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"What courses were most and least useful to you in your engineering career?"

danzima

Hey there, community! It's a pretty muggy Friday here in Chicago, but also it's Friday, so on the whole things are good.

 

One of our Chicago colleagues is writing an article for another publication on the topic "What courses were most and least useful to you in your engineering career?", and he thought it would be interesting to get input from our community, so I wanted to open the question up to the members area.

Any response that makes it into the article will be credited to you, so maybe that'll be the start of your second career as a public intellectual and you'll wind up doing TED talks in Palm Springs soon enough?

 

Thanks in advance for your input!

Parents

  • I was rather lucky in that I left school and got a job as an Electronics Technician with NZ Post Office. This is your typical mid 1970's government department where things are done in a proper manner with reliablity more important than the final cost.

     

    They sent you on nine week block courses where we learnt electronics, and radio principles, through to digital electronics. (I had several goes as the tutor just could not get it across)

    Most of the equipment was analogue, and covered a range from low frequency cable locators to microwave links carrying the tolls up and down the country.

     

    Back then computers were making an entrance and I recall learning BASIC to be able to program this 'HP Instrument controller' for some automation.

     

    As well as the electronics we also did a lot of mechanical fabrication, so welding and painting were skills learnt on the job.

     

    When I look back, the courses that relate to the actual work you are doing were more rewarding and the lessons stuck better than some stuff that we never touched.

     

    Most of the courses I've done lately are related to supporting the equipment we have, and I'm too old to start shifting sideways.

     

     

    Mark

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  • I was rather lucky in that I left school and got a job as an Electronics Technician with NZ Post Office. This is your typical mid 1970's government department where things are done in a proper manner with reliablity more important than the final cost.

     

    They sent you on nine week block courses where we learnt electronics, and radio principles, through to digital electronics. (I had several goes as the tutor just could not get it across)

    Most of the equipment was analogue, and covered a range from low frequency cable locators to microwave links carrying the tolls up and down the country.

     

    Back then computers were making an entrance and I recall learning BASIC to be able to program this 'HP Instrument controller' for some automation.

     

    As well as the electronics we also did a lot of mechanical fabrication, so welding and painting were skills learnt on the job.

     

    When I look back, the courses that relate to the actual work you are doing were more rewarding and the lessons stuck better than some stuff that we never touched.

     

    Most of the courses I've done lately are related to supporting the equipment we have, and I'm too old to start shifting sideways.

     

     

    Mark

Children
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