My First Taste of Engineering
Now this might sound strange, but I was actually really excited for this semester’s classes to start. I am a sophomore biomedical engineering major and this is the first semester in which I can take actual engineering classes! Okay, I probably shouldn’t be so excited, because engineering classes can be quite challenging. But I’ve been planning on majoring in BME since my freshman year of high school, when I first discovered the major, so it’s great to finally have a chance to do actual “engineering”. I’d always heard that it was a mix of math and science. Well, now that I’m over a month in, I can tell you that this is quite true!
This semester I’m taking two engineering classes: Biomechanics and Circuits 1. I’m also taking Bio 1 and Physics B, the last of the long (but necessary) list of prerecs for engineering majors. Circuits is…just that, circuits. I’m really enjoying the problem solving aspects of it though. Biomechanics so far has been a decent review of physics, although it’s applied to humans instead of those lovely bricks on an incline or the firing of cannon balls. One of the awesome things about taking essentially all science/engineering/math classes is that there is plenty of overlap. For example, we just started learning about circuits, resistors, and voltage in Physics, which we’ve been doing all semester in Circuits.
Probably the best part of finally taking these classes is the reassurance that I am in the right major. It can be difficult to get a feel for engineering when the first year is filled with memorization, which is so important when it comes to upper level classes, but isn’t true “engineering” so-to-speak. I just finished my first round of tests (somehow they all always seem to be in the same two weeks) and engineering is much more the application of methods and formulas than the memorization of say, all 20 amino acids. Yes, we did need to know that for Bio. I was not a fan.
However, I have enjoyed my classes thus far, and I can’t wait to learn more about this major that I’ve chosen in the coming semesters!