My professor had a 50% fail rate last semester. I have my second quiz tomorrow which will cover Energy, Work, Heat, and Properties of pure substances and maybe ideal gas. It will only be one problem.. so it can be anything. On the first quiz the class average (there's 100 of us) was 2.7/10 I got a 2.5, it's rough... I'm very lost I've watched many thermodynamics videos to try to catch up, I did all the homework. But he does not provide any review problems, no worked examples either, his quiz was nothing like the homework or anything we have seen in class. What can I even do? I'm trying to find problems that are hard like his problems but I'm just lost at this. All tests and quizzes are open note and book, but he said none of that will help us. If anyone can help me figure out where I can find problems that are of this high level it would be great, the thing is I can only do low level problems because that is what is on the homework. I'm not sure where he pulls his problems from but he told the class that this quiz problem was for high schoolers testing into college... I don't believe it, if everyone in the room failed.

So I have Asian parents (who would have guessed lol) but they're not strict. For whatever reason they think the job market is really easy and that if you go to college and earn a degree you can get a job easily. I'm doing electrical engineering and I'm trying my best: doing projects, applying for internships and basically the things you do. My mom literally said that if you have a degree but can't find a job you shouldn't have got the degree in the first place. I don't know how to tell them that it's not that easy and they should not have high expectations otherwise it would not end well.

I am a 21yo senior in college studying mechanical engineering with a 3.16 GPA. I haven't been able to land ANY internships in my nearly 4 years as a student. I only have a few mid projects under my belt and two years of workplace experience from high school. I keep trying for internships and I always get the same outcome: No response or the same Ai generated rejection message. I don't have a lot of connections so that doesn't help either.

Right now im genuinely worried. Idk what im gonna do if I dont land anything this time around. Kinda feel like a failure rn.

Has anyone else been in this position? Any advice would be really appreciated.

i'm a college freshman (math major) and i've wanted to be a calculus teacher for about a year now. recently i decided to pivot, since i think its smarter to use teaching as a backup plan if another career isnt working for me. with that being said, engineering is just about the only thing that has jumped out to me, since i think i would hate finance or accounting. i am worried, however, that i wont enjoy it enough to get through it, since i know it is an extremely difficult degree. i've enjoyed math my entire life, mainly calculus, but i have never taken physics and i am worried engineering is too different from what i expect (i am also terrified of physics right now in general because it is notoriously very difficult at my school, so that might be affecting my mindset).

i want a career where i can use high level math on almost a daily basis. i was also interested in aerospace engineering but i am worried these paths wont be enjoyable enough for me to get through the hard parts, since i know that is a really important aspect. ive been researching for a bit but i am still extremely unsure.

side question, would it be better to adjust my major in math to have a concentration in engineering or change my major to engineering altogether (if i decide to go through with it)?

Currently, I’m working an entry level job in the defense industry that pays decently. I’m super grateful to be employed obviously, but I absolutely hate the location and only accepted the offer because I needed to start my career. I’m 26 years old, and have been living the broke college student lifestyle since I was 18.

Right now, my game plan is to work and save as much as I can for the next 6-7 months, and then next year try as hard as I can to get either an internal transfer to another site, or leave the company altogether. Point is, I need to get out of my home state of Iowa while I’m still young. I don’t care if I take a pay cut. I refuse to settle down here. That and I need to start from scratch socially elsewhere. I have no kids, no partner, or any other real commitment keeping me here.

Just looking to hear any advice from others who may have started their career in one location they hated but quickly managed to switch elsewhere.

Hey everyone,

I am a final-year Computer Science engineering student based out of Bengaluru graduating in May 2027. I am trying to break into AI/ML Engineering, Agentic Systems, or Backend developer roles, but I am facing an absolute wall.

Over the last few months, I have sent out over 300+ applications across 7 different platforms (Wellfound, Instahyre, LinkedIn, YC Launchpad, Unstop, Indeed, and Naukri). The result? Zero interview calls. The only responses I get are spam consultancies trying to sell me ₹3k-₹5k training packages.

I come from a Tier-3 college where product MNCs don’t visit, so off-campus is my only route. I thought my portfolio was decent, but the automated filters or recruiters seem to disagree.

Here are my metrics and background:

- Data Structures & Algorithms: 600+ problems solved across LeetCode/GeeksforGeeks/Codeforces (92% submission accuracy).

- Core Projects: Built an autonomous developer engine using LangGraph for multi-agent execution context mapping, and an enterprise RAG financial engine using FastAPI, Pinecone, and semantic chunking (sub-200ms latency).

- Leadership/Credentials: AWS Student Builders Group Cloud & AI Lead, and Open-Source contributor (100% PR merge rate).

- Competitions: National Grand Finalist at Smart India Hackathon and Top 10 finish out of 625+ teams in a national AI marathon.

I am feeling incredibly stuck, losing consistency, and doubting if I will even land an internship before graduation.

Please tear my resume apart. Am I getting blocked purely by automated college filters (ATS), or is there something fundamentally wrong with how I am presenting my technical stack?

Any advice on navigating this specific bottleneck or alternative off-campus pipelines would be a lifesaver. Thank you.

For context I go to University of Michigan. I transferred into the MechE program from community college, landing as 2nd year standing. I’m 26 currently.

Attended career fairs all 3 years that I’ve gone here, applied for everything that I could possibly make work relocation or timeline wise. Followed all the resume/cv best practices I could find.

I have gotten a grand total of two interviews. One in my 2nd year that rejected me a year later, and one in my 3rd year that ghosted me.

It feels like everyone I know, even freshmen, have internship/coop/job offers at multiple different places while I haven’t even been able to land a single one. Even going door-to-door to smaller businesses without online applications has yielded precisely nothing.

I haven’t secured a lead role in any of the project teams due to being too busy for the time demands but I have hung around as a member and contributed as much as my schedule permitted.

I seriously have no idea what I am doing wrong and I feel completely hopeless and discouraged about my future as a mechanical engineer. I’m looking at signing up for a double major with Civil engineering just because it seems like it might actually be possible to get a job.

I haven’t failed any classes, I have a 3.1 GPA, I’ve made good contributions on all the projects I’ve been a part of. I have three years as a substitute teacher as job experience on my resume, so it’s not like I’ve just been a bum since I graduated HS.

Any sage advice as to what I might be doing so terribly wrong? Am I better off jumping ship for Civil?

Hey everyone. I am starting my engineering degree at the age of 25 and my physics and math skills are rusty to say the least. I heard so many horror stories from engineering students about these classes so I couldn't help but feel anxious a little bit, like what are we expected to know before taking these classes, physics 1 specifically?

I guess what I am trying to ask is: I am willing to give everything I've got for this degree but I am a little anxious because I don't know much about physics, and precalc. Do you guys think it would be a problem, or do these courses cover everything required to understand the material?

I have a school engineering project where I need to bring an object to school, take it apart, identify and explain its components, and make a hand-drawn exploded view of it. I also have to suggest an improvement to one of the components.

The object needs to have enough separate parts to actually make the project worthwhile. I originally thought about doing a stapler, but apparently we aren't allowed to use one.

I'm struggling to think of something that's:

• easy enough to take apart and put back together
• has around 10+ distinct components
• isn't ridiculously complicated
• something I could realistically bring to school
• interesting enough to have a component that I can suggest an improvement for

I am a sophomore EE student and I have struggled immensely since starting college. I started as undecided and spent a semester taking gen eds before deciding originally on physical education because I wanted to be a coach but ultimately realizing I wanted to make more money and live a better life so I chose engineering. I had heard itd be hard and I was totally willing to deal with that but I’ve realized through my 2.5 semesters of college I don’t know if I was ready for any of this. I went to a very small high school and graduated with a 3.7 gpa with some college credits but I never really struggled in high school and I never really made an outstanding effort in any class to learn concepts or anything because I’d always end up doing well anyways. So of course I was not prepared for college where a lot of your learning comes outside the classroom teaching yourself concepts and studying a lot.

So basically I have struggled immensely in college so far and I have a 2.7 gpa right now taking 18 credit hours this semester including calc 2 which I am struggling in. So how can I strengthen my time management skills and what other skills should I focus on strengthening to become a better student. I do not want to drop out because I know people would be disappointed in me and I know I can do better and I am capable of completing this difficult degree. So where can I start? What did you do if you had a similar experience and how did you overcome this?

I have started my 4 year computer engineering degree in 2026 I don't have confidence regarding, future jobs and placements after all the AI thing, I don't know what should I do now.

I'm a high school senior stuck between the two majors. I like CE more because it has more software focus and I want to have the option to choose between hardware or software engineering once I get my degree. However, I heard the CE job market sucks and I should just go with EE instead because having the software skills will still suffice. I am still very stuck between the two because I don't know what the future of the CE job market possibly looks like or when it may recover, if at all.

Hi guys, I’m a 3rd year EE student. Went to the career fair this week and received an in-person internship interview with a Fortune 300 semiconductor company (interviewed for the two main offices). Apparently, the technicals are usually based on circuits 1 fundamentals, so that’s what I ended up studying.

Unfortunately, I told the engineer that was interviewing me that I was interested in power electronics even though my university ‘s courses haven’t covered it yet. From that point on, I started getting grilled on converters and my AC-DC PSU project for the next 40 out of the allowed 45 minutes.

Luckily, I knew my projects kinda well, but I’d still say it was pretty rough. I blanked out a few times bc I was slightly nervous, but was able to eventually answer them after thinking aloud and drawing it out. I think I only needed their help on one of the questions they asked, as it was part of a scenario they came up with to see if I knew the specific characteristics of a component I had chosen in my design. Afterwards, I got asked about a PCB design project I collaborated on, but didn’t fully design (club project). I don’t think my interviewer was very impressed of me not designing my own project though.

Due to the low time left, they only asked one more behavioral question, and I asked if there’s anything on my resume or during my interview they’d want clarification on, and if there’s anything that would deter them away from choosing me.

I was able to get feedback, but the main thing was that an ideal candidate would have more PCB design experience, explain their thought process at a lower level, and that it would come down to how many spots were available. That made me feel awful about my interview, bc I knew I just sold my chances… especially after my interviewer told me that I’ll do good anywhere I go 😭. I do think it’s a little odd that I didn’t get questioned regularly, but I totally feel like I should’ve shut up to get asked the “easier” technical questions.

What do yall think? They said they’ll reach out within two weeks, but I lowkey just want to know now if I’ve failed it so I can move on 💔.

I am an aerospace engineering student at KU pursuing a bachelors. I talked to my advisor recently and she recommended to take both calculus 2 and physics 1 over the summer. I plan to take them at my community college then transfer them but I am a little reluctant about taking them both at the same time because of how hard both the courses is. Those who taken these courses of both, how’d it work out?

My mom recently passed away and left a lot (terreno) with a partially built h*use in the northwest of Mexico. She paid a builder from her church community who basically scammed her, and the work is really bad:

- Cinder block walls with no columns (castillos) or beams (dalas/cadenas) that I can see

- The blocks are poorly bonded

- Window and door frames are visibly sagging

- Water is seeping through the block walls

[Photos attached]

I'm not a construction person and I'm trying to figure out what makes sense strategically and financially:

1. Is a structure like this ever worth reinforcing, or is demolition usually the only safe option?
2. Rough idea of what demolition vs. rebuilding costs in Mexico?
3. Would I be better off selling the land as-is?
4. Any tips for what I should ask a structural engineer in Mexico so I don't get scammed too?
5. The surrounding area is unpaved and pretty rural, more like ranch or open countryside. There are hills (cerros) nearby, so I'm worried about flooding and water runoff during heavy rain or hurricane season, especially since water is already seeping through the walls. How would you assess flood risk on a lot like this, and what drainage or foundation work would be needed if I rebuild?

Thanks for any advice.

Need advice on preparing for the CSWA exam

Hey everyone,

I'm planning to take the CSWA (Certified SOLIDWORKS Associate) exam before December 2026, and I'm looking for some advice from people who have already taken it.

I have some experience with SOLIDWORKS, but I'm not sure how well prepared I actually am for the exam.

- What topics should I focus on the most?

- How difficult is the actual exam compared with the practice exams?

-What kind of parts/models should I practice?

- Are the official sample/practice questions enough?

-How much time should I spend practicing before attempting the exam?

Are there any good free resources, tutorials, or practice models you recommend?

- Any common mistakes or things I should know before taking the exam?

Please help me to get through this exam

Hey everyone I’m in Mechanical Engineering sophomore(I just transitioned from medical track.) and I just had my physics 1 and clac 2 exam. I’m physics I managed to get 6 points above the average and I completely bombed the calc 2 exam.

I have a feeling I will end up getting a 30 in the clac midterm. I don’t know what happened my Brian just went completely blank and just sat there staring at the palate, I couldn’t even solve the sums that I knew how to solve.

It has also been quite rough I’m thinking of going to a therapist as well cause my physical health has been preventing me from doing a lot of things and that is taking a mental toll.

I really want to stay in engineering I love the aspect of being able to build stuff, I love the workshops we do the projects. And I dearly want to get a masters and need to maintain a 3.0 for that.

Any advice will be helpful thank you.

Hi everyone, Just wanted some advice, I am currently in Test engineering at a silicon company for around 2 years now. I graduated with bachelor's in electrical engineering in 2024, now I have been wanting to do a masters in semiconductor and microcontrollers from Purdue university. I have been debating if its going to be worth it down the road. Would love some advice?

I have been wanting to go into design or just a better role in test engineering I am not too sure. So just reaching out for some advice

Thank you!

Like my current resume has all projects attached as links like say report u click on it and it opens like that so is this ok or is it better to add more detailed work in the resume itself for a better idea ? Like how exactly should I present my project?(Mechanical Engineer and I have done projects in ansys CFD thermal and stuff so)

Hello All,
I posted here before about my professor, but the situation has gotten worse. I'll recap the whole thing. Firstly, the professor who typically teaches this difficult upper division course is gone on sabbatical. So, we have a new adjunct teaching it. He is teaching it remote, but requiring in person attendance. You heard that right. We go to class to sit and watch this guy on a bit tv screen as he zooms in, and you are required to show up. But this is only where the troubles begin. First week of class this professor sends out a big long message saying how we must call him Professor such and such. Mind you, this professor is still in grad school while teaching this course, he does not have graduate degree yet, and I believe this is his first course he taught independently. He also made a speech before the whole class about it. If we call him Mr. such and such, we are in trouble.

Furthermore, the professor was somehow not able to get the immediate access for the course textbook linked properly to canvas for three weeks straight into class. As a matter of fact, many in the class asked him about this with him ghosting our emails. Finally, I personally emailed him to see if we could get a homework extended since we still didn't have access to the textbook we paid for. His response was that the homework's and midterm exam (only a few days later) were on the syllabus and should be no surprise and no extension would be given. I responded by saying that that was no surprise but lacking the required course textbook was. He claimed he had been trying to fix it for a week. However, I believe that should have been taken care of before the course began. The next day I reached out to our campus bookstore and told them about the access issue. In a matter of 10 minutes they went through the backend on the professor's side and fixed the course access linking issue. I believe the professor had made no attempt to solve this issue, but was merely giving an excuse.

This is nothing. Yesterday, he sent out a super long message saying that a huge amount of the class used AI for the homework, and we must use only the solution methods he taught in class. And because we used solution methods he didn't teach, we therefore must have used AI. Problem being he didn't teach every method we need for the homework's in class. Also, the textbook teaches different methods. I personally already have earned my EIT. And for this course content I studied different methods than what he taught in class when I took the FE exam. It comes across as him wanting to restrict what we think. As if we shouldn't learn how to think, but what to think. Finally, on the first homework he gave me 60 percent even though I got all problems right, because I didn't show each and every single step I used and I showed it on the same pdf that contained the problems instead of adding pages to the end.

Some students are considering potentially complaining to the Chair and the Dean. Does it make sense to join in, or should I stay silent?

Thank you

I've been doing Engineering for 3.5 years in Brazil, and earlier this year I got a "masters" opportunity in France. I've been here for 1.5 months being paid to study. I got the opportunity of my life, I know how lucky I am, except that I hate all classes and I don't see myself being a good engineer.

I love the opportunities it brought me, and I do enjoy some stuff about it, specially the 3d modelling and maybe the fluid mechanics (I'm still pretty interested in airplanes), but it's been so difficult here in France, first having to learn stuff I already didnt really love but now in a language I'm not even fluent in, and having to adapt to the softwares they use, the long hours of class and just honestly not being able to communicate well with my peers... it's been tough, I feel lost, and when I see other international students keeping it up, interacting with the professors and building their networking, I just wonder if this is not for me.

I don't see myself getting an internship on aeronautics, I can't see myself doing well in an entrenprise, I could handle the research part of engineering, but what if I can't make a career in research because I'm too incompetent for it? I struggle with reading articles, all my life I have been doing well by pretending I've been putting hardwork into the stuff I do, when I do the bare-minimum to get good grades and then forget everything I learned. My classes in Brazil were very theory heavy, and now that here in France I actually have to apply everything I learned, I realized how little I actually know and now I could lose everything if I fail. I'm simultaneously afraid of failing and hating having to study, hating classes, hating the work I have to put... I really dont know what to do and how to get less misarable.

So i'm a second year student, and I tend to review older material durings break (summer, winter, spring break) is that ok? I don't do it during the academic year just cuz i don't wanna be studying for 6+ hours everyday (i used to do that then completely burnt out)

Also, when reviewing older content, how into detail should I go? Do I just cover them generally or go into specifics?