how much trouble have you had in getting your degree?

I'm starting to have a tough time, but its mostly because I don't have the time to study. currently i'm only in the beginning, general chemistry(with lab) and calculus 1.

my chemistry teacher is hard to follow (foreign), i'm getting a high D
and calculus isnt that bad, I'm getting a low C
chemistry lab is a low A, but that was a pretty simple class.

my problem is i work 40 hrs during the week, and i have alot of travel time also. I have an interest in this stuff (not so much chemistry), but find it very hard to lose sleep to study.

anyways, i was able to move 24 of my work hours to the weekend for next semester, that should help greatly, I'll be taking calc 2, physics 1 (with lab), and c programming.

Ok guys, how bad do i have it???
I know i'm only in the beginnings of engineering here, and i'm not looking good, i really hope that will change next semester since i've made some changes for it.

what did you guys find tough or demanding when it came to engineering classes? I find it takes me absolutely forever to do my homework and focus on it, I blame being out of school for 5 years for that (although i know it could be alot worse).

Did you guys find the later engineering classes to be much more difficult than this earlier stuff?

btw, i'm a Mechanical engineering major, and if it matters, i've completed an associates in EET in 1999 from a tech school

I definitely found it got harder as I progressed. The math gets much harder, for instance.

But, if it means enough to you, then keep in it! Quitters generally don't succeed in life. Lord knows I didn't do too well... but I'm seeing success regardless, because I persevered.

Dan

For most of my time in college, I worked full (over) time and took a class or two a semester. For the last year, I quit my full time job so I could carry a full course load and took a "part-time" internship that turned out to be about 60 hours/week average and 123 hours in the longest week. Obviously I wasn't sleeping much.

As you get older (and I don't mean much older) it will get harder to go without sleep (and more importantly, longer to recover).

It sounds like you're trying to carry about 12 hours AND work full time AND get plenty of sleep, and only getting C's and D's.

That isn't going to cut it. First of all the grades will make it difficult to find a job later. Second, you will have a tough time in the later technical courses if you don't really learn the early stuff well - especially Calculus.

I'm not trying to discourage you, but something is going to have to give. You are either going to have to cut back on sleep, work hours, social life, or course load, or you're just going to have to buckle down some more.

Yes getting an engineering degree is not going to be easy no mater what. Decide how bad you want it, then resign yourself to no social life and get some school loans so you don't have to work as many hours.

Mine went well for the first two years, then I got married and had a kid, so I had to get a full time night job. After that the last two years took 5 years to complete, and my grades were a lot worse. If I had it to do over again, I would forget about women until done with school and live with my folks. But if you can find a woman that will support you through it and wait until you are done to start having kids, do that.

Oh and get in some good study groups too.

I know your pain. I would have agree by saying you need to know your core classes pretty well. Also, ditch the full time job if you can. If not then take fewer classes.

For this semester I decided to take a full time temporary position and 2 classes at night. I knew I was going to hate myself no matter what decision I made. Take the job and go crazy trying to juggle both, or take classes full time and go crazy... damned either way!

Even as a full time student I found it hard to concentrate, it's worse now that I have a job. Of course now that I have some money I want to play with the car some. Without a job you wont be as likely to make plans with the car, so it's almost like you have 2 things off you back just by letting go of the job.

Right now I have at least 10 classes left to take, about 12 grand in debt, and I'm 26 already. I'm sick of taking classes, my masters is out of the question, and I don't have a degree at all.

At least you have an associates to fall back on if this doesn't work out, but at least give it a good try while minimizing your distractions. You'll only kill yourself if you stretch yourself too much.

thanks for the responses guys,

I'm 25, and I set a goal to finish by age 30. quitting my job is a last resort (but not out of the question), there are some reasons for it:
1. they are helping me pay for school (of course not with c's and d's).
2. I have to pay back the tuition reimbursement if i work less than 3 years after reimbursment
3. I set another goal to finish college and not be broke (I need to move out also, yes i'm STILL at home, no other way to do it at this point reasonably)
4. My company is somewhat flexible with hours for school.

the most classes i've taken is 4, but i try to put some easy ones in there when i do that. If i can keep up with what i'm about to do schedule wise, i plan on 3 technical courses per semester, and all the bs courses in summer.

the way it works out with this new schedule is as follows:
monday, wednesday, friday - 3 classes and NO WORK, all classes consecutive
thursday, just physics lab and 8 hours work,
tuesday 8 hours work only
saturday and sunday 12 hours work.

i'm leaving ALOT of time on my main class days to study, i think thats all I really need. Otherwise, how it is now, there is no time during the week to study, most things get put off till the weekend, then procrastination screws everything up, and i end up even farther behind.

the main reason i picked the above hours is to have free time the day of my main classes, I personally think this will be a great benefit academically.

On to more questions!!!

1. What was the toughest course you've taken?

2. How much time did you find yourself putting into studying on average?

3. How often did you ask yourself "shit, if i give up now...."
a. never
b. once a week
c. once a year
d. other?

personally i think i can stick with it, just need that time during the week, and hopefully some good professors that can deliver the info. As far as study groups go, its impossible with my schedule now (except for somethign on the weekend), i don't have any time to socialize with other students, i run into class, run to another class, run to work. I also don't have any time to study or review at work.

again, thanks for the responses, and sorry for my long posts

Hey, I'm still at home too.

I see why you want to keep the job, but 3 technical classes a semester is still a lot!! Even with 28 hours of work a week, that’s about 1 day less than me right now and I can't imagine squeezing in another class. I would take 1 class less to try and hang on to what sanity you have left. Time in between classes is almost as wasteful as lurking on the web unless you have a good 2 hour block. Time before you get to school and after you get home are the most important for getting work done, I think. If I'm not at work I'm at my desk trying to do homework. The attention thing is usually shot by then, but I keep trying anyway.

I think my hardest classes were either electrical engineering or system dynamics. The system dynamics is the one where you use differential equations to solve mechanical problems as if they're electrical problems... like treating springs and dampers as if they are resistors and capacitors. I still don't know how that is supposed to work, but thanks to a curve I'm done with the class. The sad part is that I really want to know how Sam figures out how to revalve shocks and I think that was the class to do so.

The last time I asked myself if it was worth the time and sanity was just after I was laid off from my last job and had to decide if I wanted to go back to school or find another job. I decided to go back and I can't say that I regret it.

The key to getting through college is getting the right professors, have you looked at http://www.ratemyprofessors.com? Hopefully that will help you some.

I have to vote for study groups too, they really help with the attention problems and you will probably have to work as a group in some of the more advanced classes anyway.

Once I asked an engineering friend of mine if it was all worth it. His reply was something along the lines of... 'of course, especially when you boss tosses you the keys and tells you to go test the new clutch.'

i checked that site out the other day, doesnt have all of the proffessors on there from cleveland state, but it had almost 300 of them.

the electrical concepts or whatever course should be a breeze for me, i'm woried about the later math courses, physics 1 and 2, strength of materials, thermodynamics and whatever else. those I'll probably go to 2 classes per semester.

I really want to get it done though, i'm kicking myself for going to a tech school out of high school and not going into something like this, i would have been done 3 years ago, and i'm sure it would have been much easier.

oh well, cant harp on that too much,

what other pitfalls did you engineer guys have to get through?

Thinking study groups weren't important was the biggest pitfall I ran into. Like you, I went to class then hauled a$$ off to work, so it wasn't convienent. But what I learned later was I was competing against others that were working together, so of course I wound up at the wrong end of the curve. And it took me a lot longer to do assignments, because they assigned one guy in the group to each problem then put their work together. I thought the study groups were just for guys that could cut it on their own, but the truth is everybody else was in one.

My hardest course was Thermodynamics ( or Thermo-god-damn-ics as I called it.) I was in Electrical Engineering, so I wasn't all that interested in it to start with. And at least a C grade was required because it was an engineering course. I got an F the first time, a D the second time, and A on the third try! So don't feel bad!

It took me about 8 years to get my ME degree, but I did my first semester in computer engineering, then a year in business, then sidetracked into psychology, took a semester off, worked about 30 hrs/wk at Comp Cams and travelled with the NMCA and eventually got my degree.

My best compromise was to learn all I could at work about engines and take only 9 hours or so each semester at school. Work did help pay for my college and I graduated owing noone anything. It worked out well in the end, but there were many hard times.

My worse course was Controls, by far. I hated that course and have never had to use a bit of it since. It was the only course I got worse than a C in. My first time taking it I got a F in summer school. I got that F because I had to miss an exam to go to a NMCA race. I had told the professor about my upcoming trip weeks in advance, but he gave me the speech about "Which one is more important, a race or this class?" I told him straight out in front of the other students, "My job, that takes me to this race is more important, because there I'm learning things that will apply to my future." He didn't like the answer and I walked out. A year later I made a B in his class. No other professor taught it. I had no problems with other professors rescheduling exams or doing makeup work when needed.

Actually, I found my senior year to be my easiest. I think one of my hardest years was my freshman year (in ME classes) because they put you through the core curriculum with teachers that were there to "weed out" the students that didn't really have the drive to make it. By my sophomore year I was taking DiffEq (very tough) but most of my other courses were getting easier. I really liked Thermo and Heat Transfer.

Are you sure that your school isn't trying to do some weeding, Bigshoe? My first day of my Freshman year, our Prof said "look to your left, look to you right - those people won't be here by next year - and remember two people looked at you". What we were told was that there was a shortage of Profs and equipment in the later classes in the major. They had to fail out 66% of the freshman class to accommodate the capacity for the major. ...and that is what they did. How? Grad Student "professors" that didn't speak english, asking obscure questions on exams that were never covered in class but in one of the 15 required books for the course... and on and on. They indeed did fail their target out of the program - if you got lower than a "C" you had to re-take the class, if you got lower than a "C" the second time, you could not register for the course again - you were out! IN fact, classes were graded purely on a curve. In one class, there was a mid-term and a final only. The average score on the mid-term was a 39%. Boy do I remember that a$$hole professor.

To be honest, it never got easier until graduation but I got used to the pressure.

At my school there was a formalized weedout cutoff between the sophmore and junior years. That made it a little tricky, because I was on the part-time decade plan and had started out as mechanical before switching to electrical. Finally the mechanical college was tired of carrying me on the books when I was not taking mech classes anymore, and I was still one class short for formal admission to the electrical upper division. They actually suggested that I transfer to Arts and Sciences for one semester, then transfer back, but finally agreed to let me register one more time. The material didn't get any easier after the cutoff, but the classes were a lot smaller and they at least weren't TRYING to fail half the class. In that sense it was a little easier, I guess.

Well Bigshoe, I kept wondering if it could get any harder. It did. I was only working 10-12 hours/week, but I was also carring 17-22 units (quarter). On average, I was studing/in class 90-100 hrs/week. I do remember how good 4 hours of sleep felt when the norm was 2.

I wanted to get out in 4 years in the worst way even though the program I went through was a 4 2/3 year program. We didn't have an official weeding out process, they just kept piling on more homework/projects/labs/ect as you went along. You really have to decide how much you want it. I graduated with a guy who had taken 7 years and retaken many classes, but he made it. The good news is when you get out working 40 hours a week seems like you're on vacation all the time.

Toughest class -- machine design or physics. Even though I did very well in the machine design class, the professor assigned SO much work and projects that the class almost killed all of us in the class. The physics professor set his curve to give 2 A's and 40% F's. He was basically just an A hole.

Giving up was never an option for me, but I wasn't working full time and came out 3rd in my class. I did seriously question my 4 year goal, but I couldn't stand the Washington weather for another year so I stuck to it.

Good luck,
Jason S.

Oh great!!! A guy who had trouble in machine design is making torque arms for us!!

Strength of materials wasn't too bad for me... because that was when I joined the school's baja team and there were a few team mates in the class with me.

I actually started out in a Mechanical Engineering school but the whole being away from home and studying like I've never had to took a real toll on me. I went to some community colleges before going back to a real ME college agian, a local one this time. The best part is that my Diffy Q transfered in from a community college!!! That may be away to get around the weeding out problem. Most community colleges think that the upper level math classes are beyond the weeding stages, that's where an engineering college starts their freshman weeding.

But just to complain about foreign professors, poor English, and bad attitudes... we've all been there. For some reason they're getting worse in my senior classes where it is pretty important to retain this stuff, go figure. You gotta love it when you ask these people a question and the start talking about how it's your job to read the book/lab manual, and then they go on about how their family was poor and he had to share 1 pair of shoes for all the 23.5 children in the family.

That old saying is true... "those who can't, teach to those who can't understand a word they're saing!."

Now I'm off to a Heat Transfer test.

Yup Sometimes half an hour was a good night's sleep.

Once the sleep deprivation becomes severe enough, you don't have to be fully asleep to dream. Just relax in a chair for a few minutes, drift into a dream while remaining aware of your surroundings, then go back to work feeling relatively refreshed - or what I would have called "refreshed" at that time.

As others have said, it kind of comes down to how bad you want it.

I should have mentioned that it was also one of the best classes I had. The size/scope of the projects was the real killer. That class turned into more than a full time job by itself...

I was also lucky in that all of my professors had been in industry first and many of them went back to "work" for the summer breaks. Their real world insights definitly helped.

I'm going to sign off on this thread now least it turn into one of those "in my day we had to walk uphill to school both ways fighting off the woolly Mammoths" conversations

Good luck on the heat transfer test.

Jason S.

No one-upmanship intended .... the point is that getting through engineering school is physically and mentally tough. You have to be commited.

You also have to realize that some of what makes it tough are the extra hurdles you place in front of yourself, whether it's aggressive self-imposed deadlines (or the opposite), :drive: $$$ or whatever, but it CAN be done.

Just look at all the people here who made it through (in the careers thread)

Jason also raised a very good point - some of the toughest classes will also be the classes you learn the most in.

well, you guys are really scaring me!!

I work with people with engineering degrees that probably cant even do simple maintainance to thier cars, yet i hear these stories and i'm starting to question myself even more.

anyways, we'll see how next semester goes, and hopefully i pass this one, i need to start studying pretty soon, i put it off all weekend, and yes i know that is not the right attitude.

btw, if it comes down to 2-4 hours of sleep EVERY night, i don't think i can do it, i'll get in a car accident, or really screw up at work, or flip out or something, i know my body wont be able to take that for an extended period of time.

anyways, i'll let you guys know how it goes as time goes on.


thanks for the info
Miki

I'm a senior majoring in Mechanical Engineering at Univ of Louisville. I've got about one more year until my bachelors and a year until my masters (which I'm going for).

I found the basic courses (cal de etc.) early on to be the toughest because they were trying to weed you out. I also didn't like them because I couldn't apply them to the real world. If you can co-op while there do it! I'm on co-op right now at a coal burning power plant and am learning more than I could ever learn in class. It's exciting being able to come back between co-ops and draw on yuor experience. Thermodynamics made much more sense after having come accustomed with the boilers, feed water heaters, and multi-stage turbines at work. If you're mechanically inclined and like to work on cars put it on your resume. My ability to work with my hands and mechanical is actually what got me my co-op with the plant.

I must be weird-I'm 22 next month and if I have less than 8 hours of sleep I cannot stay awake at all. I'm hoping one day I'll be able to get by on less than 8 hours but I doubt it.

Well, I was trying to scare you - a little. Your performance this semester, to put it bluntly, won't cut it. I'm not trying to be critical, just speaking from experience (I had to get serious after my first year too), and you do recognize that something has to change or you wouldn't have started this thread

However, I'm NOT trying to scare you out of the program, or impress you with how hard I (or anyone else) worked, or whatever.

Like I said, a lot of what makes it tough is the hurdles you create for yourself. We each pick different hurdles, but it all comes down to trying to do too much, to avoid making choices and try to cram it all in.

You CAN get enough sleep (most of the time), but something else will have to go. You're already on the right track with rearranging your schedule. However, you may have to start thinking more about the real "cost" of things. For example, will competing in an autocross mean you have to give up 8 hours of sleep during the week to get the studying done? Then you make your choices, but you have to treat studying as non-negotiable

If engineers had to actually work on the cars, our cars would be very different. My friend that has owned his own repair shop for years and worked for GM for about 16, cusses the engineers everyday for the lack of concern for ease of maintenance.

I say let them design something and THEN make them R&R and see if they still like their design.

Actually, in my opinion engineering, marketing, and executives ALL need to learn to think like a customer. I'm not talking about any particular company, either.

I can echo a lot of what Sean siad, getting ANY technical degree is hard work. I can also say cooping was one of the best things I ever did. Most people (me included) didn't have to really study in High School because it was spoon fed to you so much. Well in College you have to really figure it out and that's the biggest difference; you can't just go to class an expect to get it, you have to work at it to really understand the concept. Take encouragement from this, my first semister I got a 2.4 GPA in Mechanical engineering and ended my undergrad with a 3.5 GPA overall, so it's not over from a bad semester. Now I'm 2 years away from my PHD in Mechanical Engineering. Work on understanding the concepts behind the class and that will take you a lot father then just memorizing. Remember, you can train a monkey to memorize eqations, but you can't train a monkey to understand the concepts.

Heck, getting just about ANY degree is difficult. I worked about 1.5 jobs all while finishing my undergrad and graduate degrees in Geology. I did take it slowly, especially for my MS, but that was to allow more time for studying. Two classes a semister, on top of my thesis project was about it.

To put it bluntly, you have to stop doing all the extra carricular activities, sadly, like this forum. When I was working on my BS, I built a CP car, and autocrossed it, and a couple of other cars, as well as restored and showed a 72 4 speed Trans Am. The last two years of my MS degree program, I realized I wasn't going to get anything done school-wise unless I started spending more time doing schoolwork. By then the cars had been in the garage, under covers for some time. I basically dropped out of circulation to get the school stuff done. No going out on weekends, no calling on friends, etc. I would take about 20 minutes every couple of days to go ride my bike, but otherwise, was either working, or doing school work.

Interestingly, the month after I defended my thesis, I got RIFfed from the oil company I was working at and went into the IT industry. I DO have my degrees, though, and have the satisfaction of a job well done. They can take my job from me, but not my degree. :-)

Good luck on your chase.

Gene Beaird

oh, and since i work on the weekends now, there is NO MORE autocrossing and roadracing for me. I would have take vacation days for that, and well, in the past year, i have only taken 1 or 2days of my 3 weeks vacation for MYSELF, the rest has all been something school related, usually to prepare for a test or write a big paper or something like that.

if my schedule changes again, there may be mroe time to play with the car, but its really getting pushed aside.

gotta eat and go to work, later guys

There is a lot of good advice in this thread already, but I add what helped me. With the exception of the pure math classes, I was able to equate everything back to a system on a car. I have been building cars and engines since I was 10 and the mental images really helped me understand the concepts and not get so lost in the details. (Make sure you can see the forrest through all the trees)

Secondly, get in a study group. But be careful who you pick to study with. I found that those with far less understanding of the material than me were difficult to study with as were those with far more understanding of the material. Our group met in one of the engineering student lab rooms as often as possible and we decided that we would NEVER leave campus until all of our homework was done. No one did and we all made it through the program. Some did a little better than others, but we all did pretty well finishing with GPA's from 3.0 to 3.7. You still have to take your own tests.

Don't be afraid to to drop a class if you have a problem with the prof. I dropped 2 classes and retook them with a different prof. That made all the difference in the world. Mt first calc 1 prof looked like Vincent Price and sounded like Elmer Fudd, I couldn't take it. My first Statics prof. spoke such broken English that I couldn't understand him. I retook both classes with different profs and passed easily. In fact I liked my calc prof so much, I took all the rest of my math classes from her. Silly little woman, but she presented the material in a way that made sense to me.

Stick with it and find out which profs teach what classes and try to stick with the ones that make the most sense to you.

Hang in there

Yes, by all means, study groups! Probably more important than having a clue, is being dedicated to do the studying. I got in a group who would be on the way out to go partying whenever I showed up to study. Found some folks at school who were interested in studying, and we helped each other.

I found it really helped to rewrite your notes at least once. If you are in a class where the tests are mostly essay questions, rewriting your notes, especially if the rewriting is geared to answering potential questions is priceless.

Definitely drop the class if your prof sux, or you are getting behind. Taking a little more time to get through school, with the GPA intact is MORE important than finishing in 4 years, MUCH more.

Like you said, vacations are for school. Think of school as another job, only you are working for yourself and your future. Hang in there, it won't last forever. I found I could do almost anything, as long as I knew it wouldn't last forever.

Gene Beaird

hang in there... it gets tougher as you get closer to the end.
I did the opposite as most people do, I did it @ a x2 rate.
Full-time is 12 credits, and I was taking 23 credits per semester... got over it quick, though.
That's 7 courses + 1 lab per semester.
Started in Mechanical Engineering, almost finished it to then switch to Computer Engineering, where I did 3 majors (Software, Electronics (hardware), Telecom)
all of it in 4 years

Good luck and keep the good work, it's very rewarding.