By majoring in civil engineering, I confirmed to myself and friends that I’m a glutton for punishment. The very first time I drank coffee was my sophomore year in college — while pulling an all-nighter doing an engineering problem set. This was the first of many, many all-nighters drinking way too much coffee working on engineering assignments. I’d always been good at math and science, and my dad was a chemical engineer — so majoring in civil engineering seemed like a good choice. I also went to West Point, which was the very first college to teach engineering, way back in the early 1800s. As you might expect, civil engineering is a respected major at the Academy with a rich history. So it seemed like a good idea to pick it as my major.
I pulled so many all-nighters working on engineering problem sets; I stopped counting. MatchCad was a thorn in my side, and my engineering math class (Calculus III anyone?) was almost my undoing — physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I remember standing up in class one day to not fall asleep — and then falling asleep standing up and almost face-planting. As I look back though, I’m glad I majored in engineering. Since college, I’ve been an Army Officer, helped start a non-profit, and now I work in tech. I’ve never really directly used my engineering major. But studying civil engineering taught me a few important things that have stayed with me.
It taught me how to tackle big, complex problems.
Engineering problems are often big and complex and studying civil engineering taught me to break problems down into smaller pieces to solve. If you look at the whole thing all at once, sometimes problems can seem overwhelming and unsolvable. Just like many things in life. Whether it’s planning your wedding, applying for a new job, or deciding whether you can move to South America to study Spanish and open up a surf hostel. But many things in life are much easier if you break them down into simpler parts.
Engineering taught me how to do this. As a civil engineer, you learn to look at the problem in front of you and then break it down. What exactly are you trying to solve? Do you have all the information you need? If not, where can you get if from? Once you’ve done this, you figure out how to solve the problem by taking a step-by-step approach. You break the problem into smaller, more manageable pieces. And then suddenly, it’s not as impossible or inconceivable as you once thought. Breaking down problems into smaller, more manageable parts helped me in civil engineering, and it’s helped me in life.
It taught me to pay attention to the details.
As a civil engineer, you have to pay close attention to all of the details. Small things can make a huge difference, and mistakes you make in the beginning can have a compounding effect and really throw off the end result. As a civil engineer, I learned to pay attention to the little things, and to make sure I understood how everything worked together and impacted everything else. Just like in engineering, in life, it’s important to pay attention to the details . What someone says, or sometimes, more importantly, what someone is not saying.
I learned to always check my work. And then check again.
At the Academy, when you came to your final answer on a problem set, you had to double underline it. Sort of putting your mark and declaring empathetically that this was the correct answer, and you were sure of it. The double underline always reminded me to go back and check my work again. And then check it one more time just to be sure. Whether it was in the Army, working for non-profit, or now working in tech, double checking my work has always proved invaluable.
I learned that you can’t tackle things with a one-size-fits-all mentality.
In civil engineering problems, it wasn’t about just getting the right answer to a problem. You could definitely get an answer right, but not understand how to actually solve the problem. To be successful as a civil engineering major, you had to learn how to solve different problems — and understand the step-by-step process it took to get there. I quickly learned that you can’t approach all problems from the same angle — because no two problems are the same. I got great at not trying to use the same hammer for every problem. It’s something that helped me in engineering, and it’s something that has helped me in life. You have to be able to approach problems in life from different angles and not get stuck in a one-size-fits all mentality.
At the Academy, they would tell us that everything we were learning was adding another tool to our rucksack (Army word for backpack). In civil engineering, just as in life, you have to know which tool is needed for the job. It took a lot of long nights of problem sets and trying lots of different things to get all the tools I needed to graduate with my degree. But it’s one reason I’ve been able to go from being an Army Officer, to helping start a non-profit, to joining the Policy team at a tech company. I know how to approach problems from different angles and apply different tools and ways of thinking to get a solution.
I’m still making up for all the lack of sleep I endured from majoring in civil engineering, but I’m thankful that I did. Countless all-nighters working on problem sets taught me valuable lessons in life that I’ve been able to apply in my life that have helped me to be successful. After I graduated, I knew I didn’t want to become a practicing civil engineer, but I still kept all of my engineering textbooks, all 100 pounds of them. Not because I ever wanted or needed to crack them open again, but to remind myself of not only all the hard work that I put in, but the valuable life lessons I learned by pouring through all of those textbooks. They helped prepare me for life outside of school in a way that I never thought possible.
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This post was previously published on The Bigger Picture and is republished here with permission from the author.
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