Dilemma of choice

Dilemma of choice

How do you choose your engineering stream? Picking the major and the minor that most interests you is the way to go.

It is that time of the year when seventeen-year-olds finishing their Class XII board exams will have one question in their minds — “What next?” Career decisions will be made in the coming months, and engineering might be one of the most popular choices. But which stream to pick is the dilemma you will find yourself in.

An easy way to choose is to take a look at the constantly changing world around us.

The next decade seems like it will be dominated by driverless electric cars, smart watches that act as phones, fitness monitors, drones that deliver your Amazon purchases, smart home speakers that interact with you, and the list goes on. The question you need to ask now is, how are you going to be part of developing this future?

Well, the obvious answer is “pick what is interesting to you and pursue it.” But in reality, everything looks interesting to us; this makes picking a particular field difficult, and thus, we pick the most popular option due to peer pressure.

Plethora of choices

What if I said, there is another way to decide? Yes, rather than picking a field, pick a product/service that you would like to be a part of developing, and find the aspects that interest you.

For example, I am fascinated by self-driving electric cars, and particularly interested in the locomotion part of the car and its ability to self-drive. Now, the locomotion part comes under mechanical engineering, whereas the ability to understand the road, navigate by itself and be aware of the surrounding traffic comes under the ambit of computer science (machine learning).

I have now narrowed down my field of interest to mechanical and computer science engineering. but we might not find a specialised engineering degree that provides both these aspects in equal measure. So here is an alternative: of the two fields, I pick the one that is more interesting. For me it is the “locomotion part of the car” and I would label it as my “major interest/specialisation”, and the self-driving part will be my “minor interest/specialisation.”

All I need to do now is pick mechanical engineering as my major in my undergrad, and focus my extracurricular activities towards learning computer science-related stuff. Sounds easy, right?

Well, like everything else, unless I put all these things into practice I am not going to be able to be a part of developing a self-driving car. So how do I put everything into practice? The simple answer is “projects”.

Projects give you an opportunity to integrate your curricular and extracurricular activities; all you need to do is start small and build upon it.

The idea of picking a major and a minor early on, during undergraduate studies, gives you clarity in thought and helps you focus on the right things. Not only that, this approach makes you an “inter-disciplinary” person.

There is a distinct advantage of being an inter-disciplinary individual, especially in the coming years.

The reason being, a common theme that wraps around most of the products being developed now is the integration of multiple services into one product. Being inter-disciplinary helps you drive this integration.

Companies making these products acknowledge it as well. In the last couple of years, recruiting has moved from hiring specialists to hiring inter-disciplinary individuals. The main reason is their ability to understand the product, integrate the right services and find solutions faster. Specialising in a particular topic is still valuable, but as an engineer, being inter-disciplinary helps you understand the product and communicate cross-functionally in an organisation.

Pick your major and minor subjects and work on projects that allow you to integrate them. So, what are your major and minor subjects?

Quick Review

Confused which field of engineering to take after Class XII? Here are five ways to go about it.

Take a look at the products of the future and decide the product you would like to be a part of creating.

Narrow it down to two features you would like to create in that product.

Now see which field you need to specialise in, in order to build these features.

The field that interests you the most among the two fields will be your major (the specialisation you will be picking in your undergrad).

The next best field will be your minor (the field that you will concentrate your extracurricular activities on).

Work on projects to integrate major and minor fields.

The writer is co-founder, EdXengine. surya@edxengine.com

Surya Paneerselvam 

Thanks to : THE HINDU - 02.04.2017