The Career Clinic Blog

You’re good in math, but you have no interest in becoming an actuary. You’re okay in science, too--but you have even less interest in becoming a researcher or a professor. You want to make really good money when you graduate, and you thought Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged was one cool chick.

Engineering it is! Or…was.

The reasons I just gave for choosing civil engineering as my major in college weren’t altogether irresponsible for a high school kid. Except there’s more to it.

I wanted to be special, and a woman in engineering was special at the time.

Pathetic, I know.

I sailed through my freshman year on what I’d learned in my advanced math classes in high school. Sophomore year was a different story. I knew within a week I was in deep, deep trouble. I was getting into more of the core engineering classes--and if I stuck with them I was in for…hell.

The problem was, I didn’t know what I’d rather be doing. The things I loved to do, the things I was really good at, were fun. And fun was something I thought you had in the evenings or on weekends or after you retired. Not at work.

Now what?

I took the advice of a favorite professor, who knew that many of us wanted to bail. “Make sure you’re running to something,” he suggested, “and not away from it.”

It made sense. When you don’t know where you’re going, as I’ve come to believe, you may as well hang out where you are.

Not only that, but it would’ve really bothered me to quit. You don’t quit something just because it’s difficult. I knew I’d prove something--if only to myself--if I got that degree.

I graduated with a 3.0 average, I passed the Engineer-in-Training exam, and I never went near a real engineering job after I graduated. Smart moves. Every one!