• Question: did you always want to be an engineer?

    Asked by ca11umch4r1esw0rth to Ed, Keith, Tish, Nicola, Rachel on 12 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by awimbaway.
    • Photo: Nicola Lazenby

      Nicola Lazenby answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Not always – It wasn’t until I was about 15-16 that I wanted to be an engineer! I previous went through phases of wanting to be an interior designer, and architect! To be honest I didn’t even know what a civil engineer was until I did a yes/no careers day survey which asked things like “do you like working inside or outside?”, “do you like maths?” – the computer program told me I should be a civil engineer and I was like “What is a one of them exactly!” and it went from there!

      When I read the description I knew straight away it was the right career for me and wondered how I hadn’t come across it before!! 🙂

    • Photo: Edward Taylor

      Edward Taylor answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      For me it took a long long time to decide. I had a friend who had always wanted to be a doctor from the age of about 10, and I was always jealous because I had no idea what I wanted to be! I even took a year off after school doing random jobs trying to decide on something to do. Eventually I decided to do a degree in aerospace engineering because I liked maths and physics and aircraft, but didnt even know then if I wanted to be an engineer in the future. Only by the end of my degree did I think engineering was for me!

      I know what you’re thinking, a bit late!, what if I decided I didnt want to be an engineer half way through an engineering degree? Well in truth an engineering degree actually opens up the doors to hundreds of different jobs both in engineering and not. Some of my friends from my degree went on to be city bankers, pilots, even a hotel manager!

    • Photo: Rachel Harris

      Rachel Harris answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      I new I want to use maths and science but I didn’t really know what sort of engineer I wanted to be until I was doing my a-levels and my school sent me on a taster sessions at Manchester university for a 3days to try out the different engineering areas and see what one you like best.

    • Photo: Natasha Watson

      Natasha Watson answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      I originally wanted to be a palaeontologist as I love dinosaurs, then I wanted to be an architect, and then I wanted to be an engineer. Wanting to be an engineer came about because I wanted to combine design with science, which is what engineering is to me!

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