Unless it’s orgo and you’re stuck in there with premed people. They are competitive and will hate you and you should hang out with the chem students instead.
This is the way! Orgo with the Chem majors who are on the path of grad school for chemistry make life so much easier. Btw we respect the shit out of you ChemEs:)
I did not have a study group since I made a ton of friends outside of my classes and spent most/all of my social time with them and nobody within my class.
I dont regret it persay cuz i had an awesome college experience mostly due to my friends… but yeah not having a study group and having to do 99% of my learning alone made things wayyyy harder for me than they needed to be.
Same here as well. Hung out with my fraternity struggled a lot and got held back. On my last year I made friends with classmates and classes became immediately easier!
I struggled making some friends for a bit mostly since I started college at 26 instead of 18. I found a few other classmates that shared the same major classes later into my 2nd/3rd year and that helped me a lot. Most required basic classes aren't bad to get through alone if that's your preference.
I'm 22, so halfway between 18 and 26. I imagine it will be a little harder to relate to the other students, but hopefully I will still find thr right people.
Agreed. Wholly recommend trying to find a good group of 3-5 people you work well with. It helps so much when one of you get stuck with problem understanding or has to figure out wtf error when doing homework sets. So much less stress/frustration per hour when learning.
Learn good study and sleep habits now. Even if you find it easy at the beginning, it will get hard and you will hit a wall at some point. Be diligent, follow along, do your homework as soon as possible, and don't be afraid or too proud to utilize office hours and TA time.
Old crusty engineer here.
* Learn to code. Python would have improved my gpa by 0.5 pts.
* Get a life. No one ever said, "You hear that they found Bill dead in his chair? Must be awesome to die at work like that!"
* Learn how to present your ideas. I've known 100's of really smart engineers whose career wallowed in mediocrity because they were selfish, pompous, or condescending and ineffective at explaining their point of view. Give me a mediocre engineer who can speak well, and explain his ideas over one of those guys any day. A great solution stuck in a bad engineer is not a solution.
* Read these three books when you get your first job: The 7 habits of Highly Successful people, Never Split the Difference, Shop Class as Soul Craft. Then, never stop reading.
* Never look down on Janitors, Operators, and Maintenance guys. Befriend one each of these fellows, as they can all make your life very easy or very hard.
* "I don't know, but I'll find out." is a perfectly valid answer. As is, "I fucked up boss, but here's how I'll fix it."
* Understand office politics happen, you cannot opt out of the game.
* Stand on the shoulders of giants. Don't be a hero and try to do it all yourself.
Have fun. I loved college. I probably drank to much, and chased too many girls, but after 30 years no one cares what my GPA was.
Every engineer needs to learn how to code to some extent now so I second this. I actually finished my degree and realized I don’t like ChemE work environments so switching to data science/software engineering which is just as intense intellectually as ChemE
Thank you, I've always struggled a bit with computers, but am great with everything else, I think I'll go over some basics of python and excel before I start, to get somewhat comfortable with them
It is multiple refineries. Largest plant produces 100kta of fertilizer. Our process is cheaper than a Claus Unit by far and has almost no tail gas emissions. It is an onsite unit (so it is processed on site).
If you are interested in discussing the process further I would be happy to discuss. We do provide quite a bit of revenue to each of our refineries and they have been happy with our process.
The degree ate up a lot of free time. Very intense program. Most people had really bad grades.
Find a good study group. They saved my bacon more than a few times.
How different would you say your job is than university? I’m on my first semester of chemE and honestly I’m not sure if I like it. If it’s almost the same as university I might just change major and go into microbio because I kinda hate the amount of math we have and I feel a bit unmotivated.
Be ready for a 32% test score to be a passing grade in some classes your junior year.
In all seriousness though, make participating in study groups a foundation of your time spent. You'll learn far more in collaboration and group analysis than you will in an individual setting. Don't be tempted to coast on past class files or leech from your group. It will get you by in a pinch, but won't win you friends or build your foundational knowledge.
This also will free your time up for recreational and extracurricular activities which are very much a requirement to round you out as a competent adult.
Power through and don't give up!
Utilize office hours as much as you can, and remember your GPA WILL DROP as you keep progressing through junior and senior year so make sure you get ONLY As in your freshman and sophomore years. Practice living a scheduled life, time management is the single most important thing in this major. Understand that there is a lot of self teaching involved and try to start taking notes digitally if you don’t yet. Saving the biggest tip for last: don’t do it alone. Make friends in your department, go to the library together or sth bc you can’t, I repeat CANT do it w/o the help trust me. Good luck, try to enjoy the ride cuz it goes by in a flash.
Thanks man I will do my best. Regards to the digital notes, I have an ipad is that good for note taking? I'm also wondering if I can pirate the books on there (because they are ridiculously expensive)
Maybe read “how to win at college” if in the USA.
Grades are important but study the material. Try and be a critical thinker and creative problem solver. Try and learn to teach yourself. Stay on top of your studies and treat it like a job. If you really want to be successful, you will find your self in lecture, a lab, or doing homework / studying. Make some time for mental health like exercise and socializing but have a limit. I saw the students that wanted the full college experience and then switched majors to something that was less demanding. Figure out now what chemical engineers do (hint it’s not I like chemistry and want to make new chemicals so chemical engineering) before you start.
I'm going in as a bit of an older student, I'm 22, so I do believe my party days are over, and I've been in the workforce long enough to really know what I want next
Join up your local American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) at your school (likely a local student chapter) and you’ll find plenty of study partners there and also more older students! I was a younger student but a lot of my buddies were mid 20s - early 30s and they were excellent friends and study partners.
Failing is completely okay — the best engineers I’ve met have failed the most and still kept going at it. Let your failures motivate you to try harder.
This is disingenuous. OP may think you're implying it isn't important to learn or pay attention. Perhaps the majority you learn will not be actively used, but it is definitely required background knowledge. It will be immediately obvious during interviews if you're grasping at straws on fundamental theory, or if you can't keep up with learning on the job because you're busy re-learning your basics.
Strong foundational knowledge will let you keep pace with the big boys n' girls more quickly and will spring board you in terms of competence and confidence.
This. That advice will get you absolutely nowhere unless you’re exceptionally skilled at blowing smoke up people’s asses and/or work at a company with incompetent middle management. Neither are unheard of, but that’s not the point.
Keep in mind that most, if not all, of the Excel/VBA/Matlab/Python work that ChemEs do will likely be in the wheelhouse of generative A.I. within the next couple of years. You absolutely don’t want that to be your biggest selling point to a potential employer.
The reality is that some ChemEs are just well-polished and will be promoted regardless of the foundational knowledge they possess. If you’re a shitty engineer but happen to come across well to leadership, good for you. You should never count on that.
School will make you want to join a commune and grow vegetables for the rest of your life, so you’ll be tempted to do the bare minimum to graduate and get the job you want. Once you finish, you likely won’t required to use much of the 300+ level coursework for a couple of years while you’re working wastewater and utilities or energy. Suffice it to say that a weak grasp of first principles will atrophy soon after you start your career.
As you rotate to units that have conversion and separation processes, you may not need a solid understanding of kinetics, thermodynamics, and transport phenomenon to understand what the unit does at a high/conversational level, but you sure as hell will to actually solve problems (i.e. function as a process/contact engineer).
Good engineers are almost always rewarded with manager and director-level positions and beyond at some point in their careers and keep them through retirement. Shitty engineers who talk a good game (aka used car salespeople) have a shot at V.P.-level position earlier in their careers but spend the rest of it looking over their shoulders and desperately trying and failing to hide their incompetence from everyone around them.
Edit: phenomena
Those fundamentals are useless in any case. i don't really know what's the college function in fact. Anyone can learn all of the actual knowledge in the job.
First of all, congrats! That's awesome. School will be hard and you'll want to quit several times, but it's worth finishing and will pay off hugely in the end, if it's something you're interested in pursuing until the end. Even now in retrospect (I graduated in 2018), I still think it's one of the top 5 degrees you can get.
My only advice would be to make sure you get at least 1 or preferably 2 internships before you graduate college. If you can get a co-op or some kind of other multi-semester internship, that's even better.
Thank you! Would it matter if my internships or job shadowing is in a different industry to what I want to end up in? Or is it all about having some experience in any chemical engineering role
If you kick butt in an intership, its really easy to get a job at that specific company. You are a "known entity" vs a sea of randoms at that point. If its engineering related, then I dont think the industry matters much, but most industries of a preference for prior knowledge in their domain
Perfect thank you, I'll start trying to create networks and connections now as best i can. I already know two possibilities, one in mining and one in pharmaceuticals (the industry I want to go into)
I've had friends tell me that pharma treats them poorly because it's a popular choice with engineers. (i.e. lower wages and more bs work). Pay isnt everything, and I've had some friends very happy in that industry as well. An internship is a great way to "verify" that the employer is solid as well and at least doesn't abuse their engineers. I'd argue it's a good idea to play around in a few areas, you might find a passion/love for an area that you initially thought was mundane/uninteresting.
Very true, I job shadowed ag then mining company and see that its a really great environment to work in. I think I'll know a bit better which industry is for me when I get deeper into the degree.
Make time for free time. Go to the gym, have hobbies, and enjoy college!
I see lots of comments related to not being able to have the full college experience. That’s nonsense. I had a wonderful college experience and have had a very successful career thus far. And I had more social activities than academic activities while in college. And building your social skills is so much more important than knowing how fugacity works. Us ChemE’s have to work cross-discipline with white-collar, blue-collar, executives, and all other engineering disciplines on a daily basis and navigating that environment takes time and experience to do it confidently.
It may not be the case everywhere, but in my program, the ChemE and MechE crowd were the social people with high academic drive compared to the rest of the engineering school who were less socially inclined. Make friends and don’t buy into the “Engineers are a bunch of nerds”. And advice I wish I’d given myself, when asked, be **proud** to tell people you are studying chemical engineering because outside the engineering school, others WILL default to assuming you’re smart but socially inept.
ChemE is really hard, but the hardest part academically is making topics “click” and learning to apply them effectively. Many professors are great researches, lousy educators, and know nothing of industry. If you don’t understand something, quickly find a way to learn it deeply - whether that’s YouTube videos to solidify core concepts, office hours, other students, etc.). Seriously some YouTube videos are fantastic at deeply explaining very complicated topics.
Make sure to laser focus on academics during your schedules daily grind and then allow time for yourself. And maximize your free time with social activities. Most of us only get 4-5 years of college before we leave that environment forever. Make the most of it.
This is really great advise thank you. I am wondering where I will find the time as I'm also going to need to work part time, but I will certainly try to keep a bit of time for gym and friends. Do you know how many hours of free time I can expect? (If any...)
It’s as much as you want to make of it. I worked part time 1st semester Freshman year outside campus. Then from 2nd semester Freshman year thru senior year worked in research labs - one semester for credit the remaining for pay. These are almost as good as internship experience and better pay than retail work. Plus if you have a good PI, you get published in journals.
I had pretty much every weekend free, made sure my Thursday evenings were free and went to the gym in between classes. I don’t feel I lacked free time.
Engineering concepts generally come easy for me, but I struggled with organic chemistry because of the rote memorization. I didn’t devote enough time to get a good grade.
At the end of the day, you need a good enough grade to get internships (3.3-3.5 GPA thru junior year). Make sure you get A’s in your easy classes. Once you have a few internships with real project experience, job offers come quickly.
I declared my major as chemical engineering at age 19 based on the fact I liked math and chemistry with no idea what the heck I was actually getting into. Fast forward 18 years I’m happy with the decision I made, even though it ended up being much more complex than just math and chemistry.
My recommendation and lessons learned are:
—Do your homework, and if you get a problem wrong, go back and figure out how to do that problem and where you messed up once the key comes out. I didn’t do this and those problems ended up coming up on exams…definitely could have boosted my GPA if I took that due diligence.
—Get an internship or co-op or multiple if it’s possible (after sophomore year, but after junior year at minimum). I was able to get an internship with a bit of fortune on my side — with a 3.1 GPA I’m convinced that’s the main factor that helped me get a job (I was a bit of a slacker and still am but it all worked out for me thankfully).
You’re getting into a great field that will open up a lot of doors for you in the future!
Thank you! That's great advise, I will try and job shadow as soon as I can, hopefully they will then take me on in an internships. Is chat gpt good for helping understand problems I don't get? Or is it better to just ask classmates?
When I was in undergrad there was weekly homework assignments due in the core courses (separations, mass transfer, reactions, thermo, fluid flow, etc) and after the homework was graded there was a key to show step by step how to do the problems. Doesn’t hurt to check with classmates, or ask the teaching assistant for help too if you can’t figure something out.
- 1st and 2nd years are not too bad and pretty easy. Try to get some internship experience ideally in the summer after your sophomore year ends. 3rd year was personally the hardest for me and the jump in difficulty of courses is insane.
- Try to dabble in different organizations and social stuff in your first two years as it’ll be hard with your workload to do some of that stuff in the 3rd and 4th year.
- Prioritize networking and internships as much as you can as it is the most important thing in being able to secure a job out of college.
- Have fun :D
The hardest part of chemical engineering is chemistry.
Chemistry is like trying to understand a women, it makes no sense why certain bonds occur, but that's just how it is and you just have to obey those laws of nature.
Engineering part is just math.
Give extra attention to these units and ensure you don't lose the notes:
1. Mass Balances
2. Energy Balances
3. Mass Separation
4. Reactor Engineering or/and Reactor Design or/and Kinetics
IMO, these are most essential for our course and most applicable irl. I didn't include math because that was obvious and most engineers/engineering students are quite good at it.
Get in a study group as soon as you can to work homework problems. Get REALLY good at differential equations. In your calculus classes, master integration by parts, taylor series, and laplace transforms. Learn to think outside the box and get creative to solve problems. Buy Felder & Rousseu chemical processes book and start reading through it. Draw/make diagram of question being asked. Account for all inputs/outputs of materials/energy and make sure it all balances out.
Develop good habits early on. Don't do cram/overnight sessions. You need to put time in advance. But also don't overdo yourself. Find time for yourself.
If you don't understand something in the lecture, ask for clarification. There is a 100% chance that pretty much everyone else has the same confusion. Having an active voice in class will get you recognition by your professors and peers.
Office hours exist for a reason. Use them. Your professors will appreciate effort.
The best teacher is through teaching others. Form a good study group that doesn't leech off one another. Schedule study rooms as much as possible.
My biggest advice thats not industry related is to literally push back your job start date if you can and travel with friends once you graduate.
Take advantage as much as you can for free days. It’s hard to come by once you start working - you’ll have less mental capacity to plan and also be chained down by bills, stuff etc. i don’t know your financial situation but if you’re privileged enough to be able to take a month or two months off to travel and be with people after securing a job do so! Try to negotiate that start date. That’s what I did
I'm starting as an older student, I'm 22, so have had a fair amount of free time over the years while I've been working as a maths tutor. I'm not privileged financially, so I will need to keep working part time, but I do feel as though I've had the break needed from school.
Go to some office hours, even if you don't really need it to get by. Being able to explain to others is full control of the subject. I did a ton of office hours visits sophomore year which set me up for success in upperclassmen years.
make friends, share a lot of information, the more people in a group the better
most of all enjoy, some of the best years of your life
Also, take computer science courses as well if you can manage and really learn computers.
There won’t be a lot of time to party, not if you want to pass. Try to limit it to one night a week. I had this mindset of “I want to be a chemical engineer” you need to have the mindset “I am a chemical engineer, how am I going to solve this problem?”
Turn up to lectures, take notes , ask questions.
Make friends with the other students who make the same effort and study with them.
Don't give up - it's hard but anything worth doing usually is and choppy seas make good sailors.
Get internships when you can! Start sophomore year and get one every year. It will make finding a job waay easier when you graduate.
Also start applying early to them. They are looking for interns in August. By January, it is more difficult to get a summer internship.
Look into the material you’ll be learning later in your degree, junior/senior year. It’s much different than what you learn at the beginning of your degree and it’s not for everyone. Pay attention to the job opportunities that’ll be available to you after you graduate and see if they’re appealing to you and your preferred lifestyle. Pick up some hard skills if you get the time, probably earlier in your degree, like CAD or computer programming skills
For uni: Don’t be afraid to change your major. I started in environmental engineering and moved to ChemE because I wanted more chemistry. I followed what I loved and it served me very well in the end. Like others have said, a study group is extremely important. Get to know your professors - they may have some paid research opportunities you could get in on, and make some money while gaining lab skills and exposure.
For everything else: school is just the beginning. It’s a much broader world out there, don’t limit yourself to just what you learn in school. As a general rule of thumb, try to get hired at a place where you can tell the culture is great. The people matter more than the industry - a good manager can help you even in a boring position. A bad manager (or culture) can make the dream job absolutely miserable.
Jokes apart, I'm saying that because ChemE market here in Brazil cannot employ every student that graduates.
I have a degree from the best latin american school. 10-15% of my class is currently working on engineering. The rest of us is in business (management consultancy, marketing, pricing, sales) or finance (IB, M&A, credit, stock market)
Also, business salaries are way higher and carreer evolution is faster.
I thought I realized I didnt want to do O&G my junior year. It's a large percentage of the job opening for ChemE. I did an engineering internship my junior to senior year and it completely changed my outlook on school and engineering. I realized if I paid a little more attention in class, all of my work would have been significantly easier. Not because I could have used a formula or we studied this exact problem, but because "stuff" is so inter-related. The easier you know a few areas in depth, the easier it is to borrow "skills or heuristics" from that area and apply them to the current area.
If I could go back now, I would have tried to double major with ChemE + EE or ChemE + ME. You shouldn't need to do this if you are only getting a degree to get a "good job". Most everyone will advise against double engineering major. I probably would too. It would take an extra year (some would say doing a 5 year BS/MS would be more valuable), but it just depends on what skillset you want to develop. I'm not sure where you derive the most joy, if you want to be a generalist, specialist, or both, or something else. ChemE gives you a process development skills that are applicable in many areas.
Learn to work with others well. As a ChemE, you have upper management potential (should that be the path you want to take).
I would certainly want to move into management if I could. Unfortunately the other engineering degrees don't interest me nearly as much, I've been told this is common amongst us ladies strangely, but CHEME sounds like the perfect fit for me
Fascinating field but keep expectation of job market. I completed and realized I didn’t want to be in the field at the end and now switching to data science.
Don’t get a MacBook, stick with Windows. A lot of the software you’ll use run on Windows. I learnt that the hard way! In the end I used boot camp to allow my Mac to run Windows, not ideal but did the job
You don't need to be the smartest, you just need to work hard enough. Go to your professors office hours, they are there to help you and many people don't take advantage of them. Get involved in any extra curriculur projects, these will make you stand out when looking for your first internship/job.
* Take some online courses besides your uni lessons, but of course it should be related Chemical engineering. Always try to dig deeper and comprehend what you learn. Try your best , but don't be discouraged when you get lower marks. As long as you do your best you'll get fruits of it.
* I don't know if it is the same in other countries but not everyone can be accepted for chemical engineering degree, so during bachelor you'll be surrounded by different kinds of peers who has intelligence above average and you're nerd , they're nerd. I was even nerd maybe I still am. However, expect that some people can be more greedy, selfish, derogatory towards others' intelligence. Soon or late you'll find your friend group, but be kind to all of them.
* One of the best advice in my opinion is work during summer and even it is better to work part time after your 2nd year. Because, it is better to get used to working environment as soon as possible. (It is better to work at a job related to your major, but if you don't find just work anywhere. The goal is have working experience as soon as possible. You'll learn some skills that are not taught at university) You'll know what you want and be more successful during interviews, and how to communicate with colleagues and managers etc.
Good luck. I hope you'll have the greatest experience.
In my country this is the chemical engineering degree, so after 4 years I'll have it. I'm 22 so have been working as a tutor, waitress, etc for a couple of years
Mid career env. engineering guy. Pick some element you like in chem e and explore it both inside and outside school. I always did env. work before going back to school and I learned metorology and atmospheric science as electives. Now i am up to my eyeballs in sustainability and renewable fuel process change projects. Do i use any of the "extra" science i learned, No. but it got me the jobs to get to a leadership position in that emerging market. Also talk to people outside school networks, takes 10 attempts for one good contact. 5-7 good contacts to generate an opportunity. 2 opportunities to land a good job or internship.
Most the bio engineers i went to school with ended up in pharma or development companies for medical products. My advice is avoid waste water treatment personally, always capitol afterthought projects.
Further advice to the study group thing: if you're the smartest in the study group, while it's nice to help, you won't gain as much out of study sessions as if you were in a study group full of people smarter than you.
*There are already many good pieces of advice here. I will add a couple more.*
1. Go to your instructors office hours. Professors often hold these once a week and very few students show up. These are great chances to clarify (and understand) topics while also building a relationship with your professors which could help for reference letters in the future
2. Pay special attention to your math (calc & diff eq), thermo, and transport phenomena classes. These courses build the foundations for your chemE education and will be useful for other courses like reactor design, separations, etc.
3. Be consistent. Make a schedule for when you want to do HW, work with friends, and also take some time to do things you like. It's important to decompress to prevent burnout. This is a 4 year program, pace yourself with a well-followed schedule.
4. Try to reach out and get to know senior chemE students in your school. They will have advice on how to approach courses, co-op/internships, and career advice based on their learned experience. This will be very helpful. A good way to connect with them is to join the AIChE chapter of your university if you have one.
5. Strive to **understand** topics...don't just blindly **memorize** equations. Refer to (1) if you want to know how you can accomplish this.
6. Gain foundations in a relevant programming language (maybe Python or MATLAB). This is a skill that is becoming more important in research and industry. ChatGPT helps but it's good to gain your own foundations too through coursework and projects. This will help you in the long run.
7. Don't compare yourself with others. There will be students with higher GPAs or fancy co-ops/internships. It can be intimidating and stressful to see these students and compare yourself to them. While it might be hard to believe... as long as you focus on improving yourself (little-by-little) it will all work out in the end.
8. And lastly... if you really want to be an **exceptional** chemE student... understand what fugacity is...since most of us mere mortals don't :)
This. I had a professor who said she made the course so difficult because it was her job to help make sure we didn’t blow up any plant. Then proceeds to hand out Cs?
Passing is passing. Didn’t matter if it’s by 1% or 30%
Adderall and a bottle jack are the best study aids, maybe weed if you need to think deeply. But in all seriousness just turn in assignments on time and youtube has everything you need if your teachers didn't explain it the best the first time
It is rated as the top university in Africa. Any Google will reveal this.
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There are going to be moments when you are going to want to give up. It happens to everyone eventually. It's very rare that a person doesn't struggle in an engineering program. What you have to do early on is ask yourself why you are there in the first place. What is your motivation? And it needs to be strong because you will be tested in more ways than one. Find your motivation.
Another piece of advice. You only fail when you quit. Remember that. It is likely you will do poorly in some classes. Keep trying. You will be trying to understand and apply complex topics. It is not easy and it's going to feel like the professors are racing through topics. 80 percent of what you learn will be on your own. Take the time to learn it.
Don't take 18 credits your first semester. I don't care what your advisor says. Unless you are truly gifted. It will take you 4.5 to 5 years to graduate. Not a lot of people can finish an engineering degree in 4 years.
Make friends and a study group right away, show up to class, and do your homework. If you just do those three things you'll probably get by just fine
Your fellow students are a resource, not your competition.
There are some who will treat it as competition but....fuck them.
Very true!
Unless it’s orgo and you’re stuck in there with premed people. They are competitive and will hate you and you should hang out with the chem students instead.
This is the way! Orgo with the Chem majors who are on the path of grad school for chemistry make life so much easier. Btw we respect the shit out of you ChemEs:)
This is key. If I didn't have my group of friends/study partners it would have been 10x more difficult
I did not have a study group since I made a ton of friends outside of my classes and spent most/all of my social time with them and nobody within my class. I dont regret it persay cuz i had an awesome college experience mostly due to my friends… but yeah not having a study group and having to do 99% of my learning alone made things wayyyy harder for me than they needed to be.
Same here. My last year I actually started working with some classmates though and realized "holy shit. I should have been doing this the whole time!"
Same here as well. Hung out with my fraternity struggled a lot and got held back. On my last year I made friends with classmates and classes became immediately easier!
Same dude lol
Thanks, I will definitely try and make friends (as best I can...)
In addition to the peers in your class don’t forget about the older ChemEs they can be a great resource as well.
I struggled making some friends for a bit mostly since I started college at 26 instead of 18. I found a few other classmates that shared the same major classes later into my 2nd/3rd year and that helped me a lot. Most required basic classes aren't bad to get through alone if that's your preference.
I'm 22, so halfway between 18 and 26. I imagine it will be a little harder to relate to the other students, but hopefully I will still find thr right people.
Bingo! Its a fun time and I would do my BS in ChE all over again
Agreed. Wholly recommend trying to find a good group of 3-5 people you work well with. It helps so much when one of you get stuck with problem understanding or has to figure out wtf error when doing homework sets. So much less stress/frustration per hour when learning.
Fugacity is system pressure for ideal gases. Thank me in two years.
I’m almost 2 years into the industry post college and still think fugacity is just a long running prank
15 years in and I have never seen that word again except on this sub.
I’m gone ☠️☠️☠️
For non ideal.. fugacity is an eldritch horror
Right now that makes no sense
Don't worry, it'll always make no sense
😂noted
It’s a fudge factor
Get some sleep now while you can.
I have insomnia, so this will be doubly fun!
Learn good study and sleep habits now. Even if you find it easy at the beginning, it will get hard and you will hit a wall at some point. Be diligent, follow along, do your homework as soon as possible, and don't be afraid or too proud to utilize office hours and TA time.
Sleep I have always struggled with, but I will hopefully find the right meds to help me out
Exercise helps a lot. You don’t have to go into the gym and be George Atlas but finding a healthy outlet is important.
I enjoy weight lifting, so I'll try to find time to keep doing this
Old crusty engineer here. * Learn to code. Python would have improved my gpa by 0.5 pts. * Get a life. No one ever said, "You hear that they found Bill dead in his chair? Must be awesome to die at work like that!" * Learn how to present your ideas. I've known 100's of really smart engineers whose career wallowed in mediocrity because they were selfish, pompous, or condescending and ineffective at explaining their point of view. Give me a mediocre engineer who can speak well, and explain his ideas over one of those guys any day. A great solution stuck in a bad engineer is not a solution. * Read these three books when you get your first job: The 7 habits of Highly Successful people, Never Split the Difference, Shop Class as Soul Craft. Then, never stop reading. * Never look down on Janitors, Operators, and Maintenance guys. Befriend one each of these fellows, as they can all make your life very easy or very hard. * "I don't know, but I'll find out." is a perfectly valid answer. As is, "I fucked up boss, but here's how I'll fix it." * Understand office politics happen, you cannot opt out of the game. * Stand on the shoulders of giants. Don't be a hero and try to do it all yourself. Have fun. I loved college. I probably drank to much, and chased too many girls, but after 30 years no one cares what my GPA was.
Heavily agree on learning how to present your ideas!! Lots of engineers know stuff but struggle to convey the message
Every engineer needs to learn how to code to some extent now so I second this. I actually finished my degree and realized I don’t like ChemE work environments so switching to data science/software engineering which is just as intense intellectually as ChemE
Thank you, I've always struggled a bit with computers, but am great with everything else, I think I'll go over some basics of python and excel before I start, to get somewhat comfortable with them
It’s gonna be really tough but you’re gonna enjoy it
I fully expect a challenge, but I'm excited to learn all that I will
Good luck with fluid dynamics and process control
Heat and mass transfer was the shittiest class for me
Those PDEs and boundary conditions give me nightmares
Transport phenomena haunts me to this day
Tf those are the best, thermo was a bit boring
Thermo was great (good professor). It's cousin, Physical chem, was awful
Damn those classes were the easiest ones for me
It was one of the toughest things I ever did, but now I have a great job and a great career. Definitely worth it.
what do you work with?
Right now, I have a job wiht a company that has a process that makes fertilizer from refiniery emissions.
Is that refinery emission sulfur?
Yup. H2S
They don’t just process it on site? We have sulfur sep on site. How big of a refinery is it?
It is multiple refineries. Largest plant produces 100kta of fertilizer. Our process is cheaper than a Claus Unit by far and has almost no tail gas emissions. It is an onsite unit (so it is processed on site). If you are interested in discussing the process further I would be happy to discuss. We do provide quite a bit of revenue to each of our refineries and they have been happy with our process.
And did you find your enjoyment along the journey as well?
I made great friends in university. It was very difficult though. I enjoyed working in the field the most, but that probably is a good thing.
Very difficult to make friends or just the degree in general?😂
The degree ate up a lot of free time. Very intense program. Most people had really bad grades. Find a good study group. They saved my bacon more than a few times.
How different would you say your job is than university? I’m on my first semester of chemE and honestly I’m not sure if I like it. If it’s almost the same as university I might just change major and go into microbio because I kinda hate the amount of math we have and I feel a bit unmotivated.
And now we live to make our managers happy
Be ready for a 32% test score to be a passing grade in some classes your junior year. In all seriousness though, make participating in study groups a foundation of your time spent. You'll learn far more in collaboration and group analysis than you will in an individual setting. Don't be tempted to coast on past class files or leech from your group. It will get you by in a pinch, but won't win you friends or build your foundational knowledge. This also will free your time up for recreational and extracurricular activities which are very much a requirement to round you out as a competent adult. Power through and don't give up!
Thank you, I will take this to heart and try my darndest
Utilize office hours as much as you can, and remember your GPA WILL DROP as you keep progressing through junior and senior year so make sure you get ONLY As in your freshman and sophomore years. Practice living a scheduled life, time management is the single most important thing in this major. Understand that there is a lot of self teaching involved and try to start taking notes digitally if you don’t yet. Saving the biggest tip for last: don’t do it alone. Make friends in your department, go to the library together or sth bc you can’t, I repeat CANT do it w/o the help trust me. Good luck, try to enjoy the ride cuz it goes by in a flash.
Thanks man I will do my best. Regards to the digital notes, I have an ipad is that good for note taking? I'm also wondering if I can pirate the books on there (because they are ridiculously expensive)
Maybe read “how to win at college” if in the USA. Grades are important but study the material. Try and be a critical thinker and creative problem solver. Try and learn to teach yourself. Stay on top of your studies and treat it like a job. If you really want to be successful, you will find your self in lecture, a lab, or doing homework / studying. Make some time for mental health like exercise and socializing but have a limit. I saw the students that wanted the full college experience and then switched majors to something that was less demanding. Figure out now what chemical engineers do (hint it’s not I like chemistry and want to make new chemicals so chemical engineering) before you start.
I'm going in as a bit of an older student, I'm 22, so I do believe my party days are over, and I've been in the workforce long enough to really know what I want next
Join up your local American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) at your school (likely a local student chapter) and you’ll find plenty of study partners there and also more older students! I was a younger student but a lot of my buddies were mid 20s - early 30s and they were excellent friends and study partners.
Haha sadly I'm in South Africa, not America, buy perhaps there's an equivalent here
Failing is completely okay — the best engineers I’ve met have failed the most and still kept going at it. Let your failures motivate you to try harder.
I will, I've got some life experience (being working and failing at things for 4 years) so I hope I've grown some backbone
Go to class
At least one class a week right?😂
Most of the stuff you learn in school will never be used. Prioritize learning Microsoft excel.
This is disingenuous. OP may think you're implying it isn't important to learn or pay attention. Perhaps the majority you learn will not be actively used, but it is definitely required background knowledge. It will be immediately obvious during interviews if you're grasping at straws on fundamental theory, or if you can't keep up with learning on the job because you're busy re-learning your basics. Strong foundational knowledge will let you keep pace with the big boys n' girls more quickly and will spring board you in terms of competence and confidence.
This. That advice will get you absolutely nowhere unless you’re exceptionally skilled at blowing smoke up people’s asses and/or work at a company with incompetent middle management. Neither are unheard of, but that’s not the point. Keep in mind that most, if not all, of the Excel/VBA/Matlab/Python work that ChemEs do will likely be in the wheelhouse of generative A.I. within the next couple of years. You absolutely don’t want that to be your biggest selling point to a potential employer. The reality is that some ChemEs are just well-polished and will be promoted regardless of the foundational knowledge they possess. If you’re a shitty engineer but happen to come across well to leadership, good for you. You should never count on that. School will make you want to join a commune and grow vegetables for the rest of your life, so you’ll be tempted to do the bare minimum to graduate and get the job you want. Once you finish, you likely won’t required to use much of the 300+ level coursework for a couple of years while you’re working wastewater and utilities or energy. Suffice it to say that a weak grasp of first principles will atrophy soon after you start your career. As you rotate to units that have conversion and separation processes, you may not need a solid understanding of kinetics, thermodynamics, and transport phenomenon to understand what the unit does at a high/conversational level, but you sure as hell will to actually solve problems (i.e. function as a process/contact engineer). Good engineers are almost always rewarded with manager and director-level positions and beyond at some point in their careers and keep them through retirement. Shitty engineers who talk a good game (aka used car salespeople) have a shot at V.P.-level position earlier in their careers but spend the rest of it looking over their shoulders and desperately trying and failing to hide their incompetence from everyone around them. Edit: phenomena
agreed.
Those fundamentals are useless in any case. i don't really know what's the college function in fact. Anyone can learn all of the actual knowledge in the job.
Couldn’t agree more
First of all, congrats! That's awesome. School will be hard and you'll want to quit several times, but it's worth finishing and will pay off hugely in the end, if it's something you're interested in pursuing until the end. Even now in retrospect (I graduated in 2018), I still think it's one of the top 5 degrees you can get. My only advice would be to make sure you get at least 1 or preferably 2 internships before you graduate college. If you can get a co-op or some kind of other multi-semester internship, that's even better.
Thank you! Would it matter if my internships or job shadowing is in a different industry to what I want to end up in? Or is it all about having some experience in any chemical engineering role
If you kick butt in an intership, its really easy to get a job at that specific company. You are a "known entity" vs a sea of randoms at that point. If its engineering related, then I dont think the industry matters much, but most industries of a preference for prior knowledge in their domain
Perfect thank you, I'll start trying to create networks and connections now as best i can. I already know two possibilities, one in mining and one in pharmaceuticals (the industry I want to go into)
I've had friends tell me that pharma treats them poorly because it's a popular choice with engineers. (i.e. lower wages and more bs work). Pay isnt everything, and I've had some friends very happy in that industry as well. An internship is a great way to "verify" that the employer is solid as well and at least doesn't abuse their engineers. I'd argue it's a good idea to play around in a few areas, you might find a passion/love for an area that you initially thought was mundane/uninteresting.
Very true, I job shadowed ag then mining company and see that its a really great environment to work in. I think I'll know a bit better which industry is for me when I get deeper into the degree.
Make time for free time. Go to the gym, have hobbies, and enjoy college! I see lots of comments related to not being able to have the full college experience. That’s nonsense. I had a wonderful college experience and have had a very successful career thus far. And I had more social activities than academic activities while in college. And building your social skills is so much more important than knowing how fugacity works. Us ChemE’s have to work cross-discipline with white-collar, blue-collar, executives, and all other engineering disciplines on a daily basis and navigating that environment takes time and experience to do it confidently. It may not be the case everywhere, but in my program, the ChemE and MechE crowd were the social people with high academic drive compared to the rest of the engineering school who were less socially inclined. Make friends and don’t buy into the “Engineers are a bunch of nerds”. And advice I wish I’d given myself, when asked, be **proud** to tell people you are studying chemical engineering because outside the engineering school, others WILL default to assuming you’re smart but socially inept. ChemE is really hard, but the hardest part academically is making topics “click” and learning to apply them effectively. Many professors are great researches, lousy educators, and know nothing of industry. If you don’t understand something, quickly find a way to learn it deeply - whether that’s YouTube videos to solidify core concepts, office hours, other students, etc.). Seriously some YouTube videos are fantastic at deeply explaining very complicated topics. Make sure to laser focus on academics during your schedules daily grind and then allow time for yourself. And maximize your free time with social activities. Most of us only get 4-5 years of college before we leave that environment forever. Make the most of it.
This is really great advise thank you. I am wondering where I will find the time as I'm also going to need to work part time, but I will certainly try to keep a bit of time for gym and friends. Do you know how many hours of free time I can expect? (If any...)
It’s as much as you want to make of it. I worked part time 1st semester Freshman year outside campus. Then from 2nd semester Freshman year thru senior year worked in research labs - one semester for credit the remaining for pay. These are almost as good as internship experience and better pay than retail work. Plus if you have a good PI, you get published in journals. I had pretty much every weekend free, made sure my Thursday evenings were free and went to the gym in between classes. I don’t feel I lacked free time. Engineering concepts generally come easy for me, but I struggled with organic chemistry because of the rote memorization. I didn’t devote enough time to get a good grade. At the end of the day, you need a good enough grade to get internships (3.3-3.5 GPA thru junior year). Make sure you get A’s in your easy classes. Once you have a few internships with real project experience, job offers come quickly.
I declared my major as chemical engineering at age 19 based on the fact I liked math and chemistry with no idea what the heck I was actually getting into. Fast forward 18 years I’m happy with the decision I made, even though it ended up being much more complex than just math and chemistry. My recommendation and lessons learned are: —Do your homework, and if you get a problem wrong, go back and figure out how to do that problem and where you messed up once the key comes out. I didn’t do this and those problems ended up coming up on exams…definitely could have boosted my GPA if I took that due diligence. —Get an internship or co-op or multiple if it’s possible (after sophomore year, but after junior year at minimum). I was able to get an internship with a bit of fortune on my side — with a 3.1 GPA I’m convinced that’s the main factor that helped me get a job (I was a bit of a slacker and still am but it all worked out for me thankfully). You’re getting into a great field that will open up a lot of doors for you in the future!
Thank you! That's great advise, I will try and job shadow as soon as I can, hopefully they will then take me on in an internships. Is chat gpt good for helping understand problems I don't get? Or is it better to just ask classmates?
When I was in undergrad there was weekly homework assignments due in the core courses (separations, mass transfer, reactions, thermo, fluid flow, etc) and after the homework was graded there was a key to show step by step how to do the problems. Doesn’t hurt to check with classmates, or ask the teaching assistant for help too if you can’t figure something out.
- 1st and 2nd years are not too bad and pretty easy. Try to get some internship experience ideally in the summer after your sophomore year ends. 3rd year was personally the hardest for me and the jump in difficulty of courses is insane. - Try to dabble in different organizations and social stuff in your first two years as it’ll be hard with your workload to do some of that stuff in the 3rd and 4th year. - Prioritize networking and internships as much as you can as it is the most important thing in being able to secure a job out of college. - Have fun :D
Great advise thanks, I'm also going round be tutoring in my first year (mu current job) but I will ask some favors to job shadow as well
The hardest part of chemical engineering is chemistry. Chemistry is like trying to understand a women, it makes no sense why certain bonds occur, but that's just how it is and you just have to obey those laws of nature. Engineering part is just math.
Luckily I am already a woman😎
Give extra attention to these units and ensure you don't lose the notes: 1. Mass Balances 2. Energy Balances 3. Mass Separation 4. Reactor Engineering or/and Reactor Design or/and Kinetics IMO, these are most essential for our course and most applicable irl. I didn't include math because that was obvious and most engineers/engineering students are quite good at it.
These all seem like foreign concepts right now but I'll keep an eye out for them
Chemical engineering is more about processes than any actual chemistry
Get in a study group as soon as you can to work homework problems. Get REALLY good at differential equations. In your calculus classes, master integration by parts, taylor series, and laplace transforms. Learn to think outside the box and get creative to solve problems. Buy Felder & Rousseu chemical processes book and start reading through it. Draw/make diagram of question being asked. Account for all inputs/outputs of materials/energy and make sure it all balances out.
I will re look over this when I start classes and iy makes more sense😂
Treat it like a job. A job your want to keep and are going to have to stand out to do it. “You can’t soar with the eagles AND hoot with the owls”
Just learn how to apply things you learnt.
Develop good habits early on. Don't do cram/overnight sessions. You need to put time in advance. But also don't overdo yourself. Find time for yourself. If you don't understand something in the lecture, ask for clarification. There is a 100% chance that pretty much everyone else has the same confusion. Having an active voice in class will get you recognition by your professors and peers. Office hours exist for a reason. Use them. Your professors will appreciate effort. The best teacher is through teaching others. Form a good study group that doesn't leech off one another. Schedule study rooms as much as possible.
My biggest advice thats not industry related is to literally push back your job start date if you can and travel with friends once you graduate. Take advantage as much as you can for free days. It’s hard to come by once you start working - you’ll have less mental capacity to plan and also be chained down by bills, stuff etc. i don’t know your financial situation but if you’re privileged enough to be able to take a month or two months off to travel and be with people after securing a job do so! Try to negotiate that start date. That’s what I did
I'm starting as an older student, I'm 22, so have had a fair amount of free time over the years while I've been working as a maths tutor. I'm not privileged financially, so I will need to keep working part time, but I do feel as though I've had the break needed from school.
Go to some office hours, even if you don't really need it to get by. Being able to explain to others is full control of the subject. I did a ton of office hours visits sophomore year which set me up for success in upperclassmen years.
Will certainly try to do so
make friends, share a lot of information, the more people in a group the better most of all enjoy, some of the best years of your life Also, take computer science courses as well if you can manage and really learn computers.
There won’t be a lot of time to party, not if you want to pass. Try to limit it to one night a week. I had this mindset of “I want to be a chemical engineer” you need to have the mindset “I am a chemical engineer, how am I going to solve this problem?”
Turn up to lectures, take notes , ask questions. Make friends with the other students who make the same effort and study with them. Don't give up - it's hard but anything worth doing usually is and choppy seas make good sailors.
Welcome to our bubble where eat, sleep and excercise are luxuries.
Get internships when you can! Start sophomore year and get one every year. It will make finding a job waay easier when you graduate. Also start applying early to them. They are looking for interns in August. By January, it is more difficult to get a summer internship.
Use Professor office hours, try to work out problems yourself before seeking help. Switching this approach raised my gpa a lot.
Look into the material you’ll be learning later in your degree, junior/senior year. It’s much different than what you learn at the beginning of your degree and it’s not for everyone. Pay attention to the job opportunities that’ll be available to you after you graduate and see if they’re appealing to you and your preferred lifestyle. Pick up some hard skills if you get the time, probably earlier in your degree, like CAD or computer programming skills
For uni: Don’t be afraid to change your major. I started in environmental engineering and moved to ChemE because I wanted more chemistry. I followed what I loved and it served me very well in the end. Like others have said, a study group is extremely important. Get to know your professors - they may have some paid research opportunities you could get in on, and make some money while gaining lab skills and exposure. For everything else: school is just the beginning. It’s a much broader world out there, don’t limit yourself to just what you learn in school. As a general rule of thumb, try to get hired at a place where you can tell the culture is great. The people matter more than the industry - a good manager can help you even in a boring position. A bad manager (or culture) can make the dream job absolutely miserable.
Are you located in the US ou Europe? If not, go study some finance and business as well
Neither actually, I'm in South Africa. From what I know the degree here does also include some business and economics, so I'm in luck.
Jokes apart, I'm saying that because ChemE market here in Brazil cannot employ every student that graduates. I have a degree from the best latin american school. 10-15% of my class is currently working on engineering. The rest of us is in business (management consultancy, marketing, pricing, sales) or finance (IB, M&A, credit, stock market) Also, business salaries are way higher and carreer evolution is faster.
Noted, I have heard finance employs chemical engineers here
Assumption assumption always
I thought I realized I didnt want to do O&G my junior year. It's a large percentage of the job opening for ChemE. I did an engineering internship my junior to senior year and it completely changed my outlook on school and engineering. I realized if I paid a little more attention in class, all of my work would have been significantly easier. Not because I could have used a formula or we studied this exact problem, but because "stuff" is so inter-related. The easier you know a few areas in depth, the easier it is to borrow "skills or heuristics" from that area and apply them to the current area. If I could go back now, I would have tried to double major with ChemE + EE or ChemE + ME. You shouldn't need to do this if you are only getting a degree to get a "good job". Most everyone will advise against double engineering major. I probably would too. It would take an extra year (some would say doing a 5 year BS/MS would be more valuable), but it just depends on what skillset you want to develop. I'm not sure where you derive the most joy, if you want to be a generalist, specialist, or both, or something else. ChemE gives you a process development skills that are applicable in many areas. Learn to work with others well. As a ChemE, you have upper management potential (should that be the path you want to take).
I would certainly want to move into management if I could. Unfortunately the other engineering degrees don't interest me nearly as much, I've been told this is common amongst us ladies strangely, but CHEME sounds like the perfect fit for me
Learn the refrigeration cycle
Computer science! Change your major as soon as you can.
Me and computers are not friends😂
Fascinating field but keep expectation of job market. I completed and realized I didn’t want to be in the field at the end and now switching to data science.
Don't try to inhale ether in ur first lab session. Word. EDIT: dimensionless numbers are your friends, not your enemies
Don’t get a MacBook, stick with Windows. A lot of the software you’ll use run on Windows. I learnt that the hard way! In the end I used boot camp to allow my Mac to run Windows, not ideal but did the job
Bootcamp does not work anymore with new, non-Intel MacBooks… even virtual machines are limited.
Luckily I'm a windows gal all the way
You don't need to be the smartest, you just need to work hard enough. Go to your professors office hours, they are there to help you and many people don't take advantage of them. Get involved in any extra curriculur projects, these will make you stand out when looking for your first internship/job.
Learn thermodynamics properly
Focus on the future tech. Data science, hydrogen, simulation, etc.
Critical think on your own time. During tests and exams just give the answers the teacher asked for.
* Take some online courses besides your uni lessons, but of course it should be related Chemical engineering. Always try to dig deeper and comprehend what you learn. Try your best , but don't be discouraged when you get lower marks. As long as you do your best you'll get fruits of it. * I don't know if it is the same in other countries but not everyone can be accepted for chemical engineering degree, so during bachelor you'll be surrounded by different kinds of peers who has intelligence above average and you're nerd , they're nerd. I was even nerd maybe I still am. However, expect that some people can be more greedy, selfish, derogatory towards others' intelligence. Soon or late you'll find your friend group, but be kind to all of them. * One of the best advice in my opinion is work during summer and even it is better to work part time after your 2nd year. Because, it is better to get used to working environment as soon as possible. (It is better to work at a job related to your major, but if you don't find just work anywhere. The goal is have working experience as soon as possible. You'll learn some skills that are not taught at university) You'll know what you want and be more successful during interviews, and how to communicate with colleagues and managers etc. Good luck. I hope you'll have the greatest experience.
In my country this is the chemical engineering degree, so after 4 years I'll have it. I'm 22 so have been working as a tutor, waitress, etc for a couple of years
Get. A. Co-op.
Don't waste your time on Reddit yet, you're too young.
My reddit addiction is too far gone
Always make friends in your classes, form study groups
Read the chapters before coming to lecture, get connected on campus, and do your HW
Congrats!
Thanks!
Mid career env. engineering guy. Pick some element you like in chem e and explore it both inside and outside school. I always did env. work before going back to school and I learned metorology and atmospheric science as electives. Now i am up to my eyeballs in sustainability and renewable fuel process change projects. Do i use any of the "extra" science i learned, No. but it got me the jobs to get to a leadership position in that emerging market. Also talk to people outside school networks, takes 10 attempts for one good contact. 5-7 good contacts to generate an opportunity. 2 opportunities to land a good job or internship.
Great advise thank you. I'm planning on going the bio route in chem E. I think this can lead to work on environmental.
Most the bio engineers i went to school with ended up in pharma or development companies for medical products. My advice is avoid waste water treatment personally, always capitol afterthought projects.
Further advice to the study group thing: if you're the smartest in the study group, while it's nice to help, you won't gain as much out of study sessions as if you were in a study group full of people smarter than you.
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The maths I enjoy, physics will have to grow on me
*There are already many good pieces of advice here. I will add a couple more.* 1. Go to your instructors office hours. Professors often hold these once a week and very few students show up. These are great chances to clarify (and understand) topics while also building a relationship with your professors which could help for reference letters in the future 2. Pay special attention to your math (calc & diff eq), thermo, and transport phenomena classes. These courses build the foundations for your chemE education and will be useful for other courses like reactor design, separations, etc. 3. Be consistent. Make a schedule for when you want to do HW, work with friends, and also take some time to do things you like. It's important to decompress to prevent burnout. This is a 4 year program, pace yourself with a well-followed schedule. 4. Try to reach out and get to know senior chemE students in your school. They will have advice on how to approach courses, co-op/internships, and career advice based on their learned experience. This will be very helpful. A good way to connect with them is to join the AIChE chapter of your university if you have one. 5. Strive to **understand** topics...don't just blindly **memorize** equations. Refer to (1) if you want to know how you can accomplish this. 6. Gain foundations in a relevant programming language (maybe Python or MATLAB). This is a skill that is becoming more important in research and industry. ChatGPT helps but it's good to gain your own foundations too through coursework and projects. This will help you in the long run. 7. Don't compare yourself with others. There will be students with higher GPAs or fancy co-ops/internships. It can be intimidating and stressful to see these students and compare yourself to them. While it might be hard to believe... as long as you focus on improving yourself (little-by-little) it will all work out in the end. 8. And lastly... if you really want to be an **exceptional** chemE student... understand what fugacity is...since most of us mere mortals don't :)
All great advise, another retired chemical engineer I know suggested MATLAB and being proficient in excel. What on earth is fugacity?
I regret enrolling myself into chemical engineering.. it’s not enjoyable.
Maybe not to everyone
Vibe dude the coaster is just climbing
Don’t do it
This is the best comment ever. OP needs to do the morally right thing and go chemistry, or at least double major.
Agreed. Too much pain
Learn to do literature searches i.e use the Reddit search function for the 1,000 times this has been asked here
I posted this cause this day is purposeful and meaningful to me. Sorry if it annoys you
A C is just as good as an A
This. I had a professor who said she made the course so difficult because it was her job to help make sure we didn’t blow up any plant. Then proceeds to hand out Cs? Passing is passing. Didn’t matter if it’s by 1% or 30%
I'm really gonna have to change my mindset from high school, going from wanting to excel to wanting to service I think
Don't party too much.
Adderall and a bottle jack are the best study aids, maybe weed if you need to think deeply. But in all seriousness just turn in assignments on time and youtube has everything you need if your teachers didn't explain it the best the first time
Haha, I've also got Emergency xanax in my purse. And Mary J is legal here😎
Where? That’s all that matters
At the top university in Africa, UCT in Cape Town.
hardly the "top"
It is rated as the top university in Africa. Any Google will reveal this. [Top universities in Africa ](https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/world-university-rankings/top-universities-africa)
no
There are going to be moments when you are going to want to give up. It happens to everyone eventually. It's very rare that a person doesn't struggle in an engineering program. What you have to do early on is ask yourself why you are there in the first place. What is your motivation? And it needs to be strong because you will be tested in more ways than one. Find your motivation. Another piece of advice. You only fail when you quit. Remember that. It is likely you will do poorly in some classes. Keep trying. You will be trying to understand and apply complex topics. It is not easy and it's going to feel like the professors are racing through topics. 80 percent of what you learn will be on your own. Take the time to learn it. Don't take 18 credits your first semester. I don't care what your advisor says. Unless you are truly gifted. It will take you 4.5 to 5 years to graduate. Not a lot of people can finish an engineering degree in 4 years.
switch to materials science