Engineered, to a degree! · 4:53pm Jul 8th, 2014
Hi again, everyone!
University for me is finally over! I graduated Friday before last from the University of Cambridge with a Master's in Manufacturing Engineering, and wow, was that ever an experience. Kind of hard to believe that I was fretting over my first year exams when I joined this fandom! Now to find a job...
In the meantime, I've been gallivanting around Singapore and Malaysia for the past week and a half on an overseas research project which has been planned for over the past year. It's been very interesting to see a variety of start-ups and manufacturers in this area of the world, but as you can probably tell by the lateness of this entry, both free time and internet access have been in short supply recently! I'll be travelling around Japan for the rest of the month come Sunday, so I should have plenty of downtime on trains and planes there. I'm hoping to get the next chapter of Vee out in a couple of weeks if all goes according to plan, and August should see some shorter stories I've been planning... and maybe a little Equine Revolution too.
In the meantime, I'll be hitting the road, and my keyboard. Repeatedly.
Congratulations on years of study! It must be a huge relief for you.
Wishing you the best in landing a job!
Grats! It sounds like your job prospects are a heck of a lot better than if you had gotten a degree with the word 'Studies' after it, that's for sure.
(IT minion here)
Not only a fellow Escapist, but a fellow Brit, too?! What ho, my good man! Jolly good show!
Congrats on the graduation, too, of course.
Congrats Melon!
Oh, and a month in Japan!? You lucky fruit predator!
I've always wanted to go (I was meant to study there for a semester in my Master's year, but half of the people who were going to join me failed to fill in their immigration forms and the exchange was cancelled as a result).
So what's beyond the horizon of study for you then (after your travelling, of course)?
2266943 2267204 Aww, thank you!
2269020 Yes, pip pip, tally ho! *adjusts monocle* Spiffing. You're most welcome!
2269175 Thank you! Not quite a month over here, sadly. Two and a half weeks, but I'll certainly be planning to head back to Japan at some point after this tour! I won't be going back to studying for a while after this, as I want to actually secure a paying job first (although I won't rule out doing a PhD or MBA a few years down the line). Although, seeing as I have an indefinite amount of free time until that job comes along, I might get to learning a few things. A language (probably brushing up on my very rusty Japanese, let's face it
), coding, drawing things other than ponies... I'm sure I can keep myself busy!
2287682 So now that you have a degree, can you confirm or deny that engineering really is as simple as hitting it with a wrench?
2287689 Neither, really... We kinda joke that Manufacturing Engineering isn't 'real' engineering.
I mean, we do a bit of material science, but other than that, a lot of it is centred around how engineering works in the capitalist world: stuff like tech adoption cycles, branding and marketing, management, product design. It's pretty eclectic, and great for people who came out of the theory-heavy first two years of general engineering not wanting to have to do any more exams that were all maths and no application!
But hey, I'm sure hitting things with wrenches probably won't make the matter worse... unless it's electrical. In that case, hit it with a soldering iron instead. Also, if it involves thermodynamics or fluid mechanics in any way, run away screaming
2287699 So basically, Valve lied to us all, but told the truth at the same time? Mind... blown.
Also, you learn something new every day. And here I was thinking that engineering was all maths. Which I suck at harder than a kid trying to gulp down a nearly frozen milkshake.
New chapters he says.
100 weeks ago, he says.