[AR] Re: Career advice please.
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2021 00:28:28 -0400 (EDT)
On Mon, 15 Mar 2021, Charlie Jackson wrote:
-what can I start doing now, at age 14, that will benefit me in the long run
Let's see, at 14 you should still have a few years of school ahead before
you hit university, and around now you should be starting to have at least
some choice of what subjects you take. Two specific suggestions:
+ If you're lucky enough that your school still offers shop courses, take
a Machine Shop course or three if you can. This is something that's hard
to pick up later: universities decided long ago that it wasn't important
to engineers any more, and even school systems that are strong on offering
evening courses often don't do it for the shop subjects now, due to
liability worries (you can hurt yourself in a machine shop). And learning
it on your own is hard because the equipment is expensive.
+ Take all the math you can. You can often pick up the basics of a new
technical topic by just getting a textbook and working your way through
it... provided you understand the language it's written in, and for a lot
of engineering and sciences, that's mathematics (algebra in particular).
It's *really* hard to pick up something if you don't know what half the
equations mean; you can be a bit rusty on the fine points without harm,
but knowing the basics does matter.
(Due to some quirks of the sequence of undergrad courses I took, I hit
theoretical chemistry before ever being exposed to complex variables --
the algebra and calculus of complex numbers -- and that was a big mistake.
I literally couldn't understand half the equations. That course was an
ordeal. In hindsight, as soon as I recognized the problem, I should have
found a suitable math text and locked myself away for a weekend to work
through as much of it as possible.) (Don't sweat this exact example --
you won't see complex variables before university, and there's no reason
to take theoretical chemistry if you're not headed into chemistry as a
profession -- but it illustrates the problem.)
Outside school, I'll echo what Bob Steinke said: build something --
something physical, not just software. If there's a model-rocketry club
available locally, build and fly your first rockets! Without a club or
some other help getting started, it may be a bit early for rockets yet,
but do something that gets you used to working with your hands and making
the physical world do what you want.
Henry
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