Shifting from engineering to business

thegodfatherdany

Hello everyone. I am mechanical engineering student now , first semester. I am not very happy with it at the moment.Have my ups and downs and seek to be a perfect student but it seems rather hard if not impossible. Although i study rather a lot and i am a 14 15 /20 student ,i found it too much to study (in my opinion) and has courses you may or may not use in a lifetime. Studying business was another field i liked with no specific field in mind but mainly banking and finance. So to make it straight to the point, can anyone guide me with business and support me with a background about it. I like both but am afraid business has no major work here in our country as a beginner nor outside . What can be the fields of work by studying business and does it have a demand in the Gulf countries or moreover internationally? Thanks ahead.

A friend told me first year is general for all engineering students where one does not tackle what he seeks before entering. Later year where one starts to take MEN courses, one will feel more at ease and comfortable i guess.

rolf

It's a wide field and it doesn't have that much of a great reputation. If you really like it, by all means, get into it.
I started studying for B&F, but then switched to Business computing (and it did not go well...). That's another thing that I wanted to talk about, if you think that choosing something "easier" will make thing better, think again by taking your motivation in consideration. Studying for a "easy" course for which you have no interest and that you don't like, is as difficult as studying for a "difficult" topic in which you have interest.
For the curriculum, you can look up University websites, but basically expect (micro, macro)economics, a good amount of accounting, marketing, non-trivial statistic courses, some political science and other social courses, English, maybe some CS, religion or other electives.
Does that more or less help you?
As for work, I can't really tell... I never really tried working in "business jobs", I don't even have any idea what it means... I guess if you're good or lucky you can get into banks... but then, for the bachelor, they won't really teach you much specialized stuff that can give you the edge, but mostly general knowledge.

thegodfatherdany wroteand has courses you may or may not use in a lifetime.

That's a problem with ALL majors.

rtwo2008

In university not all courses are relevant to your major. I think the reason is that a university graduate should somewhat have a minimum degree of general knowledge (but I still think they fail horribly at it).

Engineering is known to require a lot of studying while humanities require the least (at least that was the case in the university I was in).

Business major, according to what I have seen, was for the students who didn't make it in the more specialized majors (it is harsh but that was how it was) and for people inheriting daddy's business. Possibly even for someone who has a wasta in a bank and knows he can work there as soon he graduates.

mesa177

1) The best advice I can give you is follow your heart: there are no easy and hard courses, but rather courses that you personally find easy or hard because it depends on your perception and conception
2) There's always room for business, and it is one of the most rewarding fields of work (financially speaking, and of course not considering entry jobs but after rather 3 to 5 years of experience). However, you have to take into consideration that there are lot of competition in the field when it comes to banking and finance
3) Those "courses that you may or may not use in a lifetime" can be managed: try choosing courses that can actually help you out later on in your career: for example, if they tell you that you have to choose an elective from the school of business (taking into consideration that you're sticking with engineering), take business law or accounting because they come in more handy when dealing with budgeting projects or managing contracts. If they tell you to take a course in arts, try selecting something with architecture involved, who knows it might help out in designing the external structure of a robot you're building or simplify perceiving skew view in Autocad classes. In the end though it comes down to what you like

Bottom line: find out what you want and what are inclined towards then make your decision

Obviously

Picking a major to stick by was the hardest decision I had to do. But I advise you to take your time to figure out what you want to do. I was confused between Biology, Engineering, Physics, Architecture, Management, and Economics. I decided to apply for Engineering because it is the hardest major to get into, and easiest to switch from to other majors. In my second year as an Industrial Engineer, I took a mandatory programming course and totally fell in love with it and knew that this was the field I wanted to work in. So I obviously switched to Computer Science (because Computer Engineering had so much less software oriented courses and a lot of hardware and electrical oriented courses).

Focus on what you are good at and what you would feel is a job you would like to work in everyday for most of your life. In my case, my strongpoints were creativity and innovation. Engineering barely has any space for these.

Biology: If you don't get into med school, you barely have any other options and I did not want to get into med school.
Physics: Too theoretical and barely any job opportunities that are not related to teaching (which is something I did not want to do).
Architecture: Although I loved working with Autocad in Engineering and made some designs, I just felt it was not something I wanted to get into.
Management: Not easy to find a job and I can do it through graduate studies.
Economics: I preferred Computer Science over it.

That's basically what you need to factor in + being realistic and seeing the job opportunities + if you ever plan to move outside of Lebanon, you need to plan on that as well.

Good luck and feel free to address any other questions you have concerning this issue.

mesa177

Obviously wrote... creativity and innovation. Engineering barely has any space for these.

I don't want to hijack the thread, but this statement could not be farther from the truth. As an engineer, there's always a hitch in the job that requires creativity and innovation, thinking outside the box, and figuring out a solution to a problem within a set time frame, budget, and even limited resources.

rolf

I agree. Sometimes creativity is associated with an an artist with long hair, and painting on a canvas, or someone coming up with crazy advertising concepts... that's a stereotype. That's not what creativity means.
If you're getting paid, whatever you're doing, graphic design, marketing, advertising or engineering, chances are you'll have constraints, so it's not that much different creativity-wise, from my perspective. You are still inside a box.
Now if you can be an artist and paint only what you want to paint, then it's something else... And I may be contradicting myself... but I mean I doubt Picasso had that many constraints...

Obviously

mesa177 wrote
Obviously wrote... creativity and innovation. Engineering barely has any space for these.
I don't want to hijack the thread, but this statement could not be farther from the truth. As an engineer, there's always a hitch in the job that requires creativity and innovation, thinking outside the box, and figuring out a solution to a problem within a set time frame, budget, and even limited resources.

Well I guess it does have more space for creativity than I implied. But just not as much as I would have gotten in Computer Science. Or maybe not the type of creativity I wanted to get involved with.