How To Be A ... Mechanical Engineer
Do you have the guts? Written by: Janelle Beneke!
Introduction
In 1951 science had a dream. A dream to stretch out beyond our world, father than the most unorthodox of ideas… To go to the moon. Mechanical engineers worked day and night and an estimated 4.3 billion dollars were spent on the project, but finally after 18 whole years Luna One was ready. 1976 she set off to be the first in history to take close up pictures of the moon! Without perceptive mechanical engineers none of this would ever happen. The call now upon the new generation of engineers is monumental! We need fresh blood to step up and bravely take a bounding leap into the dark! But how do you be a mechanical engineer? What schooling do you have to go through? What are some good colleges? Find out all that and more in the next articles!
Luna 1
Some of the pictures it took
The shuttle that launched Luna 1
Colleges/Certification
Fresh outta high school you choose to pursue a life of mechanical engineering! But what college to go to? First of all any mechanical engineer needs AT VERY LEAST a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, and an official engineering licence. Here are three colleges that I personally recommend. Their relatively close and prestigious.
1. University of Pennsylvania
this college is located in pennsylvania. the graduate is: Doctorate, First Professional Degree, Master. And the under graduate is: Associates and bachelors.
2.Northcentral University
If your coming out of high school and really can pay for some fancy college but still want to have a college degree you might want to consider online learning. It's cheaper than any physical college and you’ll still get a degree
3.Universal Technical Institute
this college focus on strictly building designing etc. This college is in florida. Doing homework on sandy beaches sure sounds nice to me!
There are so many different colleges to choose from, these are just a small handful of the many places you could choose. The choice is totally yours. According to Ms. Rabolt a person I was interviewing. Mechanical engineers go to an accredited engineering school for no less than 4 years.
A Day In The Life Of A Mechanical Engineer
You might be thinking but what is an engineer? What do they do? I’ll answer that with another question, what DON'T mechanical engineers do! That seems like a really broad statement but let me explain. Just about anything physical that you can touch, a mechanical engineer has been involved. There are two major types of mechanical engineers:
- Design engineers
-System engineers
System engineers work with upgrading, or stabilizing existing systems. Design engineers work with designing a product. Whether it be a pencil or a Nasa space probe. Building it and testing it and then building improvements. If you want to be a mechanical engineer you wanna make sure you can work with a group. Collaborating with them and building with them. Also this is not a career for everyone it is very hard and you need to be smart to do it. I personally want to be a design engineer because I want to be sitting on my desk slamming two pieces of metal together trying to make it work. That sounds the most fun to me.
Professionals in the Field
Thomas Edison, Galileo, Einstein. These are all examples of some of the greatest minds on earth! And they were all engineers! I have been interviewing Ms. Rabolt a professional in the field of engineering and she gave some valuable tips for early engineers she said quote “ Take your math and science classes seriously! If you can take design classes in middle or high school take those too! Unit 5 has great opportunities if you want to be involved with engineering.”
Don't take this to mean to not focus on other things like Language arts, and Lit and Comp but to really go above and beyond on theses classes especially!