I spent so much time filling out applications for engineering clubs only to get denied.

Never have belonged to an engineering club and had no particular desire to.
Why do you think not belonging to one has hindered your career?

Yes to all four

Then what type of engineering work do you want to do that you would find enjoyable?
Narrowing that down may help.

I wanted to do electronic design, but not every engineer likes to do that.

 

Never have belonged to an engineering club and had no particular desire to.
Why do you think not belonging to one has hindered your career?
Then what type of engineering work do you want to do that you would find enjoyable?
Narrowing that down may help.

I wanted to do electronic design, but not every engineer likes to do that.

1. Most internships look for engineering clubs in the hiring process. SpaceX is famous for hiring college students who did FSAE, for example.

2. I want to do RF work because I dream of working on top secret military planes, but that is only a dream now

 

Instead of looking for your dream job, what are you passionate doing now?
Follow you passion, not your dream.

 

Instead of looking for your dream job, what are you passionate doing now?
Follow you passion, not your dream.

My passion then is playing video games all day

 

My passion then is playing video games all day

Then look for a job at a video gaming company.

 

How did you study to get good grades? What were your study techniques?

I studied enough - which was a challenge because I was working almost full time and studying took away time from sleeping. I got good grades in all of my classes, even those that I wasn't really interested in (e.g. history and English, speech).

 

I studied enough - which was a challenge because I was working almost full time and studying took away time from sleeping. I got good grades in all of my classes, even those that I wasn't really interested in (e.g. history and English, speech).

But how did you study? What techniques did you use?

 

But how did you study? What techniques did you use?

Generally, by reading, asking questions, and learning by doing the homework assignments. When there was something that I still didn't understand, I spoke with classmates. If that didn't help, I'd talk to the instructors.

 

Generally, by reading, asking questions, and learning by doing the homework assignments. When there was something that I still didn't understand, I spoke with classmates. If that didn't help, I'd talk to the instructors.

Do you believe someone can do all of that and still get poor grades? What's the difference between you and those students?

 

Do you believe someone can do all of that and still get poor grades? What's the difference between you and those students?

The students getting poor grades generally don't understand the material.

I'm also aware of some students who got straight A's and didn't actually understand the material. They were just good at taking tests. Or they used things like flirting with instructors to get good grades. Sounds unbelievable, but it happens.

 

But how did you study? What techniques did you use?

There's no one right way to study, as what works best for one person may be a poor match for someone else. So keep that in mind. But here are some PDFs that I wrote and made available to my students. Most of them, of course, never even accessed them. But I've had many students that did tell me that they really helped them become more deliberate and had a significant impact.

Here's some context that you might find useful, particularly for the PDF of reading a technical textbook.

When I was a freshman at the Colorado School of Mines, I seldom read the assigned textbook reading before class. Instead, I paid very close attention in class, taking fairly decent notes and being quick to ask questions in class. Like most students, I generally started the homework assignments the night before they were do and stayed up till all hours finishing them. I reviewed for exams, though not a whole lot because I've always had the attitude that if I didn't know the material the day before the exam, I was unlikely to change that a lot by cramming. I had almost no free time and was always stressed because of how much I needed to do, making it difficult to really enjoy myself because there was always so much stuff that I knew I should be doing. I was a 3.6 GPA student.

I then had to drop out of school to serve an active-duty commitment and came back three years later and picked up where I left off. But my attitude and approach was very different. Now I was religious about not just reading the assigned textbook material before the class in which it was presented, but I studied it, took notes from it, and worked every single example that was in the text and derived every single equation that was presented. When an assignment was given, I almost always had that assignment done the day it was assigned, even if it wasn't due for a week or more. If I had an hour between classes, I was working on that assignment that was just given. It was very common that by the time I went to dinner I had what was assigned that day done. The only exception was a couple of long-term projects, but even those I had done in a fraction of the allotted time by making an aggressive schedule of what had to get done each week. On Friday night I would stay up as late as it took to have all assigned work done, including that week's progress on the major projects, before I went to bed. This often meant pulling an all-nighter on Friday. But, as a result, I had the entire weekend completely free and could do whatever I wanted to and really enjoy it because I had no stress on me. I also didn't study for a single exam all semester except spending half an hour reviewing for the final exam in Differential Equations. I had enough free time to study for and get my Technician Class amateur license and get heavily involved in Civil Air Patrol, something that I had had to put aside when I was a freshman. I also designed and build some electronics projects for the school theater group as well as the competition timers for the Society of Physics Students annual high school physics bowl. The basic approach can probably be summed up as: Really study for understanding and comprehension and stay aggressively on top of assignments.

The end result? My first of several 4.0s despite a heavier class load. So, clearly, I figured out something that at least worked very well for me.

 

i looked at as challenge to identify core courses and prioritise time. one of the challenges is that i was also working so every second counted. one of the core things that really make the difference was math. without excelling in math, falling behind is practically guaranteed because all other courses make heavy use of it. all courses basically build on what was previously thought, one slip-up and it is hard to catch up. things that drove me mad were the mandatory useless courses. it was upsetting me that i had to pay for that garbage instead of being able to pick something that would actually be useful (more math for example, anything actually related to engineering). i have also seen tons of students having really hard time with programming courses, or any course where the one can do assignments much more efficiently, by just writing a bit of code. i strongly favoured using software (Matlab, excel, Visual Studio, anything) to test numerous alternative scenarios my changing input data. i guess today, students would rely on AI to this for them. so AI learns and they do not. then they are surprised when AI replaces them

 

i looked at as challenge to identify core courses and prioritise time. one of the challenges is that i was also working so every second counted. one of the core things that really make the difference was math. without excelling in math, falling behind is practically guaranteed because all other courses make heavy use of it. all courses basically build on what was previously thought, one slip-up and it is hard to catch up. things that drove me mad were the mandatory useless courses. it was upsetting me that i had to pay for that garbage instead of being able to pick something that would actually be useful (more math for example, anything actually related to engineering).

I was fortunate in that sense, due to a couple of factors. First, and probably foremost, is that I'm interested in learning just about anything. Even stuff that I wouldn't think might interest me I end up finding interesting. I remember a friend and I went to a classical concert and we paid the extra to attend the pre-show lecture by the featured soloist, who was a harpist. I fully expected to be bored silly, but ended up finding it utterly fascinating as she described the nuances of the harp itself and how it's played. Now, I didn't retain any of it, because it's not of long-term interest or relevance to me, but I sure enjoyed that lecture. So I was able to find any class at least interesting. I was also fortunate in that I had much of my humanities and required electives covered through AP courses in high school and/or placement tests during New Student Orientation. The Technical Writing course I had to take did turn out to be pretty worthless, but that was because I think the professor was way off script. I was actually looking forward to improving my technical writing skills and was sadly disappointed. But my senior year I took a Writing Fiction course to finish out my humanities requirements and I learned a LOT from that course that I use to this day and that significantly improved my writing years later when I started writing conference papers and journal articles, to say nothing of my dissertation (and, no, it's not lost on me that a writing fiction course was useful in those). Really, other than that Tech Writing course, I think I can honestly say that every course I took ended up being useful, including Geology (required of everyone at CSM) or Intro to Metallurgy.

 

How about coming at this from a different angle. What have you personally designed and built which works at home? Do you own a multimeter, an oscilloscope, a soldering iron? Do you have boxes full of components available because you always buy more than you actually need for a project?

 

How about coming at this from a different angle. What have you personally designed and built which works at home? Do you own a multimeter, an oscilloscope, a soldering iron? Do you have boxes full of components available because you always buy more than you actually need for a project?

I'd say that if he passionate about electronics, he'd own many more things, as they come very handy when you have them all.
For example, I have an Atorch battery discharger/electronic load (it can measure volts, amps, ohms, charge, energy, time, internal resistance, all from the battery/power supply connected to it) and of course I have a power supply I made myself because of money. It's a dual power supply 0-37 V @ 5 A (but they share the negative) (that can graph, set OVP, over energy protection, over Ah protection, over time protection, lots of things).
When I connect, for example, a DC-DC converter to them, I can measure its efficiency without a single multimeter, just making one single division operation. And more, I can select any value of load I like, any input voltage I want, see the waveform of any component on the 'scope. I have the tools to understand all I want from a converter like that. With a battery instead of my power supply is another thing easily done.
And imagine that the minimum wage here is about 150 dollars when bought in electronics (92% tax over importations and 5.3 reais per dollar, so it's 10:1).