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Engineering career

Lammchop93

Lammchop93

Supporting Member
Feb 4, 2007
8,862
14,169
Southern Indiana (Louisville, KY)
#1
I think I've finally decided what I want to do with my life. I'm only a Sophomore in highschool now, so i have some time to think on it.

What I've noticed I love is working with electronics. I'm always wanting to help people as well. So I got to think and what I thought would be an awesome career is being an electronics engineer for the military. I want to design electronics for miltary weapons and vehichles. This just sounds like the thing for me.

Now, next year I am taking some electronic engineering classes in school to see if this is what I want to get into. But what I wanted to know was what else can I do to help? What can I research and is electronic engineering the correct field for this kind of work?:confused:

I have a 3.5 GPA and am very outgoing and always try my hardest.

Thanks!:bassist:
 
#3
I'm a senior in Highschool. I thought I knew what I wanted to do several times, and I keep changing my mind. Right now I'm enrolling in UIC for Mechanical Engineering, and I'm still not sure thats what I want to do. Whether or not you change your mind, you've still got time.

First of all, EE is supposed to be one of the toughest fields to major in. Lots of math too. Just so you know what you're getting into.

You might want to look into computer science. Someones got to program the electronics that get built, and you have to know quite a bit about the electronic components. Right now I'm taking a Logic and Hardware class, where we learn how a computer works from the NAND gates all the way to the Operating System.. Its really cool stuff. My computer science teacher was offered a job straight out of school from a company who works for the military. He would have been programming missiles and lots of other cool things like that, but he decided he didn't want to do that. He found it morally wrong (he's kind of a wuss, haha).
 
#5
Sound like the right field for you, electronic engineering consists of both learning to design circuits to do what you want, and also the practical aspect of putting them together.

It really depends what you are doing as a job which you will be doing more of, however the theoretical aspect does require a good deal of physics and maths.

As far as a career path, im not sure about where you live, but in Australia the military is an awesome way to get your qualifications, you get paid about 30 grand a year to study, rather than having to pay for your study like you do elsewhere, you are however locked into a contract for nearly 10 years... Plus side, you are guaranteed a job as soon as you are finished studying..

Im not sure if there is anything like that in the states? But it would be worth having a look.
 
#7
Sounds like you have a good plan, metallicafan. Military electronics are
mostly designed by military contractors; not the military itself. For
example, you might end up working at Lockheed Martin. Stay out of
trouble and away from drugs as you don't want anything interfering with
your ability to get a security clearance.
 
#8
As others have said, hit the math hard. You're a sophomore, so there's always a chance that you will be inspired by something else between now and college (as I was at your age), but for almost any technical field, math is the gatekeeper. In addition, math by itself is of interest to the military because it is the basis of encryption and many kinds of electronic communication and surveillance.

There's a lot of overlap between electronics and software. Possibly the majority of electronic circuits in use today contain a computer and are running code. Embedded systems are systems where electronics and software work together. There are dozens of computers in your car and your house, in places where you wouldn't even imagine looking.

Whatever you study, don't forget to enjoy it. Aside from being useful, this stuff is loads of fun.
 
#10
Don't let ANYONE tell you that you can't do it.
You might want to pick up Oliver Heaviside's stuff(or bio) and Sylvanus P. Thompson's Calculus Made Easy. I was fortunate enough to have the best physics teacher in college(Dr. David Derbes, now at U of Chicago) who pointed at those texts.

Closet math lover(BSEE) here.
 
#16
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