Being interested in understanding the operation of “systems”. For example, being curious about how airplanes fly (aerospace engineering), how your mobile phone sends messages to your friends from Facebook (Telecommunications or Information Technology engineering), but even how do the waves from the ocean move (mechanic, sustainable engineering), and even how the body works (biomedical engineering). In my opinion, that’s really it, being curious and really wanting to find answers to these type of things.
Everything else that is associated with engineering tend to be tools that will help you to tackle the problems that you solve (in building or understanding “systems”), for example: mathematics, research, analysis, etc., are all tools. If you learn mathematics, then it would be easier for you to “model” systems with them, but you can still understand how “systems” work without being a genius of mathematics.
In my opinion, the most important thing you’ll need to be is curious, and you’ll need to want to improve the way people live. If you have this kind of mindset, then engineering will be a suitable job for you I think. Then, you’ll have to work hard at school. Grades aren’t everything, but you need a lot of knowledge to be good at engineering! You also usually need pretty good grades to do engineering in college in Ireland 🙂
Officially speaking…just a degree. But to be a good one you need to be curious and passionate about the subject. It needs hard work, commitment and hard work, but if it’s something you like, it always pays you off.
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