it’s important to stay relevant. This next suggestion draws from my experience as an individual who earned a degree in mechanical engineering: Take computer science classes as a mechanical engineering student.

  • Example 1: You’re conducting reliability testing on a prototype that includes motors. It would be valuable to have some coding experience, so that you can have more control and ownership over how you test and move the motors, without needing assistance from a software engineer on your team - it allows you to be more autonomous, not needing to wait for a software engineer to assist you when you get stuck.
    • Suggestion: learn Arduino, an open-source electronic prototyping platform
  • Example 2: You’re gathering a bunch of data, and want to be able to analyze the data more quickly, and run many queries - you’re running up against the limits of Excel and Google Sheets.
    • Suggestion: learn the programming language Python, and after you understand the basics, explore the data analysis library called pandas.

What are typical jobs in a field of study?

I suggest looking up job descriptions for roles in various industries within your discipline of interest. Look up open opportunities on LinkedIn or any other job board. Take a look at the job description (what you’ll be doing day-to-day) as well as the job requirements (education and experience). What skills and responsibilities appeal to you?

For example, a few roles that leverage a background in mechanical engineering include:

  • mechanical engineer
  • mechanical design engineer
  • product design engineer
  • aerospace engineer
  • controls engineer
  • systems engineer

Am I happy with my decision to major in mechanical engineering?

Yes - although while I was a student, I couldn’t tell you what I wanted to do with my degree - I knew I enjoyed math and science. While working in industry, I’ve discovered that I really enjoy project management and data analysis. As I write this, my current job title is Technical Project Manager, and after reflecting on my time in college, I noticed my role combines some of my favorite parts of school and my interests in general: I enjoy being organized and designing processes to allow myself and others to follow the same procedures to work better together (let it be project planning, or documentation), and I enjoy being a team leader, rallying people together. I have a track record of this while I was in school - both in class projects and working as a TA for several of my professors, serving as a resource to students. In my current role, I get to interface with technical coworkers of various engineering backgrounds to solve engineering problems. I leverage my degree as my foundation of technical understanding, to be an educated individual in the conversation, able to provide my own thoughts and understand my coworkers, and continue learning when discussing issues with other engineers.