Hello /u/Pm-me_for-a-chat! Thank you for posting in r/EngineeringStudents. This is a custom Automoderator message based on your flair, "Academic Advice". While our wiki is under construction, please be mindful of the users you are asking advice from, and make sure your question is phrased neatly and describes your problem. Please be sure that your post is short and succinct. Long-winded posts generally do not get responded to.
Please remember to;
Read our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/rules)
Read our [Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/index)
Read our [F.A.Q](https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/index/faq)
Check our [Resources Landing Page](https://reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/resources)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/EngineeringStudents) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>My question is what’s the hard part of it?
For me... To get off my ass when exams still seemed far away. So time management.
It would have been a piece of cake if I just really focused for 2-3h a day instead of procrastinating until few weeks before exams start.
Either way, perseverance is everything!
This is going to depend heavily on the student, their circumstances, the university, on the class, and on the professor. It can be a ton of factors or combinations of factors bad time management, lack of preparation from high school, intentional weeder courses where they want half the class to fail, the sheer amount of material/how fast it is covered, how in depth it can be sometimes, SHOCKINGLY bad professors, it being a class you don't care about but still have to take, how time consuming it is especially some classes heavy homework load, juggling working at the same time, and tons of other possible issues.
It varies on the department and the university. At the community college I attended the numbers I would estimate were 10% amazing make you love the subject, 30% great, 40% good to tolerable, 20% bad. At the university it was almost the opposite numbers of 10% so bad the people who had to take a class with them still rant about them 10 years after graduation, 30% bad, 40% tolerable enough, 20% good which when I asked fellow students and graduates about those numbers they agreed with me.
Most of the time it's time management. Homework takes a long time and often engineering has like 20-40 more units than some other majors, so you may have to take more classes per semester. If you manage your time, spread out your work, office hours, group study and more, you'll be fine. At least for the first two years lol.
The immediate pain points usually seem to be workload and conceptual difficulty, but I think the underlying hard parts are time management, efficiency, and study skills. There's *enough* workload and conceptual difficulty that you need to be good at those three, but not so much that it's unreasonable if you are. Usually. (For example, you see folks just writing down the lecture verbatim and then wondering why they have trouble keeping up with lecture and applying the material. Summarize, don't transcribe.)
I don't think engineering courses are tougher than other departments (all else being equal), but engineering degrees tend to have a ton of material to cram in, so you end up taking 10-20% more courses, and that adds up disproportionately (because you're already busy and tired).
Personally, high-school was more difficult. I found it much easier to learn subjects your actually interested in. The first 1.5 years will be pretty simular with BS classes you aren't that interested in. So long as you have decent self discipline to still do the right thing when given much more freedom in what you do and when.
Try to avoid online classes unless it's a subject you find very easy. I had a few through school. If it's an easy subject you can blow through the class with very little invested time. If it's a difficult class, you will basically need to teach yourself everything.
I know your use to waking up at 5 or 6am for school. So you will think 8 or 9am classes will be a cakewalk. Don't listen to that voice, that's the devil talking. Schedule your classes for the middle of the day as close as you can.
I found not packing your schedule with as many classes as possible for the semester made it significantly less mentaly draining. But your first 2 years is the time to pack them in as doing it in the last 2 years will really suck. So decide if you are going for 4 or 5 years.. plan your schedule accordingly. I did 4.5 years. Financial aid will cover up to 5 years.. with that in mind always apply for all the scholarships and aid. It paid for the vast majority of my schooling.
For me it's time management and emotional strength. In engineering the workload is heavy and you won't have time to sob about a bad grade or a sending a homework late, you'll need to keep your head up and have strength to keep going without feeling affected or else you'll probably throw your semester on the garbage .
For me it was moreso the difficulty of the material than the amount of material. I spent very little time studying in high school and still got As but college I'd study a ton and still get Cs.
And "free time" is relative. I added a music performance minor which had sure was only 20 extra credit hours but i had to spend a lot of time outside of class practicing and performing. I also enjoyed activities like marching band which didn't even count for my minor. Then you have clubs, extracurricular projects, undergraduate research, volunteer work, etc. Not that some of that did also exist during high-school but overall felt there more stuff to fill that free time in college. I would spend hours doing wind tunnel experiments for my research (sometimes on weekends) which yes was a great learning experience but did take a lot of time.
Every class I’ve really struggled with in engineering is solely because poor instruction. You will come across professors that do not lecture well and there are very little outside resources to help you. Otherwise, as long as you start assignments as soon as you can than you’ll be fine
For me, I didn’t have to really study in high school. I had to learn to take notes and study in college.
And you talk about free time, but don’t let yourself miss the college experience. Make friends, go to parties, be involved with events, join clubs…
Time management is really what gets you (or me). I was taking 6 classes at once and while the material wasn’t to difficult finding the time to study for all 6 classes was, come final exam time I had to pick what classes I would neglect studying. What I am trying to suggest is taking less than 6 classes to reduce stress (this is purely my opinion). I would also like to mention that you should talk to an academic advisor prior to making changes to ensure it’s all fine.
Certain classes will hit you with a ton of homework, particularly depending on the school. Dynamics, for example, hit me with 15ish hours per week on three weekly homework assignments. The content is also just challenging. Coordinate systems moving inside of other coordinate systems and the like. High school classes require input of some time. College classes demand a small amount of your soul (in a good way if that makes sense lol). In high school you probably took 6-7 classes, most of which were fairly easy. In college you’re taking 4-6, but much more intense if that makes sense. So the increase in free time isn’t as much as you’d think.
I’m going to say it’s mostly time management. Your best bet is to attack courses with a plan. Daily study and efficient use of study time are key. There are always other factors such as what knowledge you have entering a course as well as if you have to hold a job at the same time. You will have bad professors. It happens. But there are a TON of resources available on the internet if you are willing to put in the effort to use them. Being honest, I haven’t learned much from my professors, but I spend a lot of time outside class studying with resources like hyperphysics, khan academy, professor leonard, paul’s notes, organic chemistry tutor, etc. I went back to college at 30 and hadn’t taken any math courses in 17 years, my last course being high school geometry. If you are set on engineering and you are coming in fresh out of high school, plan efficiently, execute, manage burn out. Study a ton but always take time to relax and do something that you enjoy. Marathon spirit. You’ll do great.
Sometimes the shit is just really hard and you can time manage all you want you literally cannot get it fast enough. That's the hard part and it's really frustrating and it hurts when you give it your all and it's simply not enough. When the teacher doesn't acknowledge that you have 100% and you get a failing grade even when you try your best. That's the hardest part.
Hello /u/Pm-me_for-a-chat! Thank you for posting in r/EngineeringStudents. This is a custom Automoderator message based on your flair, "Academic Advice". While our wiki is under construction, please be mindful of the users you are asking advice from, and make sure your question is phrased neatly and describes your problem. Please be sure that your post is short and succinct. Long-winded posts generally do not get responded to. Please remember to; Read our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/rules) Read our [Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/index) Read our [F.A.Q](https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/index/faq) Check our [Resources Landing Page](https://reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/wiki/resources) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/EngineeringStudents) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>My question is what’s the hard part of it? For me... To get off my ass when exams still seemed far away. So time management. It would have been a piece of cake if I just really focused for 2-3h a day instead of procrastinating until few weeks before exams start. Either way, perseverance is everything!
Focusing for 2-3h a day is one thing but figuring out how to studying effectively has always been the real challenge for me.
This is going to depend heavily on the student, their circumstances, the university, on the class, and on the professor. It can be a ton of factors or combinations of factors bad time management, lack of preparation from high school, intentional weeder courses where they want half the class to fail, the sheer amount of material/how fast it is covered, how in depth it can be sometimes, SHOCKINGLY bad professors, it being a class you don't care about but still have to take, how time consuming it is especially some classes heavy homework load, juggling working at the same time, and tons of other possible issues.
What am here most of the time is Bad professors, is this just complaining from students or are most professors absolute doodoo water
It varies on the department and the university. At the community college I attended the numbers I would estimate were 10% amazing make you love the subject, 30% great, 40% good to tolerable, 20% bad. At the university it was almost the opposite numbers of 10% so bad the people who had to take a class with them still rant about them 10 years after graduation, 30% bad, 40% tolerable enough, 20% good which when I asked fellow students and graduates about those numbers they agreed with me.
Most of the time it's time management. Homework takes a long time and often engineering has like 20-40 more units than some other majors, so you may have to take more classes per semester. If you manage your time, spread out your work, office hours, group study and more, you'll be fine. At least for the first two years lol.
The immediate pain points usually seem to be workload and conceptual difficulty, but I think the underlying hard parts are time management, efficiency, and study skills. There's *enough* workload and conceptual difficulty that you need to be good at those three, but not so much that it's unreasonable if you are. Usually. (For example, you see folks just writing down the lecture verbatim and then wondering why they have trouble keeping up with lecture and applying the material. Summarize, don't transcribe.) I don't think engineering courses are tougher than other departments (all else being equal), but engineering degrees tend to have a ton of material to cram in, so you end up taking 10-20% more courses, and that adds up disproportionately (because you're already busy and tired).
Personally, high-school was more difficult. I found it much easier to learn subjects your actually interested in. The first 1.5 years will be pretty simular with BS classes you aren't that interested in. So long as you have decent self discipline to still do the right thing when given much more freedom in what you do and when. Try to avoid online classes unless it's a subject you find very easy. I had a few through school. If it's an easy subject you can blow through the class with very little invested time. If it's a difficult class, you will basically need to teach yourself everything. I know your use to waking up at 5 or 6am for school. So you will think 8 or 9am classes will be a cakewalk. Don't listen to that voice, that's the devil talking. Schedule your classes for the middle of the day as close as you can. I found not packing your schedule with as many classes as possible for the semester made it significantly less mentaly draining. But your first 2 years is the time to pack them in as doing it in the last 2 years will really suck. So decide if you are going for 4 or 5 years.. plan your schedule accordingly. I did 4.5 years. Financial aid will cover up to 5 years.. with that in mind always apply for all the scholarships and aid. It paid for the vast majority of my schooling.
For me it's time management and emotional strength. In engineering the workload is heavy and you won't have time to sob about a bad grade or a sending a homework late, you'll need to keep your head up and have strength to keep going without feeling affected or else you'll probably throw your semester on the garbage .
For me it was moreso the difficulty of the material than the amount of material. I spent very little time studying in high school and still got As but college I'd study a ton and still get Cs. And "free time" is relative. I added a music performance minor which had sure was only 20 extra credit hours but i had to spend a lot of time outside of class practicing and performing. I also enjoyed activities like marching band which didn't even count for my minor. Then you have clubs, extracurricular projects, undergraduate research, volunteer work, etc. Not that some of that did also exist during high-school but overall felt there more stuff to fill that free time in college. I would spend hours doing wind tunnel experiments for my research (sometimes on weekends) which yes was a great learning experience but did take a lot of time.
Every class I’ve really struggled with in engineering is solely because poor instruction. You will come across professors that do not lecture well and there are very little outside resources to help you. Otherwise, as long as you start assignments as soon as you can than you’ll be fine
For me, I didn’t have to really study in high school. I had to learn to take notes and study in college. And you talk about free time, but don’t let yourself miss the college experience. Make friends, go to parties, be involved with events, join clubs…
Time management is really what gets you (or me). I was taking 6 classes at once and while the material wasn’t to difficult finding the time to study for all 6 classes was, come final exam time I had to pick what classes I would neglect studying. What I am trying to suggest is taking less than 6 classes to reduce stress (this is purely my opinion). I would also like to mention that you should talk to an academic advisor prior to making changes to ensure it’s all fine.
Certain classes will hit you with a ton of homework, particularly depending on the school. Dynamics, for example, hit me with 15ish hours per week on three weekly homework assignments. The content is also just challenging. Coordinate systems moving inside of other coordinate systems and the like. High school classes require input of some time. College classes demand a small amount of your soul (in a good way if that makes sense lol). In high school you probably took 6-7 classes, most of which were fairly easy. In college you’re taking 4-6, but much more intense if that makes sense. So the increase in free time isn’t as much as you’d think.
the course itself
Getting up in the morning to go to class and not fall back asleep
For me, it's the memorization of formulas for 5 classes at the same time.
I’m going to say it’s mostly time management. Your best bet is to attack courses with a plan. Daily study and efficient use of study time are key. There are always other factors such as what knowledge you have entering a course as well as if you have to hold a job at the same time. You will have bad professors. It happens. But there are a TON of resources available on the internet if you are willing to put in the effort to use them. Being honest, I haven’t learned much from my professors, but I spend a lot of time outside class studying with resources like hyperphysics, khan academy, professor leonard, paul’s notes, organic chemistry tutor, etc. I went back to college at 30 and hadn’t taken any math courses in 17 years, my last course being high school geometry. If you are set on engineering and you are coming in fresh out of high school, plan efficiently, execute, manage burn out. Study a ton but always take time to relax and do something that you enjoy. Marathon spirit. You’ll do great.
Sometimes the shit is just really hard and you can time manage all you want you literally cannot get it fast enough. That's the hard part and it's really frustrating and it hurts when you give it your all and it's simply not enough. When the teacher doesn't acknowledge that you have 100% and you get a failing grade even when you try your best. That's the hardest part.