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I'm 99% certain I'm in trouble
Disclaimer: I know I've avoided personal posts on this site for a while now, but this one is an exception. I'm hoping the wisdom of the masses can help me out here. Humor me.
Today was the first day of classes in my final semester at Cornell. This is the phase of my life where I have to figure out the rest of my life. This semester might be the most important one of all.
You might remember me blogging about my dream job in the past. As sarcastic as that entry was, it was totally honest. Unfortunately I think I'm getting past the point of dreaming and wishful thinking. I could dream about my future back when I was a kid (I wanted to be a geologist when I was little), but now my future is already here and I need to be realistic.
Why is this so hard?
My first problem is that sometime in the past year I decided that I don't want to make digital hardware my career. It's easy when you get a bachelor's in ECE and you just go off to an ECE job and do ECE work for the rest of your life because that's what you like. When you decide instead that you will get your bachelor's in ECE but you will not go off to an ECE job, things get a bit more difficult. When, on top of that, you want to be choosy about where you actually work, you are walking in my shoes. I hate to be so picky but I really want to ensure that I'm happy with my career after I graduate. If I don't get what I want I can settle for something else, but let's not talk about settling today.
So let's face the facts here: the likelihood of making a career out of blogging and paying off all my college debt is non-existent. It would be easier if I blogged about sex, celebrities or being a mom, but my own personal values prevent me from doing that. The likelihood of getting a job in Europe is slim. For all the talk about the "global market," being a global employee is a lot harder than it should be. Getting an internship in Germany was cake compared to actually getting a job there or in any other European country… it would be one thing if I had EU citizenship, but that's not the case here. If anyone has a reason why my chances of getting a job in Europe are better than I think, please contact me. Another thing that's very unlikely is being a professor… I don't think I can put myself through the 5 or 6 years of graduate study while my debt gains massive interest just to become a professor and get paid in peanuts.
What I'm set on right now is getting into the web industry… software, web development, consulting, whatever. I really think I'm capable of making it in this industry. I want to stay on the east coast if I stay in the U.S. The issue is just, where do I work? I don't want to end up at the wrong company. I need all the time I can get this semester to really focus on my job search, which means I have to make sure my schedule is manageable. That's where my dilemma gets worse.
I have to complete 2 more ECE classes to graduate. Right now I'm signed up for ECE 474 (Digital VLSI Design) & 476 (Microcontroller-based Design), then INFO 431 (Web Information Systems) which I'm taking because it's an information science course that could be helpful to me if I get into the web industry, then GERST 200 (German) because I still think I might have a future in Europe, and then HADM 430 (Wines) which is the must-have course on wines that all the seniors fight for. This morning I'm sitting in 474 and the professor tells us that we'll be spending a lot of time in lab outside of our class time to complete the assignments, and I'm thinking, "oh no, I can't do that. I need all the time I can get to find a job and work on my web skills." Mind you, 474 is a Digital VLSI course which is completely irrelevant to me if I'm changing my career path. If it's going to be a lot of work it will just be a pain in the neck.
Later in the day I heard about a new course, ECE 496, which is a lecture on Evolutionary Algorithms and could be an alternative to ECE 474. Neither of the two are important to me but ECE 496 promises to be more useful for learning about software and the course should be a whole lot less time-consuming. I visited it today and it seemed okay. The only problem is that it conflicts with my wines course… I don't know if I can live with switching to 496 and losing wines. I know I'm rambling here, but this is important! Last semester I had very little time to find a job because I was so busy with my classes… I can't let that happen again. I haven't figured out what to do yet, but I'm going to have to figure it all out soon.
So there you have it… I'm 99% sure I'm in trouble. I'm just putting this out there to let everyone know that I'm looking for work and I'm open to ideas. I'm also looking for advice. Please share.
Why not be a hub designer?
All I know — maybe you should read this:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/
What's a hub designer?
a hub designers' main goal is to controll and optimize flows. It is intelligent system design
With your background you could add tech features to better process eg passengers in a airport terminal.
It happens. I'm much in the same situation myself right now, except that I'm just in my 2nd year, not senior, so I've decided to switch into a major that I would enjoy more (from Mechatronics into CS). I realize that's not a feasable move in the last term though… Good luck.
Or you could optimize wireless networks with your background?? All this stuff we will encounter in the future …
Johan: Yeah, that stuff is cool, I'm just not sure where to find jobs in that. I haven't heard of anything like that from the companies that are recruiting on campus, so I have to hope that something good turns up in Monster.com or something.
I was in the same situation, except my senior year I petulantly wanted to learn Chinese so I didn't take a required CS course. I was lucky to have the Dean wave my requirement.
Such a thing is really possible? Really? Maybe I could get the Dean to waive an ECE course for CS 431…. that would be a dream.
Personally I think they just wanted to get rid of me…
Anything for you, Christian. Just let me know and I'll make it happen.
… Oh. Wait.
Elliot: Makes sense.
Dean: You and your witty zingers.
If you have the contacts, and the skills, why not set up shop for yourself as a web developer?
David, I don't think I have the graphic design skillz to make it on my own. If I could pair up with a graphic designer, it would be possible. On my own I think I will need a couple years with a company before I'll be ready to go freelance.
Welcome to the world
I went through a similar thing when I was finishing up school — during the first Internet boom. I knew so many people that left before they finished and were making a decent penny writing code for bad web sites. Here I was finishing a geography degree.
My first job was working on geographic information systems that had to have a web version (google maps mash up would have saved me a load of time back then) for a northern Ontario tourism portal. So I ended up working on the web… now I still do and it has nothing to do with my undergrad degree.
I don't know many people that are working now in the field they studied then… now is seven (crap) years later. Don't sweat it, enjoy yourself. The courses you take at school mean very little. You will have graduated from Cornell, that is all employers will look at. You don't want to work for someone who thinks University should have given you trade skills… you want to work for someone who knows University gives you thinking skills and wants to use them.
Well I agree with the degree != to career path in most cases. I started out in photography and animal psychology, did live arts (digital art and writing) then performance and visual arts and rounded those all off later by a return to study in software engineering. Hows that for a long and varied career path
All of those things have helped me be where I am now, even the oddest and most random ones.
I also after well over a decade out of study am the sum of all the varied jobs that have piled up to bring me to freelance. I think yes having a goal is great but even though it may not seem it the decisions you make will not govern you life in such a way you can't retrain later / go back / study whilst working / learn from work and enter fields that way. It's easy to see your university path as the be all and end all of your life's career - it's so not and infact in a lot of cases it's just having been that counts (even that is debateable in a lot of careers now).
Take it from someone that has been there are did various degrees, your life skills in work will end up meaning a whole lot more than any certificate - yes it can open doors but they close if you can't prove yourself. Just do the course you want to and feel inside is right. University life can seem so important but in the scale of the real world it's what you do once you have that paper not getting it.
Hi,
I'm an Electronics engineer running a design firm in Australia ( http://www.priority1design.com.au )
I would suggest you do what I did when it came to choosing a career. I had a long list of possible occupations given me by my careers councilor. I ran my finger down the list of occupations and when my finger hit Electronics Engineer I stopped and just knew it was the one.
I'm calling it the gut-list theory. Somewhere in your subconcious you already know the answer, and when your eyes see the occupation in print you just get this gut reaction that tells you thats the one. Of course you may not get rich doing what your gut tells you, but you'll probably be happier.
Regards
Robert
karmatosed, Robert: Thanks, that's very encouraging. I've been thinking this semester that I definitely need to focus on doing what I love, and not worry about the money too much… I just know that I want to be happy with my career most of all.
And if anyone is wondering, I dropped ECE 474… the moment the professor started talking about semiconductors, I knew I was in the wrong class. I'm taking ECE 496 even though I'm missing it on Wednesdays and I'm sure I made the right choice. Here's to hoping for a good semester…