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I was an M.E. major, also. I was attracted to thermodynamics
first, and continued in the thermo-fluid track: compressible and
incompressible fluid dynamics, heat transfer, statistical thermo, etc.
I also found most of my prof's not very adept at teaching. They may have been great at getting research grants, but they weren't what I
considered inspiring types - except for my heat transfer prof. He
seemed to be more math literate and stressed modelling aspects
and the use of developing differential equations to model phenomena involving heat. After graduating and working for
a commercial HVAC contractor, I became very bored with my
work. Having had courses in D.E.'s and P.D.E's, I found that my
math abilities were severely underutilized.
Well, I quit that job and took a permanent substitute position at
my local high school. My pay dropped to less than half what I was
making at the HVAC firm - I never went back to engineering. All the
math I took as an undergrad M.E. was very useful in the AP Calculus
and AP Physics classes that I had to teach. And although the
financial rewards aren't great, there's no price one can put on the emotional compensation one gets when students achieve a bit
more than they thought they were capable of.
Engineering had good and bad aspects, as does teaching.
If one is working with a good group or team of engineers, the
project can be that much more interesting. However, the service
that the group produces, oftentimes, isn't so much to advance
technology, but to advance the financial status of the major stockholders. With any engineering group I've been associated
with, there was always this underlying antagonism between
the bean counters and the people who want to put forth an
elegant design.
Teaching is diametrically opposed to this: you're never working
with a group of other teachers. You're somewhat isolated. There's
not the camaraderie one would find in construction, manufacturing,
or design engineering. And the pay, unfortunately, isn't what one
would make in engineering, and is only a fraction of what one gets
with a law degree. This pay discrepancy, I think, goes a long way
to explaining why so few good students enter the teaching profession
and why there are so many bad teachers. I've known math teachers,
at the high school where I worked, that weren't math majors, and
the ones who were, had less math background than what I had
with my undergrad' M.E. background!
I've since gone further and received an advanced degree in applied
mathematics. I guess I'm the kind of student that learns best when
it isn't so abstract and can be applied to something real. Now, I
teach at the college level and find myself often teaching math to
engineering majors. But regardless, teaching is teaching, and
there's not that much difference between teaching high-school
and teaching at the college level. Some of the brightest students
I've ever met were when I was teaching high school.
So, if you like people more than you like making a lot of money,
I'd highly recommend teaching. You can always use your summers
to perfect that invention you've been thinking about, or if you're like
me, work on your Saab!
posted by 12.91.43...
, Wed, 16 Oct 2002 00:13:58
, Tue, 15 Oct 2002 11:57:35, Mon, 14 Oct 2002 21:56:42
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