A Million Lives

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Interested in Becoming an Engineer?

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.

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What Does It Take to Be a Civil Engineer?

Civil engineers are the ones designing our roads, water treatment plants, power plants, schools and other critical infrastructure. The architect creates the general design, but it is the civil engineer who makes sure the supports hold up the roof and the runoff doesn’t flood the basement. This means that there is always demand for civil engineers. What does it take to be a civil engineer?

Visualization

They say that if you can see it, you can achieve it. For engineers, the ability to see how to implement the architect’s often fanciful designs is essential. The ability to visualize all sides of a part or structure are essential to ensuring all sides of it are properly designed. And unlike the architect, civil engineers figure out how to build the tall walls and sweeping facades while still integrating plumbing, electrical wiring, network cables and other infrastructure, which makes visualization skills that much more important. Mistakes lead to unsightly holes cut in walls to bring chilled water or conditioned air to common areas or uncomfortable buildings because of insufficient air flow.

Math Skills

Engineering is one of those fields where calculus and algebra are relevant and critical to the job. Determining the stress on beams, the torque a strut is subjected to, and the load behind a wall as the water levels rise all involve calculus.

Communication Skills

Civil engineers are the ones who oversee much of the construction of the designs they’ve contributed to. They have to work with architects who are selecting materials and then tell them the ground just won’t hold that load. They need to work with skilled tradesmen to build the structure and handle issues like material shortages, failures, and oversights. They’re in constant communication with the client regarding the status of the schedule and talking to vendors to keep the materials and talent coordinated so you don’t end up with beams arriving before the concrete is ready to be poured or wait two days for electricians while drywall installers sit idle. This is also why project management skills are essential for civil engineers. Skills like this are taught to you as you complete an online civil engineering degree.

Critical Thinking

Engineers are problem solvers. They’re often the practical half of the architectural firm, figuring out how the heck to build what the architect designed and fixing practical flaws in their designs. And they’re solving other problems, too, like how to maximize access to an area while ensuring security or using materials the customer wants while remaining within limits set by the local building code. You can learn practical solutions to common issues like this while enrolled in the online civil engineering program at Norwich University. You also learn solutions for retrofitting buildings, whether making them more energy efficient or upgrading aging equipment.

Conclusion

If you want to become a successful engineer, you have to either have or learn the traits and skills above. The good news is that it’s never too late to improve yourself, all it takes is perseverance and a little bit of self-awareness.

A Million Lives

Travelling in all its glory is fun and exhilarating but sometimes you might want to find some information on where to go, what to see and how to go about it from someone other than the go-to websites, especially when it comes to travel hacking and the coolest, most useful ways to get the most out of your next adventure.

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