My Life As… An Engineering Student

July 5, 2010     Posted in College, Reality

While every college girl shares many of the same college experiences (selling books, sexiled, one shot too many), she also carves her own path and has her own unique adventure. Have you ever wondered what it’s like for other girls? What it’s like to go to an all-girls school? To go to fashion school? To double major? To get married?! Well wonder no more. Our one-of-a-kind CollegeCandy writers (and readers!) are sharing their unique experiences and opening our eyes to different college worlds.


By Meg

Are you doing something spectacular/different/interesting that you want to share? Send your ideas over and perhaps you could be telling your story right here.

I’d bet my graphing calculator that you don’t have many girlfriends that are engineers. It’s not because we’re antisocial (well, I’ll speak for myself on that one…), it’s because there aren’t many of us to begin with. Sure, it may seem like a pretty sweet deal to be one of seven girls in a class of 100, but I promise its not all it’s cracked up to be.

Let’s start with a day in the life of. Unlike most other college girls, I get taken less seriously if I dress well. Yes, wearing a cute blazer and jeans (or make-up and accessories) actually diminishes how seriously my peers and professors take me. For some reason, certain professors seem to hold it against me that I am a girl going into a seriously male dominated world. However, being taken seriously is seemingly on the bottom of my to-do list when it comes to classes.

For example, this past semester I had one assignment due per each one of my five classes per week. An average assignment is about 5 problems long, making around 25 problems due per week. Not so bad, right? That is until you take into account the level of difficulty, the amount of time spent and precision required for each section of each problem. Whether it’s the 16 points I got off an assignment once for writing Page 1 instead of Page 1/8 on each page, or the time I neglected to box my answers properly (apparently circling them wasn’t sufficient that day…), every assignment seems to bring its own headache in a unique form. Four hours, two lattes, and nearly half a pad of engineering paper later, I might have finished half of an assignment.

That is, if I had no other commitments and rarely made a mistake.

Forget weeknight TV marathons or $1 pitcher night at the campus bar – the night before an assignment’s due is for nothing other than that assignment. I could go on for hours about the extreme amount of time dedicated to our assigned projects (like the time when I spent more hours in the computer lab than in my dorm one week), or the high expectations we’re held to, but I think you get the picture. Engineering is hard.

It’s not only classes where I receive a luke-warm welcome. I can’t even count (and trust me, that’s something I’m good at) how many times I’ve been asked what exactly I do as a civil engineer. “Bridges, buildings, roads, stuff like that,” seems to be my auto-answer, though that barely scratches the surface. I know people at parties or in coffee shops could care less to hear my drawn out “it’s really soil cohesion and pile driving techniques” answer, but there’s so much more than what meets the eye.

Oh, and bring on those stereotypes. Sure, I laugh at derivative jokes and I carry a pencil sharpener and calculator in my purse at most times, but not all of them are true. My engineering friends are some of the most personable and funniest people I know. They’re not all stiff and uptight and they don’t only speak in greek letters. Like any other major, engineers come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them even have girlfriends! Okay, that was kind of mean, but you get the point.

Someday I’ll be standing on a construction site, wearing Tims, a hardhat and a pencil skirt, doing mental calculations and managing an entire project. Despite how idiosyncratic of a picture that might paint, I’m excited to graduate, dive right in and get my hands dirty. Haha get it? I’ll work on a dirty construction site? No one? Okay… so maybe engineers aren’t as funny as they think…

So next time you’re sitting in traffic thinking about what you could be doing where ever it is that you’re going, just think about me in the car next to you, calculating how much more efficient the light cycle could be if they just increased the number of lanes so that the capacity would… okay, I promise I’ll stop now.

38 Comments on "My Life As… An Engineering Student"

  1. LA says:
    Mon, 5th Jul 20109:07 am 

    My roommate is a girl in civil engineering. There's actually a surprising number of girls in her class. Here at the University of Waterloo, up in Canada, engineering is by far the largest faculty and in recent years girls seem to be taking advantage of what is has to offer. Hopefully that starts spreading to other schools!

    From what I've seen of the work my roommate and my boyfriend have to do, civil engineering really is hard. I certainly don't envy it! But good for you for sticking to it :)

  2. Sri says:
    Mon, 5th Jul 20109:33 am 

    Engineers are the best! They're the most spunky and witty people I have ever met. Good on you for choosing a great subject. Civil engineering has the largest intake at UBC in Canada and it's true that they take heavier courseloads than most other faculties. It's always interesting to hear them talk about how much they have to do compared to us scientists – puts things into perspective, I think!

  3. becca says:
    Mon, 5th Jul 201010:24 am 

    glad to hear i'm not the only uw girl that reads collegecandy!

    check out http://www.wastedtalent.ca/

    it's a webcomic about a female mech eng student and does a really good job of showing how hard an engineering course can be with lots of humor to go along with it.

  4. morgan says:
    Mon, 5th Jul 201010:28 am 

    i actually lived on the honors engineering floor of my dorm freshman year so a good number of my friends are engineers. it's definitely a grab bag of people who are engineers. i was originally in the engineering college and i am also on the cheerleading team, one of my good guy friends is an engineer and also in one of the best frats on campus, i know another girl in the engineering college who is president of the "party girl" sorority. there are the super nerdy awkward kids but there are a surprising number of really cool people also

  5. Alison says:
    Mon, 5th Jul 201011:23 am 

    A lot of the hardest partiers I've met were engineers. When you quarantine yourself in the library for 12 straight hours, you need to find a way to let loose. And let loose we do! Sometimes. It's not easy being the student walking back to her dorm from the library at two in the morning with a backpack on while the rest of campus stumbles around drunk.

  6. A says:
    Mon, 5th Jul 201012:51 pm 

    my boyfriend is an engineer and he and his friends are probably my favorite people. I love engineers! Though I don't actually know any girl ones….

    Either way, I know all those calculus classes kick your asses, but you guys are awesome :)

  7. Sarabeth - Universit says:
    Mon, 5th Jul 20102:07 pm 

    my best friend is actually an ME, and and i hang out with her engineer friends all the time. They work hard, but then when they get the chance they party harder. I love my engineers!

  8. Carissa says:
    Mon, 5th Jul 20108:28 pm 

    This article was very helpful I'm happy to know what I have to look forward to since I'm going into mechanical engineering. I'm definitely happy to know that not all the guys are super nerds and that there are other girls out there who understand how it is being the lone ranger engineering girl!

  9. Sarah says:
    Mon, 5th Jul 20108:41 pm 

    I'm an electrical engineer. My friends always laugh when I refer to my friend as the other girl EE, because she's the only other one in my class. There are more in the other engineering majors though, like BME.

    Don't forget being forced to carry a toolbox around campus.

  10. joy says:
    Mon, 5th Jul 20109:54 pm 

    Hey LA, I'm from UW too. Glad to know other people from UW read CC too!

  11. Lilliain says:
    Tue, 6th Jul 20107:14 am 

    I wish someone would write a post like this about life as a Nursing student (at the Bachelor degree level). We also take on a lot more than some university students in other programs, considering we have a full academic course load, PLUS many, many, many "clinical" hours banked each week in practical areas such as Labour and Delivery, ER, Addictions and Rehab services, etc., etc…I know that some of my engineering friends (have to say, they are all males…) also have practical components in their degree programs so I can relate to that aspect of engineering. And of course, nursing and engineering being the two "golden ticket" degrees where you will have a job the moment you graduate, pretty much guaranteed. Hooray for these great programs!

    Also, my boyfriends mom and dad are both engineers, his mom civil, and she has taken on a huge management role with on the safety side of highway construction. She seems to love her job, but I have heard from her son that she's certainly been disrespected for her profession, perhaps because she is very stylish, put together, and I can certainly see her having been a bit of the girly girl type you mentioned during her schooling?

  12. Lilliain says:
    Tue, 6th Jul 20107:15 am 

    **should have said disrespected in her profession, certainly not for it!

  13. steph says:
    Tue, 6th Jul 20108:57 am 

    There's an engineering student on college candy?! Thank you for coming clean, that makes me so happy! I'm a MechE from MIT. Our whole school is mostly engineering/science, but we're luckily maintaining a 45% female student body! A lot of those girls are more into the research sciences; mechE and EE are still very male-dominated.

    @meg, your comment about disrespect/dressing nicely correlation is interesting, I've never experienced that. I've only used it as an advantage. By dressing effeminately, the faculty and union workers in the machine shop are very willing to look over and give me tips on projects/design and machine operation, my supervisors (be it a professor, or some post-doc i'm working with) don't get bothered when I come to the repeatedly for questions, etc. They're not nearly as patient with guys. However, sometimes they do underestimate my intelligence, but if I stand up for myself or demonstrate my understanding they'll speed up the pace.

  14. A says:
    Tue, 6th Jul 20101:33 pm 

    As a physics student, I totally get what it means to put in days worth of work into each assignment (some semesters, I have 2 or 3 classes which require weekly assignments taking upwards of 15 hours to do WITH help from classmates and professors!). I also take cell biology classes as part of my joint major in biophysics and the physics students laugh when I say I'm taking bio while the bio students wonder why I bother to take physics.

    Admittedly, it is hard to impress the prof for my biology class presentations and write brutal physics exams (where the top mark is sometimes 30%) at the same time.

    I'm not going to lie, I enjoy the list of lame science jokes taped to our common room door. I'm glad to see a post from a science student! None of the stereotypes are true – in fact, most of my friends from physics can drink everyone else under the table :P .

  15. Terry says:
    Tue, 6th Jul 20104:32 pm 

    I'm from Virginia Tech and most of my best friends are engineers, love them! :)

  16. KP says:
    Tue, 6th Jul 20106:00 pm 

    I love being an engineer! I'm a civil engineer at northwestern university, and I totally agree about trying to describe what civil engineering is.

  17. Monica says:
    Wed, 7th Jul 20105:11 am 

    Great article! I was also an engineer as an undergrad and I keep telling people that my college experience was completely different from others' experience. There were assignments due every night, projects every other night, etc. And it's so true, there may only be 10-15 problems per set but each problem took hours to figure out. And midterms and finals were brutal. It's all worth it in the end though.

  18. A.A says:
    Wed, 7th Jul 20103:21 pm 

    One more University of Waterloo engineering student on CC! I'm in chemical engineering (dubbed Fem-eng for the high female enrollment) and we have about 44% girls right now, but only 20% in my year for the overall faculty. Both my roommates are in my class, my bf is in electrical, and the majority of my friends are in engineering too.

    Whenever I dress nicely (i.e. in a skirt, or basically anything other than jeans and sweaters) I get some questions, but mostly compliments :) UW is a really casual place, so I don't think it's unique to the engineering faculty that people dress down on a daily basis. I've never been treated badly for dressing nicely by my profs or classmates, that'd be horrible! Plus, we have on-campus interviews for coop so we're used to seeing people in suits and fancy clothes in morning lectures. If anyone questioned my attire I usually just use the laundry excuse :P

    I've been told a few times to "stand there and look pretty" at one of my coop jobs, but that was by a fellow student and I set him straight right away.

    I've never witnessed any discrimination from my profs at UW, although I've sometimes felt like I had to work harder and achieve more than the boys in my class to feel like I belong.

    Love to all my fellow WIE

  19. Lauren says:
    Wed, 7th Jul 20105:57 pm 

    PLEASE do a my life as a business student edition! I am a high schooler definitely looking into this field so I would love a great piece on this! (:

  20. Re says:
    Fri, 9th Jul 201012:42 am 

    Hey…wow first time EVER finding another girl physicist here (ok totally different approach but w/e)….I totally agree…also its like a girl has to either be ugly or stupid…yes we can party..but just try to get a guy (ok i got a bf…but any way) like 95% of them get intimidated that u r smarter than them.. i mean im no model but its amazing how nobody believes that im studying physics…any way…good luck

  21. Kat says:
    Sun, 11th Jul 20109:26 am 

    ah, my life for the next 5 years! it's great to see a post like this. i'm going to do civil engineering at northeastern this fall. there are a few other engineering girls that are going as well in the fall, so it will be nice to meet them all. i know it will be tough, but i like to think of myself as a go-getter – i try to work hard, but i also play hard. i'm looking forward to the challenge.

  22. manonymous says:
    Sun, 11th Jul 201011:55 am 

    "So next time you’re sitting in traffic thinking about what you could be doing where ever it is that you’re going, just think about me in the car next to you, calculating how much more efficient the light cycle could be if they just increased the number of lanes so that the capacity would… okay, I promise I’ll stop now. "

    Before thinking about expanding the lanes, why not think about public transit first? In fact, there have been many cases where decreasing road capacity (for pedestrians or busses for example) actually led to an overall reduction in traffic in the area that was thought to become even more clogged!

  23. tanya says:
    Mon, 12th Jul 20101:17 am 

    bieng an engineering student in india with an electronics major, i would life as an engineer is hard but its got its own rewards.

  24. smiles says:
    Thu, 15th Jul 201012:46 am 

    I totally know the feeling when I read "being in the computer lab more than in the dorm". I'm an Architecture major and I was in the computer labs with some Engineering majors too. The room I was in had half Archies, half Engineers. We all had projects due the Monday after that week. I saw one engineer 4 nights in a row and when we had eye contact, I knew that he remembered me. Ha. I respect Engineeers and their hardwork(:

  25. Sandra says:
    Sun, 8th Aug 20104:28 am 

    I'm also a girl studying Engineering (Computer Engineering) and I understand how you feel!

    I don't live in a dorm, I live at home (things here in Portugal are a little different) and some weeks I spend more time in college than at home (I only go home to get some sleep!).

    This last year, we were only 19/170 girls (and I'm counting with the ones who changed majors and with those who only go to classes like once in the whole semester xD).

  26. criolle johnny says:
    Sun, 8th Aug 20106:15 am 

    BRAVO! Sincerely, BRAVO!

    You're missing all the FUN! Right. Ten years from graduation, your schoolmates will be wondering why they don't make the same money as you. These are the schoolmates who have degrees in English Literature and Sociology or "Womyn's" Studies.

    How many "Sexting 101" classes have you taken? How about your "electives"?

    I completed my BA in 21 months. I missed a lot of the "college experience", but I had a job the week I graduated.

    You get your ice cream AFTER your broccoli.

  27. Alison says:
    Fri, 20th Aug 201012:08 pm 

    I'm a nuclear engineering major at the University of Michigan and as if there weren't enough female engineers already, there are hardly any in nuclear engineering! After a while you get used to studying all of the time and doing math problems. It even becomes like an escape for if other aspects of your life are irritating you. I'll just grab my coffee and calculator and hit the library!

  28. chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa says:
    Wed, 25th Aug 201012:28 am 

    its very nice speaking

  29. Alyssa says:
    Thu, 9th Sep 20102:43 am 

    Hi! Im from one civil engineering school in the philippines.During the first day in college, a find it really diffiult to adjust myself to a class dominated by boys. But i tell you they are really great. Some other students say civil engineering students are boastful but its just the reciprocal anyway. We may look like the happy go lucky types but we make sure there's a linear path directed to the positive x and y axis directed to our one and only dream: having the "Engr." phrase before our names.

    Engineering is hard yet the coolest course! I tell you….

  30. George says:
    Thu, 31st Mar 20114:27 pm 

    I am a boy from Ghana and i am 16 years of age and i am very interested in Engineering .And how can i become an Engineering .

  31. Ella says:
    Mon, 20th Jun 20114:17 pm 

    This article is so great! I am a Civil & Environmental female student at Iowa.
    The best part of this article was: "I can’t even count (and trust me, that’s something I’m good at) how many times I’ve been asked what exactly I do as a civil engineer. “Bridges, buildings, roads, stuff like that…" haha, it's so true!

  32. AYN says:
    Mon, 25th Jul 201110:45 pm 

    I'm in Civil at UW, I'm so happy I found this! Pretty much all of it was true for me. And I just have to point out, the guys in my class, and engineering in general, are WAY hotter than they get credit for. LOL I was starting to feel underrepresented on this site, thanks for writing this article!

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