When you’re thinking about career opportunities when you’re a kid, most of the options that you likely come up with are highly inspirational. You may want to be a princess or a mermaid or a detective, for example. Adult careers are generally less fun than we presume they’re going to be, however. But there is one profession that adequately combines the aspirational careers of superhero, scientist, and construction worker all in one: that of being a research and development engineer.
Why are engineers superheroes? Because engineers work tirelessly to ensure that the systems which make our lives possible — from electricity to rail transport to infrastructure — are sturdy, optimized, and evolving as fast as technology will allow them to do so. If you’re interested in becoming an engineer, you’ll be happy to know that there are many different fields which you can turn to for employment, from protecting soil erosion in South Africa to optimizing solar panels in America to engineering superior Slope Stabilization in Canada.
Here, we’ll talk about reasons you might want to become an engineer.
1. You Get To Use Creativity to Solve Problems
When you’re an engineer, you will be expected to use your training to get things done. However, as an engineer, you have the increasingly rare opportunity to ensure that you’re thinking outside of the box to utilize all of your resources in the most cost-efficient way possible. Much of your career, no matter what your field is, will consist of people asking you to get things done economically and efficiently. How you do so will often be up to you!
In fact, one reason to become an engineer is simply because, far more than almost any field other than perhaps medicine, current engineers report a higher usage of the skills they learned in school. Most engineers are actually required to do some form of ongoing education, but one in which the skills gleaned are applicable to their day to day lives. In short, if you become an engineer, you’re likely to spend your days learning and thinking creatively—not a bad proposition!
2. It’s Usually a Varied, Energetic Profession
As opposed to most jobs in modernity, engineers get to live out much of their career without feeling like they’re chained to a desk. Certainly a large part of being an engineer will revolve around calculations and proofs and studies and reports, but after you’ve done the desk work, you’ll have the opportunity to go and work outside or in the lab, putting the paperwork you’ve done to the test.
Often, depending on the specific line of work you do, the engineering profession will require you to travel. If you’re always up for an adventure, then, the engineering profession may be the way to go!
3. You Get a Chance to Keep the Earth Safe
Because engineering is, at its nature, about optimizing processes to best utilize and protect resources, many opportunities for engineering can be found in the environmental sciences. This alone would be a good enough reason to get into these fields, as well as it being a superior tie-in to the oft-dreamed youthful ambition of becoming a superhero.
Many of the natural job opportunities open to engineers are about wind, solar, and other renewable forms of energy. Several other job opportunities lie in ensuring that the natural resources and structures we have built in the past are still safe and usable for everyday purposes. A great example of this is the science of slope stabilization.
Soil erosion is a huge problem that affects the world in at least two ways: through the degradation of topsoil and other surface structures, and through the mobilization of the soil that is whittled off these structures. Fortunately, a team of engineers has come up with a new product that may be able to reverse both of these processes before they cause too much more harm.
Neocells are a man-made resource which, when scattered over the topsoil, assist with the process of slope stabilization and help ensure that degradation doesn’t happen any faster than it naturally can. They help assist with efficient, safe drainage as well as providing a stable and durable protective cover for the topsoil they help cover.
Engineers are coming up with creative solutions for world-threatening problems such as these all of the time! If you’re a creative person who likes to work both independently or on a team, engineering could be a great choice for you.
