#50: HOAES (3)

Being an engineering student in the 21st century is exciting and comes with many opportunities and adventures, but the fact is we are living in the age of technology. Therefore, we the students of today have to be familiar with many computer programs for engineering projects. Personally, I think some of them are really exciting and some aren't. It becomes overwhelming sometimes to learn these programs and they take up so much time, in order to get a better understanding of its functions.

After being enrolled in many engineering classes over the past years, I've come to learn and understand some of these programs and there are some that my head is too stubborn to comprehend till this day. I am no expert in any of them, but I do my best in a good amount of them. The best advice I can give future and present engineering students is that in order for them to get better knowledge and skills for these programs, they must dedicate a lot of time practicing these programs. I've come to realize that the more time I spend on programs by myself and play around with the menus, the better it is for me to effectively use the program.

However, the more classes one takes as semesters go by, there are not many times available in the day to just sit in front of a monitor practicing programs. Therefore, one has to manage their time accordingly and try to struggle with the program on their own before getting help. I am not proficient in sticking to the second part of the advice because I get so frustrated sometimes with the programs that I just give up and get help, which is not a bad thing, but struggling is also good because you will have the right questions when help is finally received. For instance, if someone feeds you all the information, you won't think thoroughly of something but just work on automous mode and recall on all the things the person did when they were helping you and not knowing why. Honestly, I am telling you this now because I know it is the truth, but being the fact that we're all humans, it is easier said than done. But do try your best to stick to it.

It gets aggravating at times when learning these programs like I said earlier, but in classes to come, you tend to appreciate the fact that you learned it because you have more ways of approaching certain problems. That is what usually puts a lot of engineers and engineering students at an advantage sometimes compared to others without engineering background, because they aren't conversant with these programs. Therefore, pay attention to all programs you're learning today and will be learning tomorrow because you never know when it may sneak up on you. Trust me, I say this with experience.

Here are some programs I've encountered and had to learn over the past years:
Autodesk: *AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Inventor
Carlson Mining
ArcGIS
LabVIEW
MatLAB
*Microsoft Excel


*Used in most of my classes

Jasmine Mans - Roses