Help me decide post graduation plans

I am a senior mechanical engineering student and while I am going to be graduating in May, I don't feel ready to head into industry. I have had a couple of internships and co-ops and it is rough. Not that I can't do the work, it was waking up early putting on some business casual clothes working in front of a computer for 8 hours, getting home tired and then having only a few hours before sleep and repeat. The prospect of a 8-5 desk job for years and years and years just doesn't sit with me right now. I will probably go into the engineering field later but I think first I want to take some off and do my own thing. My initial plan was to spend the summer after graduation biking across the US with a group at my university, Illini 4000. They do it as a fundraiser for cancer research. Then the plan would be find a job at a ski resort for the winter, and then the next summer be a wild life firefighter. Repeat the ski bum/fire fighting thing as necessary? Then I could be boring and get a job.

Well I guess there is a hitch in my plan, I wasn't chosen to join the Illini 4000 ride for the summer. Fairly bummed out about that. Maybe I didn't play the cancer angle during the interview as much as others. To be honest, the main reason I wanted to do it because I would be biking across the US. That's awesome. But I still would have raised a lot of money through fundraising, even if I don't have a huge cancer victim story.

So now I don't know what to do after graduation and before the ski season starts. The Illini 4000 thing was nice because part of the fund raising money goes to cover the trip expenses. If I wanted to bike across the States on my own, I would need to buy my own food.

So GRM, what do I do with my life now?

My friend does mining technology engineering and he is out of the office and in the field a fair bit and travels for work fairly often.

A few other friends have engineering degrees and graduate degrees work for defense contractors that do a good bit of work in the field. Although there seems to be no getting around sitting at a desk for some of the time. Just depends on what you wanna do, if you're burned out a sabbatical doesn't sound like abad idea for a summer at least.

Take the ride anyway, fund yourself with a kick starter to pay for it and donate the excess to cancer research.

Being boring sucks. It really really sucks. Leave the 8-5 jobs for the rest of the hamsters, get out and live and do and explore for as long as possible. I only gave in to the weekly grind to get out of credit card debt and because my job and my wife's job affords us lots of travel opportunities we wouldn't otherwise have. If you can manage it put away a little as you go and live as absolutely simply as possible.

If you come to next summer and find yourself needing a job and can get yourself to Alaska, go to www.alaskatourjobs.com and let me know when you apply, I'll put in a good word. That would make an epic bike ride, but I would recommend driving up. At the end of the season apply for one of the many mines or one of the native corps, oil companies, or wherever else you want, companies desperately need people up here and are willing to pay.

Just get a job.. if you don't like it, get a different one.

novaderrik wrote: Just get a job.. if you don't like it, get a different one.

This. Find work that energizes you and that you're passionate about. That can cut both ways, but when it's working in your favor, it really makes the days fly by.

If you don't find it on the first try, find something else. And don't drop the first job until after you've secured the second one, no matter how disagreeable it is. Old farts stick with one employer for life. The new generation jumps around, that's to be expected.

As you've laid it out now, your future resume would throw up a lot of red flags and I guarantee you'll have trouble finding and adjusting to that first engineering job, should you ever decide to go back.

You get used to the 8-5 thing pretty quick and you'll get better at using the 5-11pm and weekend time to decompress. Find something energizing to do during that 8-5 period, whether it's specializing in a particularly gnarly bit of your field, or working in an industry that speaks to you.

I'm sorry you had E36 M3ty internships or co-ops. They should have brought some life to the work you were doing, but they didn't and that's their failure. Now you need to go find work that will ignite that spark for you.

Tell us what it is about mechanical engineering that got you interested in that field in the first place. What mech-e stuff do you do in your spare time? The hive-mind may be able to help guide you towards something you'll really like.

Get a job and thank whatever deity you'd like that you have a useful degree and wont spend the next five years sobbing into ramen.

Or actually reading your post, get a job, don't be a dumb. Unless you've got the expendable cash to waste a couple of years doing berkeley all, then go for it.

one of my cousins spent the better part of a decade going to college to be some sort of an engineer... it took that long because he's one of those people that was financially stable enough to take a year off "find himself" while backpacking around Europe or whatever because my aunt (his mom) started working at 3M in the 60's and has been buying stock the whole time..

anyways, he finally got a degree and got a job at GM in the Detroit area. he didn't feel "fulfilled" working on window regulators, so he took a few months off to travel the world... then he somehow got a job at a contractor that was working at the NASA facility in Alabama on the new rockets.. he didn't like that he was working on some small parts of the interstage rings that hold the rocket together, so he quit and travelled around the states for 6 months... then he got some computer programming job somewhere for a year or so before getting sick of that and he's currently meandering around the backwater parts of India... i don't think he'll ever get a steady job, but why would he- mommy's stocks have been doing a good job of fulfilling his emotional needs so far... he's 35 now and has never had a job for more than a year- his life will get really fun if my aunt ever cuts him off and he needs to just dig in and become a productive member of society with skills that are a decade or more out of date..

the funny part is that his mom is the same woman that gave me a dollar at the county fair one time so i could try to get something out of the crane game, and asked me if i had that dollar to pay her back a few months later at thanksgiving. she said she wanted to teach me responsibility or something..

I know it may be hard to do at your age...I know it was for me when I was young...but try to think about what your long term goals are. If it involves being in the corporate world and doing the 9-5 thing, make sure you understand what ramifications living the freestyle life may have. In other words...will a perspective corporate employer look at your resume and say "OK...so you got a degree in mechanical engineering and then spent the next 4 years serving drinks to ski bunnies and protecting wild bunnies from fires??" If they put your resume up against the next guy who has 4 years experience in the field, you're likely to be at a disadvantage. I know in my field it would be an issue.

I am not...repeat, not...saying you have zero alternative than to put on a boring shirt and tie and get in line. Simply be sure that if you chose to chase a dream you've always had that it doesn't have a long term negative impact on your career.

Look for a job in NASCAR. You won't spend a lot of time behind a desk I bet.

Grad school.

Or actually understand that 99% of the jobs out there are not 100% satisfying. Dilbert is funny becauses it resonates with most people, let alone engineers.

Find a job that is satisfying enough, and understand that it can be a mechanism to do what you want outside of work.

My wife and I travel a lot for pleasure. And both of our jobs allow us to do that. If I wanted to run the Challenge, I could quite easily. Bonneveille? Every year if I want. We autocrossed for 17 years before moving on. And I know quite a few people who race- running, biking, motorcyle, and cars. All thanks to the simple fact that the carreer they chose allows them to do that.

It is a whole lot easier for me, since I really do enjoy the work I do.

So find a job that is satisfying enough, and understand that you work to live.

Others live to work, that's perfectly fine. I've learned that I do not envy what they have acquired in their lives, as the sacrifices they took, I was not willing to do.

I'll put it in a different way. If one of your parents got sick- could you be able to just get up and take care of them for a month? Or your in-laws? That turns out to be a important feature to my carreer- that I can go even with an afternoon's notice.

There are a lot of engineering jobs out there that don't involve spending all day every day behind a desk. If you don't mind cold weather, my company has an opening for an entry level ME in northern Minnesota:

Summary

The person selected for this position will work on multi-discipline project teams providing mechanical engineering and related technical expertise. Typical project assignments may include collecting field information, completing engineering calculations and analyses, selecting equipment and components, preparing design drawings and specifications, writing technical reports, preparing sketches for system arrangement, developing details of designs, and preparing cost estimates. These activities will be related to the design of mechanical systems such as bulk materials handling, process piping and pumping, industrial ventilation, industrial machinery and equipment, and building systems. The work will be primarily related to industrial processing facilities, power plants, mining facilities, and other heavy industrial facilities. The work may at times involve short-term, out-of-town assignments.

NOTE: Some work locations may feature rough terrain typical of industrial sites and may also require entering and working within facilities that include limited accessibility, moving machinery, and other conditions typical of industrial facilities. Safety training will be provided for work in these areas.

alfadriver wrote: Find a job that is satisfying enough, and understand that it can be a mechanism to do what you want outside of work.

This.

I don't know what it is with my generation and younger (I'm 32) with all this "soul fulfilling job" stuff.

Find a good job with good benefits that will allow you to do what you want outside of work. Because all jobs are going to have some BS to put up with, and it's all going to be close to the same BS.

Go into industry now. You'll be in a much better position in your 30's if you do.

Grad school or get a job.

I'm looking at it from the perspective of I'm 24 and facing 38 more years of this. If I were to slack off and "find myself" now, it would be a fairly big hit to my career, and to my retirement savings. I'd rather have a longer retirement than a long summer. Because guess what? I just spent the weekend out at the bars, sharing a hotel with 5 great friends. This weekend I'm visiting family. Two weeks from now, I'm going to Iowa State to visit my brother. Sure, the whole getting up at 5AM thing is hard, but not that hard.

z31maniac wrote:

alfadriver wrote: Find a job that is satisfying enough, and understand that it can be a mechanism to do what you want outside of work.

This. I don't know what it is with my generation and younger (I'm 32) with all this "soul fulfilling job" stuff.

My thoughts: It isn't any different than it ever has been. We just hear it a lot more due to the internet, and the fact that it is us now.

There are also a lot of other things that are in play here--salary vs. inflation/cost of living, social security, etc., but I really doubt it is that different.

Oh, one thing to consider: Go to North Dakota and work in the oil fields. Live in a conversion van and fly home every 2 weeks (my aquaintences who have done this are usually 2 weeks on of 80+ hour weeks, followed by a week off), save 75% of what you make, do it for 1-5 years then go into whatever you want with a huge start on your nestegg.

ive always been told your never more hire-able then when you are fresh out of school

z31maniac wrote:

alfadriver wrote: Find a job that is satisfying enough, and understand that it can be a mechanism to do what you want outside of work.

This. I don't know what it is with my generation and younger (I'm 32) with all this "soul fulfilling job" stuff. Find a good job with good benefits that will allow you to do what you want outside of work. Because all jobs are going to have some BS to put up with, and it's all going to be close to the same BS.

Very true.

There are a TON of ME jobs that are not desk monkey positions. I worked with a lot of ME's as a technical service adviser for general electric working on locomotives all day. Basically every company has a similar roles in their field service organizations and not a one is a desk monkey. The race industry hires ME's left and right if you are good. You can see the world and play with race cars.

Here is the issue you will run into if you take a year off, you are now yesterday's news in the job market especially right out of college. Employers will wonder why you took time off and why I should hire someone that didn't get a job right out of school. Not to sound horrible but it will make people question your hire ability if you do not have an in with the company.

Do not go to grad school without a solid, realistic plan to leave grad school and do something that only a graduate degree will allow you to do.

We've all run into those perpetual student types who graduate from one program, work or fool around for a bit, then go to another graduate program. Given current market conditions, there's a lot of them, especially in non-tech fields. Grad school (or various different grad schools) can be a great place to hide out for a few years while living a college-ish lifestyle. Do not do this. Go in, work your ass off, get out.

Unless you can point to jobs you'd really love to do, but which absolutely require an advanced degree, you'd be better off starting with an entry-level job and moving up. Teaching or Research PhDs are the one exception to that; they're a separate category from this discussion.

In reply to peter:

That does help- I went to grad school just to get into the auto industry....

(for the long trip thing- I did that during my 2 months off during grad school- I drove and camped all the way around the country for those two months. Really cool)

Remember that job hunting takes time!

Even for engineers.

Take time off and the job hunt will take even longer.

I know very few people who found a (good) job in less than 6 months time hunting.

You might be thinking "take a year and start next year" but remember that you will still have another probable year of searching.

rotard wrote: Go into industry now. You'll be in a much better position in your 30's if you do.

I'll +1 this if you're going into an industry that will make you grown-up money - enough to get your own house and a new car and support a family and all that good stuff. I'm pretty sure you are. Grinding at a desk all day isn't a bad price to pay for a nice lifestyle with fun hobbies etc. At least I don't think so.

But if not, then go have fun if you can afford to, because I've learned that a sub-livable wage is like zero. You can multiply it by hard work to the power of the force of a thousand suns plus saving up hard, and it's still berkeleying zero, you'll never be able to make anything of it within a human lifetime. So you might as well try to make the best of it.

Join the military. Take a commission in the Air Force or Navy and see the world on Uncle Sams dime. Do 20 years and take the retirement check at 42-43 years old and then really enjoy the double dip for the next 15-20 years.

Do NOT have a couple of kids any time soon. You want to see your personal freedom and options diminish, have kids. Just my opinion, YMMV.

Get a job and deal with it. Welcome to the grow-up world. Diplomas are a bit like fish in that they lose appeal if they go any time without being used.

Employers might make the mistake that you are some kind of special person, when what they want is a 9am-8pm Dilbert that has a wife and family to support and no choice but to do their bidding. Yeah, we do think that way. Starting careers is like starting a business (cause that is what you are doing), kinda sucks.

www.crazyguyonabike.com do the cross country bike tour on your own... if you follow most other peoples track you won't have another chance to do it until you retire... depending on how you eat and sleep you can do it fairly inexpensively... read up on stealth camping and www.warmshowers.org for free camping... go read some of the books about other peoples cross country/around the world tours for some inspiration :)