[Corsa GT]

I've read various threads on the forum, and talk to Kevin (Trackbird) frequently, and just figured this would be a good place to put my question out there. I can't very well get it answered if I don't ask.

I'm fresh out of high school, and currently plan on going to Kettering University (the former GMI) in the fall. My question is this: What exactly goes on during an average day for you guys? I'm talking automotive mechanical, of course. I love playing around with my Miata, thoroughly enjoyed my short ownership period of an LT1 TA, and have been learning intensively about cars in the last few years. I always find myself wondering how something could be improved when tackling a problem, or processing a variety of ways to attack a problem. I strongly feel this is something I want to do, and could enjoy doing for quite some time.

What I don't want is to be sitting in front of AutoCad for 10 hours a day, 50 weeks a year. This is not saying I don't want to use something like that weekly, even daily, just not all day every day. I'm not an artist, either, much past giving poor representations during dinner on napkins (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) . I see myself wanting to be with a few other people, bouncing ideas back and forth, finding shortcomings and improvements on each other's. I don't mind working the often required late hours, nor do I mind traveling. I'm not sure how much it really matters, but when I recently took a questionnaire through school a few months ago, asking me about my interests, interaction habits, and other personality traits, engineering was high an the list of recommended occupations.

With all of that out of the way, I come back to the initial question: What is an average day like? Is there any advice you can give me about this field? I appreciate any and all input. (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[slowTA]

I can still recall walking out of a physics class with a score of 34/100 feeling gut shot, guess what, that was a high "C" after the curve was drawn.

Speaking of really bad grades and curves... How many of you have acutally gotten good grades in most of your classes before the curve?

I can only think that most of my classes work that way. How are we expected to learn anything if we can fail the tests and still wind up with a solid B on the transcript? I know most of my calc classes were either curved or the lowest grade was dropped, same for quite a few core classes. Then I take a design class that doesn't teach much of anything and has the hardest grading becuase you have to squeeze ALL of the prof's notes on 1 page. Heaven forbid you mislabel one of his long winded descriptions of "The mechanical process part 3" that has more made up words than anything with the 'part 6' description.

Or... If you just happen to get lucky and join a school team where a faculty advisor is supposed to be involved but the guy is always AWOL. Everything just seams to be a huge waste of time.