Anyone with Electrical Engineering degrees?

[brand0nized]

hm... astronomy... interesting...

[brand0nized]

That's a lot to take on Brandon.  I will oversimplify the complexities of life by saying 'do what you love the most'.

Trust me, if you can make a full time wage from a hobby you love, you will hate it in no time at all

Agree!  To oversimplify even more, do the thing you would do even if you had to do it all day for free.

I did 2 years of mech eng studies, made it through the weed out courses and finally realized it wasn't at all what I wanted to do for the next 40 years. 

If there's something you're really interested in, see if you can spend some time with someone who's been doing that job for at least 4-5 years. You'll learn a lot in no time.

Thanks for saying that, guys. The biggest things I want to learn are all in music. Music theory, singing, songwriting, audio engineering and recording, all that fun stuff. I feel like I'm just scared to jump into all that. I've just had so many people pushing me away from that and politely hinting that it isn't easy to get good jobs in those fields (them being polite about it just pisses me off, like why can't  you be real with me? Don't pretend that you support what I do if you're trying to tell me not to do it  ) My youth pastor and one of my old counselors are two of the handful of people in my life who encourage me to do music. Finding your calling is so hard...

[chromesphere]

Awesome scope, would love to see the stars through that set up, amazing!  Luckily in Australia its not QUITE so hard to get clear skies.  My light pollution is 'average'.

/end of hi jack

Brandon, I don't do my passion as a day job.  I do office work.  I wish I COULD do my passion as my day job.  It would be a lot more fulfilling.  Maybe one day who knows.  Its tough to work out.  You could hedge both bets, learn a trade you know you'll get work with and keep your passion in part time (like I do).  A friend of mine works in an office environment, LOVES audio engineering.  He records bands part time.  That sort of thing.

[brand0nized]

Awesome scope, would love to see the stars through that set up, amazing!  Luckily in Australia its not QUITE so hard to get clear skies.  My light pollution is 'average'.

/end of hi jack

Brandon, I don't do my passion as a day job.  I do office work.  I wish I COULD do my passion as my day job.  It would be a lot more fulfilling.  Maybe one day who knows.  Its tough to work out.  You could hedge both bets, learn a trade you know you'll get work with and keep your passion in part time (like I do).  A friend of mine works in an office environment, LOVES audio engineering.  He records bands part time.  That sort of thing.

That would be pretty nice, as long as I don't hate my day job. If I do that, I'd feel like a rebel musician

[chromesphere]

I don't 'hate' my day job as such, I'm just not enthusiastic about it like I am with other things.  That's probably the compromised approach I suppose.

[brand0nized]

[micromegas]

I'm about to finish my Telecommunications degree here in Spain, which is nearly the same as an EE degree.
I've learn quite a lot about protocols, signal treatment and radiofreq and the basic about opamps and discrete electronics, but everything else that has some relationship with pedals has been learnt in the forums or self-taught.

[pryde]

Seriously man you HAVE to do what you love to do. I learned the hard way as many others have. I spent 60K in college and have a masters in Occupational Therapy. I did/do find OT to be a great job BUT was it my "passion"? No.

After dealing with some personal health issues and getting a severe reality check, I came to realize that indeed life is short and a truly a gift. I pursued by own small business repairing and building guitars and amps and have not looked back, this is my passion and I love it.

I made ALOT more money in healthcare but have never been richer than I am now 

 

[gjcamann]

Seriously man you HAVE to do what you love to do. I learned the hard way as many others have. I spent 60K in college and have a masters in Occupational Therapy. I did/do find OT to be a great job BUT was it my "passion"? No.

After dealing with some personal health issues and getting a severe reality check, I came to realize that indeed life is short and a truly a gift. I pursued by own small business repairing and building guitars and amps and have not looked back, this is my passion and I love it.

I made ALOT more money in healthcare but have never been richer than I am now 

Even if you do major in what you love --- the day will come when you won't find it rewarding. Particularly after you get married and have your first child (if you ever see yourself as the family man). I'm an EE and have no regrets, although if I didn't goto college I think I would probably have my own landscaping business by now and be equally satisfied. As I see it, you need to break your balls for a few years - you can do that in college or trying to start a business of some sort - either way the hard work will pay off.   

[midwayfair]

My degree is in English (with enough credits for a minor in Russian, but Towson didn't have a Russian or foreign languages program, so no dice), with a focus in research and critical analysis. So I can't give an opinion about getting an EE degree. But I might have something useful for you to take away.

Here are the things I'm most interested in now: Music, electronics, astronomy, politics, books, and food. Here are the jobs I've held for any length of time since I turned 18: Russian linguist, elementary/secondary substitute teacher (and no, I didn't just babysit ... I actually taught the lessons), science editor (for PNAS), music writer/editor (this was volunteer for Driftwood Magazine, but it was basically a second full-time job), and paralegal.

I'm essentially self-taught in everything I do. Despite having a degree in English, the only job I've ever held "in my field," science editing, required far more expertise than my degree trained me for.

What I DID learn is how to learn -- as much as possible, quickly.

I'm not exactly successful in life, and I'm not the best at anything I do. But I muddle along. I have the free time to pursue things I'm interested in. I don't think I'd be a more successful musician if I'd studied music. I don't think I coulda been a rocket scientist. I would have hated being a cook. I originally wanted to go to college for Archaeology, but obviously I couldn't be further from that.

So I would say: Study what you really love, but get everything you can out of learning now. That's the real skill you'll learn from college.

Unless you want to get paid. In which case, learn a science.

[brand0nized]

Wow Jon, that's quite a testimony. It's Awesome that you still have free time for your hobbies. That's one of my fears because I love to record cover songs for YouTube and record my own music, but I barely had time for that this year and my last 2 years in high school. I have a bad habit of doing too much at the same time. I Probably have more hobbies than I can handle right now, but I Don't want to forsake any of them. There's so much to learn on the interwebs!

[playpunk]

John's story is kind of like mine - except that I was an english/poli-sci major and went to law school. There are a two basic paths in life - the set path careers (doctor, lawyer, teacher, accountant, etc) and the people that just do those things which are steady, can be kind of boring, then there's the jump around path - start off doing one career, switch to another, move for opportunities, etc.

How much instability do you enjoy? Do you want to have a family? Was your life growing up stable? All of those things will influence what you want to do. I don't like instability, so I have taken a pretty stable path in my career/life. One of my best friends and roomates has done all sorts of things, is always jumping from company to company, doing business development and all sorts of weird voodoo, but enjoys the churn.

Good luck!

[stecykmi]

I have an EE degree from a Canadian university. It _was_ hard. I went because I got interested in musical electronics, but it was a toss-up for me between university for a bachelor's or college for a technician's certification. I had the grades to get into a pretty good school close to me so I opted for university, but in some ways I think a college degree may have been a better fit as the curriculum is more practical.

I recommend the university experience to almost everyone (it was pretty fun and a learning experience in itself), but you should be aware that very little of what you'll learn is directly applicable in musical electronics, especially in the first year. Very often, what you learn is so theoretical that it requires several layers of abstraction before it can really be used. I often felt that I was learning stuff just so I could pass the test about the stuff that I was supposed to learn. When I first entered the program, I was very keen on specializing in electronics, but after the introductory course in that area, all the courses mostly focus on the design of integrated circuits (which aren't very much like discrete electronics much at all). After I realized this, I decided on to focus on power systems which was the most practical sub-discipline offered by my school (software engineering, aka coding, is also fairly practical, but I'm not so good at programming).

Electrical engineering is pretty brutal when it comes to math. If you're dedicated, you can get by, but the degree becomes much easier if you like and/or are talented with math. I always struggled with courses that where very mathy.

I recently got my first job as a junior engineer. Jobs that involve the technical side of music are few and far between, so I work as a power systems/communications engineer in rail infrastructure. By 3rd and 4th year, I was actually able to apply some of the stuff I studied to effects pedals and such, but it's unlikely that I'll ever do it professionally. Overall, I think engineering is a pretty good career choice, but I wouldn't recommend starting this degree unless you are open to the idea of working in an industry other than music. An engineering degree opens up a lot of doors, but it is by far from a sure thing, no matter what you want to do.

[jkokura]

There's a good part of me that wishes I had gone, not to get an EE degree, but rather an electrical technicians diploma at a college. I think they're applicable to this field.

I would love to have gone and gotten something like that, and then taken some sort of Luthier training. Spent my life as a pedal and amp tech, and building/repairing guitars.

That said, I love what I do, and I'm grateful for the 'hobby' of electronics and building pedals. I think I have a good balance going.

Jacob

[chromesphere]

What I DID learn is how to learn -- as much as possible, quickly.

This might be difficult to explain, but I hear this all the time from people that have been to university.  What does it mean?