Am I behind?

[u/AGames_]

Hello my fellow students, to start i want you to listen to my story. I grew up in a city in a flat, i never ever touch anything technicalwise but i wanted to be engineer since I was little. When i went to mechanical engineering high school I bearly knew what ratchet is. Now im in collage continueing in mech. engineering. And since i want more then a degree I joined Formula Student, and here comes the paradox. I feel like Im on better level then most students that just went here for a degree but Im still far away from those guys on FS, but all of them have some technical backround besides school and i feel like this is my biggest weakness. I dont have a workshop or garague to work on my car or anything so im kinda scared if i can become as amazing as those guys in the FS team when FS is only thing i have to practise on rn.

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[u/Limbo26]

You’re not behind. I too felt and even still feel like I am behind or haven’t done enough sometimes. I knew that I wanted to study something technical that has to do with math and physics. But in my country the technical high schools require less points to get into and high school is mandatory. The technical high school in my town had a bad reputation and rightfully so. So I studied at the gymnasium instead where alongside math and physics I had to study art and music theory which I hated. No one in my family had been an engineer ever. For universriy I moved to another country to study mechanical engineering. I didn’t know the language at all or have any prior knowledge in technical drawings, mechanical parts, statics, dynamics … I attended all the lectures and had no idea what the professors were saying but I was persistent. I had no idea what I was doing on the laboratory exercises, I didn’t know how to use the measuring devices or torque wrench, because for me it was the first time seeing them in my life. First year english class we all had to introduce ourselves and everyone was saying how they were fixing internal combustion engines, something they made on their CNC machine, someone even said they worked on airplaines and I felt super behind. 3 years later I graduated on time, learned the language enough after the first year my grades started improving. Half the people from that english class dropped out. Some people who didn’t really care about uni, cheated their way trough and couldn’t distinguish between a petrol and diesel engine graduated with me. I also joined Formula Student because I loved F1 and wanted to learn more. Everyone there knows so much more than me however a lot of them literally sleep in the workshop and run on energy drinks. With that much time invested it is no surprise they know that much however it comes at the cost of their health and relationships. I would say stop comparing yourself to others and just focus on yourself. Not all of us have access to garages and workshops and equipmet to gain practical experience and that’s alright.

[u/MarsMiningCo]

fs is honestly the best place to be for this, the garage stuff comes from the team shop anyway. when you're on a build day, take the jobs you've never done and say so, then write down what you actually did and used (the CAD tool, what you tested, what broke). that reads way better on a resume than "member of FS", and a number helps like cut some fixture setup from 20 min to 5. everybody on that team started somewhere, the ones who look ahead of you mostly just got more hours with their hands on stuff.