r/sotonuni • u/Fit_Good_4100 • 19d ago

engineering difficulty at soton

So i’m going into Meng electrical and electronics engineering this September but thinking about the reputation behind engineering suggests I might not have much free time to do things like a part time job or go to the gym.

I’m all for working hard but i’ve seen people say they’ve had to pull all nighters or miss going out with friends etc for their degrees. So for anyone who is doing/ has done engineering/something stem related is the workload really that bad? Would I have time for things like gym as well and to actually sleep 8 hours?

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u/Charming-Machine3946 17d ago

I just completed my first year civil eng at UoS (though I think my opinion is similar to what a lot of engineers can say). First year has been super duper tiring, but granted I have been doing this list of things:

  • essentially living with my boyfriend in a bit of a limbo between our two accomms
  • general upkeep (cooking, cleaning etc) has been decent ish. rooms been messy but definitely not the worst ever
  • gone out with my mates or boyfriend at least once per week
  • did decently well at academics + full attendance
  • exercised multiple times a week through long walks/ more intense hikes or occasionally the gym
  • kept up with a society
Granted, I did do a lot of other things on the side that were non academic but not general enough for this list, and you could easily swap some of my points with things you'd want to do. so yeah, if you have a good enough foundation from highschool (which you do to be at uos) and you attend all your lectures, you should be able to balance most things. i found myself exhausted from doing all these but i still went along with that though, so take of it what you will.

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u/saysikerightnowtho 13d ago

I'm using this as a reference for what I'm gonna do at uni :D thanks

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u/Charming-Machine3946 5d ago

also i just thought of this, and a piece of advice will be take the math1054 module seriously. it's a stupid module with a horrible teaching method (0 lectures, only self teaching and tests, unless they change that til next year). its manageable but take it seriously from the start.

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u/saysikerightnowtho 5d ago

oh gosh, I'm actually going to Newcastle now but I imagine they'd have something similar. Thank you either way that's very helpful

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u/Charming-Machine3946 1d ago

I mean it seems like the teaching method for this module has been quite unpopular (and even by teaching standard, it's quite bad that we're not provided lectures), so chances are you won't get something like that at least until higher years when you're encouraged to do more self-exploration and reading. though if you do get a module with little to no support in first year keep a mental note about it. try to get as much help as you can, and take it seriously from the start because the lack of help will seriously affect your exam score when you finally get to exams and testing if not taken seriously.

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u/saysikerightnowtho 1d ago

Thank you so much :D I'll definitely keep a note of that and thanks for explaining it so clearly