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"What is Electrical Engineering -- really?"
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Undergraduate Electrical Engineering
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In theory what is it?
Electrical engineering is the study and engineering of signal waves and their
propagations. A signal wave is any kind of electromagnetic impulse that
either carries data or controls something. EE is in the business of taking
this signal wave and making it become another or reading it. Simply
stated, wave manipulation.
An electrical engineer would be in the business
of converting the crest shape of an ocean wave into a silly looking square shape,
then identifying that the ocean would need 60% more salt and 10% less fish to
support such a shape. And after travelling 2 miles, the square ocean wave would
spread out into several soft rolling waves.
What is it used for?
The 'connection' your cellular phone makes.
receiving music on your radio.
Identifying the highest 'MHz' that a computer can really support.
Converting digital data on CD's into music.
What does the major actually entail -- work-wise
Electrical Engineering used to consist of lots of 'hands-on' work using
capacitors, resistors, transistors, and other little cool devices to
manipulate waves & make things happen.
Unfortunately, since the advent of the DSP (Digital Signal Processor) and
Computer Engineering advancements, EE is more about using software
packages to put preformed components together on the screen & inputing the
necessary parameters. At a lot of universities, this boils down to hours
of painful grunt work (aka 'training') in front of the computer screen on
how to use the software packages. There is less and less of the golden
theory and hands on practice offered these days.
What this roughly translates into is less of an 'education' and more
of a 'tutorial'. The degree obtained in programs like this has a useable
lifetime of only a couple years -- the lifetime of the software products
you learned how to use.
If you want to go into this field, make sure to ask current
students whether the tuition is paying for education or training. Because,
it is highly likely that if you want to go into this field, you
already know something about EE -- you will be dissappointed by a tutorial
environment.
What kind of jobs do you get with it?
Contrary to popular belief, EE has nothing to do with being an 'electrician'
The kind of job an EE will get vastly varies. In a large company, Entry EE's
tend to get 'grunt' jobs, characterizing or designing the most basic
of electrical components. e.g. Designing the circuitry that controls the
motors of 'Dancing Barbie'. This is because large companies tend to recognize
the more 'training' nature of the EE degree.
However, in a startup company, an EE might design the entire layout and electrical
system for a new cool device.
What are the fellow students like (personalitywise) in it?
My fellow students in electrical engineering tend to have large egos but fairly
low confidence. They have 'something to prove' but never actually try to
prove it.
Most are, or end up unhappy, having never mustered up the guts to actually do
anything.
Interpersonally, my experiences have found them to be spineless, more apt to take
a backstabbing passive aggressive approach to solving an interpersonal problem
rather than a forthright one.
Because of the generically low female population in this major, conjoined with
the lack of guts, most EE majors have trouble either finding dates, communicating
with females, or connecting on a more personal level to other people.
Common Misconceptions
Engineering is where to come if you want to 'change the world' with your innovation.
WRONG!
If you are innovative or creative, engineeringwise, go into a business
administration degree & get a double major in the engineering that interests you
the most.
Busadm shows you how to deal with people to get things done, and form contacts with
people capable of forwarding ideas to production with funding.
The attitudes of engineering departments are froth with large egos, who cannot allow
another person to be (as they will see it) smarter than them -- much less an
undergraduate...
In all the business classes I've been in, the people have been friendly and sociable
(more so than my EE fellows), and armed with the knowledge that busadm people are
probably putting the '$' first, they are pretty easy to get along with.
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