Personal Essay Example: Engineering Career
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” For the first time in human history we wanted to send a man to the moon. The question was, how would we do it? We would soon answer that question with the help of engineers. To reach my goal of becoming an Engineer, I must develop my problem solving and leadership skills, earn a degree in engineering, and focus on working hard for the rest of my high school career.
After completing the Spiritual Gifts Inventory and Naviance’s Career Interest Profiler, I discovered several key traits that make me uniquely equipped for a variety of careers. “The Career Interest Profiler helps you find careers by mapping your interests to six basic types of personalities, together called the Holland Code. The higher you score, the more you are like that type” (Career Interest). My spiritual gifts were Acts of Service, Prophecy. My attributes and qualities were Investigative, Realistic, and Enterprising. The suggested careers I was given based on my results were Engineer, Scientist, Entrepreneur. Lastly, some of the clusters I was suggested included Agriculture, Health Science, Information Technology. Although the tests claimed to show our interests I did not feel like they were accurate at all. The jobs that they recommended I had little to no interest in except for engineering.
Scientists come up with innovations, engineers apply these discoveries to the real world. The job I chose to research was Industrial Engineering. Industrial engineers “Design, develop, test, and evaluate integrated systems for managing industrial production processes, including human work factors, quality control, inventory control, logistics and material flow, cost analysis, and production coordination” (Career Cluster). Jamie Stewart is the president and CEO of an oil and gas equipment manufacturing company. He said that his job involves managing industrial production processes as well as cost analysis, and production coordination. One important thing Jamie taught me was how being a leader is very important when being an engineer.
Part of being an engineer is you have to be a good leader and you have to be ready to fail. Being a leader is very important no matter what job you are going into. A leader does not follow. A leader's goal is to make people follow. If a person does not follow it's not your fault it's theirs. They are choosing to make their own decisions and when they fail you don't have to fail with them. But if you do end up failing, don't freak out. Failure is a part of the job. I learned that if you are not failing in this job or in any job you are not doing a good job. You should not sit and wonder why you failed. You should learn from that mistake and try again and again until you succeed (Stewart).
To become an engineer you have to be able to do many things. Texas A&M University has almost everything a person will need to succeed in becoming and engineer. “The mission of the College of Engineering is to serve Texas, the nation and the global community by providing engineering graduates who are well-founded in engineering fundamentals, instilled with the highest standards of professional and ethical behavior, and prepared to meet the complex technical challenges of society” (TAMU). Some engineering majors that A&M offers are Engineering/Industrial Management, Mechanical Engineering, and Engineering Science. Some engineering classes that A&M offers are Engineering Analysis, Engineering Design, and Engineering Processes.
Although I am not taking any classes that will prepare me for engineering, I plan on doing so in my future. I plan on taking Principles of Engineering which is, “a hands-on, project-based course designed to expose students to the major concepts of engineering and prepare them to further explore engineering in college” (TWCA). I also plan on getting a Computer repair technician internship. This internship will help me understand the world of computers. I can use that knowledge to better benefit me if I choose to go into computer engineering or any technological engineering job in the future.
In conclusion, engineering is a lot more different than I expected. Although engineering seemed fun at first, I soon learned after this research that engineering is not something I would like to be doing in the future. This has shown me that I should do a lot of research before I dive into such a big decision as what career I should do. I believe that engineering is not for me. I am glad that I know this information now. I hope it will benefit me in the future when choosing a job.
