I need advice from Hambers and people who do this stuff for a living

No question...Stay in school.

I have a BSME and have worked in various roles over the years in transportation/equipment related industries - engineering, purchasing and sales. It has provided a good living. I currently work in sales an a manufacturers rep and sell parts to OEM's that make anything with an engine on it.

I have never been unemployed since I started my first internship in approx. 1994.

In addition, my degree allowed me to obtain a master plumbers license in WI and I now own an interest in a very successful plumbing company...you have to have a backup plan...

Get the degree. Engineering is an excellent base degree no matter what you intend to do in life.

 

Oh...and no question. They are just trying to weed you out the first two years.

Once you get past the General math/chem/physics requirements, your education will be much more enjoyable.

Good luck

 

A truly "wise man" knows education never ends. Congratulations on earning your degree!

 

anyone who says "do what u love and you'll never work a day in your life" is full of shit. take it from someone who knows, the best way to kill your passion is doing it for a living. today i love working on cars cause i do it for fun now,when i did it for work i began to hate it. today i have been tattooing for 10 years, passion? not any more. graduated college too. good luck kid.

 

I did not have a running car when I started college. I would come home and my friends were working. The were buying newer cars, headers, tires and wheels. I was on foot. I would walk to school, bum rides and hitchhike. I worked my way through school unloading box cars, work study programs any thing to make a buck. Sometimes I lived on a hot dog a day.

A few years ago I talked to the guy that sold my friends all of their headers, tires and speed equipment. He said most of it was sold on credit and there were a few that never paid off their bill. I thought they were doing great. Looks can be deceiving.

 

The last person I would want working on one of my projects would be a teacher.

They are free to teach ideas that aren't tested in the real world. If an idea fails in the real world people lose money go out of business are sued, etcetera. In college the professors can teach untested ideas as fact and are protected with tenure.

The cost of a college education could be drastically reduced or maybe in some cases free, with corporate sponsorship, but the leftist institutions do everything in their power to keep the real world and tested corporations from challenging their domain. Heaven forbid the real world and tested facts be brought into a leftist institution. After all, socialism might be proven a failure.

Granted, engineering is probably one of the least affected subjects however you'll still see the predjudice.

 

GET THE PIECE OF PAPER. you may not need to use too much calculus in the future but it is one rung in the ladder. Just look at it as a really bad piece of cast iron you have to weld. Bust your ass, get help, talk to everybody, do your best and never take another shitty cast job again unless you have to. GET THE PIECE OF PAPER. Without it you will surely be stuck at 13 bucks or less For-ev-er. Even if you have to shovel snow or rake leaves for a tutor do it (not much of either in AZ). Last but not least, TALK to the teacher. Most people get it or don't give a damn. show that you are trying and most teachers will bend over backwards for you.

 

This is pure bullshit. I was in industry for 35 years doing engine combustion development. For the last 10 years I was involved with several top notch research universities, among them UW Madison and Michigan Tech. The in depth knowledge of the University research staff (Professors) is second to none.

Almost all of the advanced research is co funded by Industry and government. This is work that Industry cannot afford to do on it's own. The partnerships lead to things like direct injection you ar seeing on today's high output engines.

Universities like this keep our country competitive in the world. These projects also provide training for bright young engineers who enter industry and keep our comapnies vibrant. The work is too high risk for industry to take on alone, but with high risk comes high rewards. Cost sharing and pre-competitive research by these consortiums is essential unless we want to become stagnant and irrelevent as a people..

 

GET YOUR SCHOOLIN, my big bro did not want me in the trades.................dumb me, he was willin too see that I made it in collage well I was a stupid kid hey 1968 to 70 well spent my life workin on cars , now I,m all beat to hell, still car stupid made a livin but thats about it I put my 2 kids through collage both got solid deegrees my little girl in engineeering 5 yr good job started at more that my best year "fixin cars" get a solid start its not all what the rags say ya might make a livin most of the guys I know livin the dream got their careers else where and kept it as a hobby turn off the tv it paints a bull shit picture!!!!!

 

Add me to the list of folks telling you to stay in school. The math can definitely be a PITA but in the end the Mech. Eng degree will be a blessing.

My son got his BS in Mech Eng back in 2005. Started at 60K plus. 5 years later his salary has gone up accordingly, he's in his own house with NO help from Mom and Dad, and oh yeah he's catching up to MY salary real quick.

As far as what to expect? He works for an Aerospace company. The stuff he does can very. Sometimes he's reviewing drawings and such. Other times he's got his desk in the hangar under the aircraft wing doing alot of "hands on" stuff.

The bottom line is you can decide whether to get involved with hands on jobs, paperwork jobs, a combination of both. With Mechanical Engineering the fundamentals apply to Manufacturing, Design, Process and many more.

Remember, Engineering doesn't just mean design. For every item that gets designed it still has to be assembled. Ever watch "How it's Made"? Every machine that performs a manufacturing process has to be designed and manufactured too!

Contrary to popular belief there's plenty of Engineering work around.

 

quitters never win and winner never quit. school opens doors for you that would otherwise never be opened for you stay in school finish what you start.then you will have more options in what you want to do for the rest of your life.it gets easier.this is your life don't quit on yourself.then do what you love. if you do the money will chase you insted of you chasing the money.I do and I love what I do.I build peoples dreams.there homes and there hot rods.I love helping people with there projects and there projects keep me loving what I do.don't give up on your self win win win.

 

Stay in school. Get a tutor, just pass those classes and keep going. I am a chemical engineer with 20+ years and I work in the semiconductor industry. I work with people just as smart or smarter than me and they hit the glass ceiling on pay and promotions because they don't have the degree.

As many have said, once you are employed you will not be doing integrals or differential equations. We have computers for the grunt work.

I've hired engineers, even in this economy, and they are making good money. If you are good with your hands and understand electronics, you could get an AS degree and go to work for an employer that would pay for you to go to school to get the 4 year engineering degree.

Good luck. Don't quit.

 

i was in the same exact situation you are in , college or try and run a shop. i picked the shop and it has been some of the most fun ive ever had in my life....

but i hardly ever had money when i was running it full time, every bit of money i got had to go back into the shop. insurance, tools, suppiles, rent ect. ect. plus you start working on a project for 50 hours a week for a couple months, and all the sudden it becomes a job and you sometimes lose the fun factor. i found myself a girl that actually had her shit together and started to relize how broke i actually was, and that i needed a job.

a couple years ago i ended up getting a general manager job at a golf course, because i was an old friend of the owner of the course. i got lucky that i knew somebody because there hasnt been alot of good jobs around. a degree isnt a guarentee to get a job, but it will help.

plus you can still do the shit on the side, i still have the shop and build 3-4 cars a year and do alot of selling on ebay. its great knowing i can do that stuff for fun, and not have to worry about getting behind on bills and shit.

so long story short, stay in school.

 

...and one more thing. When you are asked during the job interview process about your hands-on engineering experience, make sure to let them know that you built a Hot Rod. I always, always ask the engineers and maintenance techs that I hire if they work on their own car. It is a make or break answer for the kind of engineer that I am looking for. I want to hire an engineer that is both book smart and has actually built something.

Best of luck. We were all there at one time like you.

 

I can concur with the "hate math" situation. I attempted taking electronics in vocational school, and got thoroughly frustrated. But that's the basic understanding of electronics. I wanted to work with radios, stereos and stuff, but couldn't stick out the basic hard stuff in school. Just like you, I loved working on cars, so I got on at a local body shop. And when you do ANYTHING all day five days a week, it sorta takes the "fun" out of it! So do what you have to do...finish school, then learn how to fake the rest!

 

Have not read all of the posts in your thread...but I agree with the majority of the ones I have read...STAY IN SCHOOL. I hated calc. and chemistry as well. I even dated the smartest girl in my calc class who tutored me. Took two tries to get through calc 1 and chemistry and three tries to get through calc 2, all of which was needed for my engineering degree. Many universities have student tutors, or kids who tutor on the side for a reasonable rate. Utilize them. They may help you better understand by giving you a different perspective.

I watched both of my parents make great money in union factories, but hate every day of it. As a result of my degree, I have a great job that I enjoy alot as a engineer in aviation industry.

Good Luck and stick with it. Remeber, a college degree does not necessarily tell a prospective employer that you are smarter, it tells them you have the ability to be taught, as 90% of what you will need to know will be on the job training.

 

x2^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

Another thought is a degree in business with an entrepreneur speciality, get a degree and learn the essentials of business from the desk side - wrench on the side and perhaps marry the two

 

if you really like to weld check out you local pipe fitters union. i am a union pipe welder here it pays $31 an hour plus you benifits , no you dont get to work on cars all day but you get to weld all day then work on your toys when you get home.

 

I went to Wyotech, but my intentions were to get in to Automotive engineering. School is expensive and I still haven''t gotten to the engineering part, but I don't want to work on others' cars for a living. So I am a valet right now, I just drive others' cars. There is a location here in Vegas where a valet has a phd, but earns just as much without the hassle of running a practice... (I don't make that much but the potential is in the location)

 

I'm a mech engr, calculus and chemistry are difficult topics and there were many times I didn't know what the fuck was going on. The engr curriculum at most schools use calculus to weed out the ranks. Are graded on a curve where 30% on a test is passing? Basically your calculus and diff equations builds your background to do statics and dynamics. Calculus sucks because you have to think in terms of how something changes due to the variables, you're learning to think non linearly. I was confused for 3 years, once I got to heat transfer, materials, otto cycles it all made sense. Stick with it, its a great degree that let's you work in many different fields, in 13 years I've worked operations, new product design, purchasing. You make good $ to allow you to have projects and tools and a garage to work on them.

 

I thought calculus was hard until I realized at the end of the second semester in college (50 years ago) how easy it was....
read the SECOND sentence of this page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus

Differential is the slope of the curve at a point
Integral is the area under the curve between two points
That's all there is to it.

Stay in school. If you need a tutor, get a good one in the subject who can simplify things for you.

 

So- have you graduated? Stay in school. I am down to the short rows on mt doctorate. I am burned out, frustrated with the details, and just about out of gas. But I didn't do all the work up to this point to quit. You can always quit later. Hope you finished, or are close.

 

An engineering degree gets you in the door at a company. What you do after you get in the door determines how far you go.

There are certainly good paying jobs that do not require a degree.....they mainly require a skill like welding, painting, etc. Both those examples require brainpower more than they do physical ability.

An engineering degree is important if you want to design stuff instead of just building someone else's design. We are an engineering company and we get to do side jobs (commonly called "government" jobs) like designing car parts using SolidWorks, making car parts using SLA technology, desiging wiring diagrams, making quad parts, etc. The fun thing about engineering is that it teaches you a thought process so, even though you forgot the formula for gunpowder long ago, you are aware that it exists and have the ability of find the info you need. If you never took Calculus, you might not know that you can find the area of a compound curve revolved around an axis with ease. It is important like squirrel said to learn the basics....future engineering course work uses the basics to build on.

 

McGurk nailed it. My parents both have collage degrees, mom has a 6y MBA, step dad has a bachelors from one of them phoenix online deals. They both don't and have not used those degrees for years. He was bagging grocerys last month. I make 18-20 an hour with just a G.E.D and trade skills. Pooling that with my wife gets us by. IMO it how much you chose to apply yourself and use what you have with as much effort as possible. Otherwise you wind up with fancy desk/wall decor as in my parents case. Go get em.

 

Since you asked about earning a living... which involves continuous cash flow over the next few decades...

my two cents:

For the love of all that is good.... do NOT try to earn a living by working on cars. Those days are OVER.

Find something enjoyable (besides cars) that actually PAYS GOOD MONEY and keep the cars as a hobby (and try not to get too carried away).

It might be possible to do a side biz with cars. But until that is making money hand over fist, I wouldn't do it full-time. Even then, if you make the plunge, you should be aware that this hobby is declining. Think 30 years down the road as people's disposable income gets less and less and fewer and fewer people are doing it (and there are fewer and fewer cars to reasonably work on).

If I was to do a car-based side biz, I think I'd sell T-shirts at a swap meet, LOL
Easy to get in, and easy to get back out. <--- (The second part of that statement is key)
Some T-shirt vendors make a bunch of easy side money. Do I like swap meets with nothing but T-shirt vendors? No, not really. But I understand why there are so many of them. They are earning some real money, and when it dries up, they can quickly move to the next thing. Contrast that to a shop that has huge overhead and huge equipment costs, insurance costs, is labor intensive, etc... and in a dying field. Not much of a comparison, really.

If you do work on your own cars as a hobby, your tools and skills will increase, and perhaps you can sell a few fab jobs. But I wouldn't recommend trying to do that full-time and for the next 30-40 years.

Whatever choices you make now, can very likely affect you the rest of your life. Cash flow is king, don't let the glory of an ideal suck you in to where you have a hard time getting back out.

My 2 cents only... based on experience. You can do as you like.

 

BTW, I actually don't fully disagree with a lot of above posters. There are good points there.

I know someone who got a degree in mechanical engineering or something, with all the CAD/CAM design, etc. Now he's got a good job at Edelbrock... designing car parts. He has his own hobby cars to have fun with, but I imagine he's probably got a good-paying job with perks. And when Edelbrock finally succumbs to a dead hobby, he can probably go to work for another company in a different field. And he will still have good pay, and can still enjoy his hobby cars.

I just don't think that you should build cars for a living. I don't think that's a good choice at this point.

Again, my 2 cents only. Do what you want.

 

Repetition is the key to learning anything. My Mother went to Baylor Dental school and was the only woman there and said the only way she could learn something was to do it over and over and over again. Stay in school. Nobody can take that away from you. GOOD LUCK!!!

 

Surely this guy has made a decision in the past 2+ years!

 

A little bit of time has passed since this thread opened and life has changed for a lot of folks. 3 years ago, I would have said stay in school, but now it depends on WHAT your degree is.

For guys like me, who graduated in the late 70's, I can see that skill jobs are becoming valuable again. All the college folks working, when they can find it, don't want to get dirty. They're paying good money for the guy who works with his hands. I'm in my last semester of welding school and have 3 job offers. Two want me to jump right in, the third is as a helper. Even though I'm carrying a 4.0 GPA and caught on quick, I'll probably go for a helper job. I have a good idea that welding on the job is a shit load different than welding in a class room.

So, my advise for the college guy is pick a major with a future. Marine Biologist sounds cool, but there's one working at the coffee shop at my Barnes & Noble. Blue collar jobs like A/C repair, plumbers, welding, auto mechanic, etc. are becoming valuable in this high tech world. Computer Sciences is good, but the A/C in your house will break or your toilet will over flow one day and that trade school guy gets $75 just to tell you why it's broke.