My opinion is there are two types of people in high school. First, there are those who look forward to one particular subject because it’s their favorite class or easily rewarding. Then secondly there are those who only look forward to lunch. As for me, I fall into the first category because the academic subject that shaped my education the most were my engineering classes. Not because it was easily rewarding, but because it was so different from any of my other classes. We didn’t have tests, or busy work assigned by the teacher, instead my engineering classes forced me to challenge my mind and develop my problem-solving abilities. I firmly believe this academic subject has shaped my education the most.
Allow me to explain, over the years I’ve learned more life skills from my engineering classes than any of my other classes combined. Engineering taught me how to solve problems by challenging my mind to figure it out, instead of attempting to commit bits of information to memory. One could see engineering as a combination of multiple other classes all put together to solve a problem, I feel this has shaped me for ways to deal with my life ahead.
Engineering has taught me skills that many companies will look for when they hire. For example: I’ve learned the importance of work in a team environment. Our generation has become so technology advanced that potentially I could be solving problems with others around the world in real time. Engineering is a discipline that forces you to collaborate with others because you may not be able solve it on your own in isolation.
School does a good job at teaching students information; how to do something procedurally and expect them to commit the information to memory. As a result, we become dependent on the teacher for the answers which makes one more prone to giving up. In contrast, engineering, challenges you to figure the solution and sometimes there isn’t one, or there may be many. There isn’t always one “answer” every time for why your model doesn’t work or perform the way expected, so you must figure it out on your own.
Not to say that all my classes haven’t taught me valuable information over the years, but no class has ever been comparable to engineering with respect to shaping my education and providing me with relevant life skills.
