Majoring in Mechanical Engineering

[Peter Matteson]

ME is a tough major, as are all other engineering curriculums. Yeah we made fun of civils and joked that that management majors couldn't handle real classes at WPI. It's an engineering thing that goes something like this:

The Chem Es and EEs all think the MEs are slackers. The MEs think the Civils are slackers, and the management guys never leave the bar.

Any way the point I wanted to make is if your an ME take as many hands on manufacturing and materials labs as you can. You would be surprised by the number of engineers who never participate in something like first or learn how to fabricate anything before they graduate. If your going to be an ME learn to turn handles weld and program CNC so that you know the limitations of design have a lot to do with manufacturing and fabrication. At WPI we called the class where you did this "Grunge". You learn more useful information from a class like this than "diffy screws", which is still easier than calc 3. Also, for the record Fluids is an evil course.

Pete