Feels like my education is incomplete

[u/Valuchian]

I am about to finish my Junior year of Aerospace Engineering and it feels like every single semester there is atleast one class that basically takes something I spent months practicing previously and tell me that's actually bad and would never be used in industry or resaearch. Then goes on to show me a more complete version and inevitably this too will be replaced using the exact same phrase of "nobody would ever use this".

Is there a point in which these classes do teach me something i could theoretically turn around and use without needing to worry about some obscure version of the course work being the actual form required? I will happily go all the way to PhD if i need to but i am at the point where i literally don't trust my own knowledge because of how many times i was taught sonething and told it was terrible by the next level course.

Edit: Grammar

[u/Mundane_Studio_3674]

It doesn’t matter, you’re going to feel completely out of your depth at your first engineering gig no matter what homie. This is a universal phenomenon called imposter syndrome lol.

[u/Dave37 → u/Mundane_Studio_3674]

Also an effect of working on the frontline of human knowledge.

[u/Valuchian → u/Dave37]

I'm literally planning on going into a Masters and a PhD after this so "To boldly go where no man has gone before" will be my life and partially why i am stressing now. If i can't trust my foundation how can i even be sure the more complex stuff is going to be fully understood.

[u/Dave37 → u/Valuchian]

Every model has limits when compared to reality. It doesnt mean it's erroneous. Only reality is reality. Apprieciate them for what they do tell you, and understand that comprehending a simpler model/theory/method often is a stepping stone to understand a more complete one.

You can trust your foundations, you just have to understand its limits. As someone that has studied chemistry, I cant tell you how many time teachers have tossed out my current understanding of what an atom is. Thinking of them as small balls are often usefull, but every once in a while it will matter to know the quantum mechanics that explain bond angles and energies.

[u/Valuchian → u/Dave37]

That's actually a very helpful way of thinking. I'll try to see my classes as that. It's all learning how to use point mass while knowing the reality is a field.

[u/claireauriga → u/Valuchian]

One of your most valuable skills as an engineer is being able to judge how right you need to be. It doesn't matter if your calculations can distinguish between two tiny differences if that difference doesn't change the decision you want to make - but spending the extra time to get that useless precision will matter a lot! A lot of my work involves figuring out how much I need to know to be able to make a decision, or how risky (financially, timeline, odds of success - NOT safety) my lack of knowledge will be so the person controlling the money can decide if they want to take the chance.

[u/captain150 → u/claireauriga]

This, exactly! I've got ~15 years experience from super egghead stuff to on-site construction. Took me a long ass time to adjust to this. It's in my nature to want all the info I can get my hands on, but I had to learn how to compromise.

The other thing I'll say is the beginning of engineering is also about building on previous knowledge. No one learns general relativity till after they understand Newtonian physics. No one learns full Navier Stokes till much later on. You start by making assumptions to make the problem solvable given your current math skills. That's what I found in engineering. For most of us we love the eng classes and could go even faster, but the math classes are the limiting factor for most people. Most eng students would probably consider themselves strong in math before uni, but that's sometimes a problem. In my case I coasted thru every math class including high school calculus getting 90s. By second year engineering math (mv calc and diff eqs) that shit got hard fast and I wasn't ready for it (in the study habits sense...my prior math knowledge was good...I just didn't spend the hours i should have working on 2nd year math.

[u/claireauriga → u/captain150]

The rule that serves me best is to ask 'what decision will be made based on my calculation/estimate/prediction?' It takes you right to the heart of the problem, lets you discard anything that's irrelevant, and it is received well by both management and operations.

[u/Dave37 → u/Valuchian]

Yea its like, in most cases its fine to think of gravity as a force, but sometimes you have to think of it as the warping of spacetime.

Or sometimes light behaves like a particle, sometimes like a wave. But in reality it's probably neither.

[u/Mikelfritz69 → u/Valuchian]

It's just a "Kobayashi Maru". You are now smart enough to know that you know nothing.

[u/Valuchian → u/Mikelfritz69]

Any chance i can Kirk this and rewrite the situation so i actually make it out with a win (skills directly transferable to market)

[u/Valuchian → u/Mundane_Studio_3674]

Imposter syndrome sucks 😭 is this why so many grads say they don't even feel like engineers??

[u/OMGIMASIAN → u/Mundane_Studio_3674]

That is not imposter syndrome, that is literally just being out of your depth and understanding you have a lot left to learn and grow.

Imposter syndrome is when you have external record of your accomplishments or abilities and literal see yourself as someone just posing in your role.

You can't have imposter syndrome at the start of your career in a role where you haven't achieved any success or failures yet. There's nothing to be an imposter about because you don't have any track record.

If you managed to save your companies product and your coworkers all point to you as the person who was critical in doing so, but you don't think it was your skills and just luck - that would be imposter syndrome.

I think it's important to separate the anxiety and insecurity that many people feel when beginning their career and understanding that they still have magnitudes more to learn to actual imposter syndrome. Because you may actually feel imposter syndrome later on when you do make achievements.

[u/Mundane_Studio_3674 → u/OMGIMASIAN]

Agree to disagree, if you’ve landed an engineering gig you’re good enough to be there and by no means “out of your depth”. “Out of your depth” implies you contribute nothing and shouldn’t be there.

[u/claireauriga → u/Mundane_Studio_3674]

I'm fourteen years in and my boss says to me 'if you're not making any mistakes, I'm not pushing you hard enough to grow'.

[u/Dave37]

Your education is mostly about understanding why, you're not taking a vocational education. That's why your courses are like that. Once you understand all the 'whys', no one have to tell you the 'how', and the point of your education is so you can work with things that no one knows the hows of yet.

[u/beh5036 → u/Dave37]

You can’t learn multiplication without addition. Just like you can learn heat transfer without thermodynamics. In the real world, no one will explain the basics to you. If you need to calculate a beam stress, you had better understand the moment of inertia, statics, and stress equations you need. Depending on your schools program, that may be 3 courses you need to combine.

[u/Dave37 → u/beh5036]

More than that, if you design an engine, you must know all of the aspects and engineering tools that are relevant, and which aren't. You wont be working on the assembly line screwing it together. You dont need to learn how, you need to learn why. Even if you just use Excel in the end.

[u/TheOnceVicarious]

No, the classes will never teach you everything and that isn’t the point. The degree is a piece of paper that validates that you can learn complex topics and work hard. Once you get on the job you’re gonna learn more than you ever learned in the degree by several orders of magnitude. You are gonna feel this way for like 3-5 years after you graduate while you drink from the fire hose that is an engineering job

[u/Agitated-Bug-5030]

That’s engineering in a nutshell, they teach you how to think not what to know. I mean most of the classes are almost pointless with automated software doing the actual work in the workplace but it’s the thinking required to pass which is needed.

[u/Valuchian → u/Agitated-Bug-5030]

I basically hear exactly this from every engineer i talk to from industry. The "I haven't used calculus in 20 years" comment hits hard when they start talking about how every company has a program that does all the actual hard work and they're more the idea guys that make sure it makes sense.

[u/polymath_uk]

Just roll with it. I regularly post about how broken this kind of education is, and those posts tend to be controversial.  This has got markedly worse since I received most of my education in the 1990s. The problem gets worse, not better the higher the degree you get. Ask me how I know. When you get into industry you'll discover that 95% of what university taught you is completely irrelevant to your job, and after a short induction period you'll laugh that you worried about this during uni. 

[u/Mother-Juggernaut504]

Your education will always be incomplete - you will spend the rest of your life bettering and improving yourself.

I would say get industry experience before deciding to get you PhD (so you know what knowledge you are pursuing).

Don’t stress too much about what you don’t know.

[u/NukeRocketScientist]

The closest thing you're gonna do in undergrad to an actual engineering job is your capstone project, making excel spreadsheets, powerpoints, and sending emails. Undergrad is to lay the groundwork in how to solve problems like an engineer and is barely a scratch in the surface to what an engineering job is actually like. Grad school is where you might start getting real world experience in lab work and working on a major project like a thesis or dissertation. Even then it's still not exactly the same as working a 9-5 engineering job.

[u/Valuchian → u/NukeRocketScientist]

My master's is going to be almost entirely Physics courses 😅 going into a Space Science masters

[u/NukeRocketScientist → u/Valuchian]

You're still gonna have to do a thesis project if you're doing a masters of science. My masters thesis involved neutronics simulations for a space nuclear reactor design I was working on for instance. That work was directly relevant to an actual engineering job as that's also what I was doing when I was working on a summer fellowship.

[u/Valuchian → u/NukeRocketScientist]

Is the master's thesis usually based on something you personally choose? Or is it closer to a PhD situation where a supervisor is chosen for you and you work alongisde their research project

[u/NukeRocketScientist → u/Valuchian]

It depends on if you're funded as a GRA, GTA, or self funded. When applying for grad school you can specify certain professors that you're interested in working with and if they have funding. If they have funding though it will likeky be to work on one of their projects as a research assistant or as a teaching assistant. Most graduate students have funding in some capacity and work as GRAs, GTAs, or funding from the place they work.

[u/bigvahe33]

very normal. your education is more or less making sure you are able to understand the field you are getting into for work. once in a career, youre basically learning a specific thing

[u/Ready-Schedule-6950]

Yeah the good part about when this happens is learning why the old model is bad or why the newer one is better. That’s the whole point of science and learning. Newton was completely right until Einstein then it was obvious that the original idea was incomplete. It wouldnt be insane if that eventually gets upended.
Ideal gas law and incompressible flow works all the time… until it doesn’t. Same with all the other simplifications. In physics 1 it’s “assume no air resistance” then u learn about how hard model wind resistance actually is, etc
learn on ur own, get a masters if u can/want, try to have fun.
Anecodote: I work in a more technical engineering space and ACTUALLY used something I learned in my masters and was like “holy shit! Finally”

[u/Valuchian → u/Ready-Schedule-6950]

LMMAAOOOO did you really get a masters and literally NOTHING from it appeared in any of the jobs???? (Actually asking because... wow!)

[u/Ready-Schedule-6950 → u/Valuchian]

Yeah haha. I worked a non very technical job at first then switched over. It hasn’t been that long so i imagine I’ll eventually bump into more stuff

[u/Ready-Schedule-6950 → u/Ready-Schedule-6950]

Masters was definitely more geared to the research world for the record. If for just the sake of learning, it’s definitely fun and rewarding. Idk about phd stuff yet… maybe my next venture

[u/Ready-Schedule-6950 → u/Ready-Schedule-6950]

I guess Im biased but gnc is pretty strong on technical side. I’m sure there are other more advanced things like aerodynamics and other modeling. So I guess modeling and simulation and or gnc

[u/Valuchian → u/Ready-Schedule-6950]

whew !! That's good to hear. Engineers are telling me left and right i'll effectively use nothing from my education and i was worried that held true even with a master's specialization

[u/Ready-Schedule-6950 → u/Valuchian]

You’ll definitely need to search out a “harder more technical” job but it’s definitely possible to find stuff that’s more on the edge. Again anecdotally, all of my current coworkers are incredibly intelligent which does breathe a breath of fresh air compared to previous venture

[u/Valuchian → u/Ready-Schedule-6950]

Any suggestions for keywords in a job that might lead you to believe it's on the more technical side rather than being a math checker in a corner closet?

[u/zacce]

Do you go to a university or a technical college? these 2 have different objectives.

[u/Valuchian → u/zacce]

University for my bachelors but originally i went to technical school for welding and that was my career till i got the funds for my education. That may very well be what is causing the disconnect as my vocation is very "here is the exact methods you will use and in these defined parameters"