By Ryan Ellis
During my time as a dual enrollee with a a local community college, I took pre engineering classes that allowed me to explore my curiosity within my field. As a final project for Computer Aided Design, I was instructed to find some object that was related to Mechanical Engineering and replicate it in Creo (a commercial CAD software package.) I decided to take the piston out of an old push lawnmower my dad had left sitting around in the garage.
Before starting the process of taking the engine apart, I first read up on online about the basic parts of small engines so I had a better understanding of what I was looking at when I actually took it apart. I looked at everything from schematics in Google Images to 3D animations of engines in operation on Youtube.
Nothing quite compares to actually getting your hands on the physical parts, learning how they go together and work with each other. Taking that engine apart with my own hands gave me a new perspective on my field of study. Book work and reading about the concepts of your field are important, but nothing compares to first hand experience. There are misconceptions that engineers are always busy with mathematics and physics (two subjects that have connotations with reading a lot textbooks) Although that is sometimes true, it is not the heart of engineering. For me, the soul of being an engineer is finding out how things work. Working with objects, machines, tools, essentially anything with moving parts.
To me, being a mechanical engineer means understanding. It means knowing the purpose of something in order to further your own knowledge of that thing, what ever it may be.
It was very interesting to hear how you became interested in the field of engineering. You gave vivid detail throughout your whole post that enticed me to read on. The one thing I would suggest you try doing next is instead of using first and second person, use third person instead. It sounds more professional to the readers.
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