Where is my future with engineering?

Over this summer, I managed to secure myself a great internship opportunity with a company that specializes in factory automation. For the particular project I was assigned to, the company was hired by a machine manufacturing company in Japan to install their equipment for one of their clients here in Malaysia. I was determined to do an engineering related internship as I believe exposure is very important for the future. Many a times we think we know, but we can only truly know once we’ve experienced it.

So I joined my internship with an open mind with the hope of learning and taking away as much as I possibly could. I spent the first few days being inducted and learning about the scope of work that I would be doing. To put it simply, the work was assembling IKEA furniture in difficult mode except here the assembly is of complex machinery. I really enjoyed the work as I was constantly moving about and doing something. Before I know it, it’ll be the end of the day, you know what they say, time flies when you’re having fun.

This prompted me to think about the type of engineer I wanted to be and the field I’d like to pursue after my studies. Reflecting on myself, I realized that I am now in my final year and it won’t be long till these questions need to be answered. It wasn’t long ago that I came across an article that talked about the lack of engineers in Malaysia. In this article, they mentioned that there are many people graduating from the field of engineering, but not many are staying in the field. Something someone once told me really stuck to me comes to mind, they asked me “would you really consider not using any of the knowledge you suffered to acquire for the duration of your studies, wouldn’t that be a waste”. Personally, I’ve never really thought about doing anything else, at least as much as I can. I’ve always wanted to create something and so will stick to engineering for the next couple of years (I hope!).