Fog
I'm a Fullerton Grad as well, class of 81. Recalled to active duty with the SEABEES in July. Off to Iraq soon with the MEF! Great group to serve with! Love those Leathernecks!
There are other things that my career has taught me and that is the engineering profession is dangerous to those in business, especially big international engineering firms. My career path has lead me to down an interesting path in engineering and construction. I do design and construction. But my big, and very unexpected career path is in claims. I work alot with regulators (usually against them) and meet a ton of attroneys. Engineering was my aptitude due to a desire to build and make things better especially in the environmental arena (water quality) , but as I get older I have become more and more disallusioned by the profession. There are a lot of reasons for this but it comes down to the business aspect of engineering or simply put its about the money and generally not about doing the right thing. I could go on for a lifetime on the secrets of civil engineering but the big issue is the profession itself. I have thought, even at my advanced career (over 31 years) about getting a law degree and just mixing it up with the folks that are really messing up the civil engineering world, but than I am tired of jousting at windmills. But I digress and I am starting to rant. Off to Iraq to make a difference.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FOG
My bachelors are in ME and Poly Sci. I joined the Marine Corps so never used either in the civilian world. The most lucrative offer out of college at the time was from a think tank due to a paper I wrote on the then Soviet Union.
I am a graduate of Cal State Fullerton. A couple of other factors that drove people out of the engineering schools were directly related to profs/instructors. Both negatively impacted the ability to learn,
Among my friends one of the biggest pet peeves was the instructor getting out of his lane and ranting on politics or social issues while ignoring why we sitting in that class room. Then the rant finished the unhinged professors would tend to challenge the students to comment, and your grades did suffer if you did not parrot their bizarre thoughts.
The other pet peave was lack of focus on the part of professors. In other words they did not realize what the professor was there to teach. It was a common occurrence to have professors berate students if they did not have a pre-requisite the professor had just made vice the students meeting all the catalog requirements. The classic was a professor berating a class for their lack of calc skills (three semesters of calc was the requirement) when a student raised his hand and reminded the professor he had just finished his masters in mathematics and Fluor was sending him back for some more classes and even he had no idea what the professor was doing.
The favorite instructors were the ones from industry who were out doing the job. They were far better teachers and actually wanted open discussions and lacked to be challenged.
Remember this was over 20 tears ago so…
S/F, FOG
|