Engineers out There?

Is there anybody out there that is an engineer/becoming one? I ask because I would like some personal direction on what the heck I am thinking about doing. I love to tinker and try to build, but I know I have the potential to be a not-to-bad engineer (it's in the blood). Although i am rusty on my math and such, but hey, four years out of high school, who wouldn't be? I was looking at medical eng, love the idea of artificial organs and, well basically becoming Winry Rockbell.

You gotta be strong in math, chem and bio for biomed. Just do some research into the field like what jobs you can get, what specialities would you be interested in, and what the day to day is like. Also look up programs and their pre-reqs to get an idea of what kind of classes you'll have to take to get in and it'll also give you an idea of what you need to be good at.

:) Thank you xueli. I'll look deeper into the field. There's just not a whole lot of programs around here that have what I want to do. There's only four places in the US that i have found so far and they are 3,000 away. :)

Hmm if you want to do what your talking about xueli is right i have alot of science skills myself along with a bit of medical and i love messing with robots so all power to you in doing that especially since it benefits mankind and doesnt harm it moreover i havnt made up my mind really either on the matter been busy with a multitude of things

I have actually gotten most of my engineering prerequisites done and plan on taking engineering classes once I have some of the student loans taken care of. You have to have very strong math skills and good computer skills to either take the CAP classes or pass the CAP tests. Math is the really big one though. Of course I've already studied automotive technology, and plan on getting into automotive engineering since they have the vehicle research institute at the university here.

I'm a reactor mechanic in the Navy, and I have been working on my BS in Nuclear Engineering. The ACE recommends some 32 credits for completion of Naval Nuclear Power School and the Naval Propulsion Training Unit, and that goes a long way towards a nuclear engineering degree. Once you join as a nuke, though, you commit yourself to 6 years of service in the Navy, and for the first 2 years of it, studying nuclear power becomes your job. Navy College will pay for 16 credit hours per fiscal year, though, once you get to your first ship. Also, they have another program called NCPACE where you can take CD-ROM based courses while at sea. If you are good at math, physics, and chemistry, and are good at understanding systems, you'll do fine. If you want to be a licensed engineer, you'll have to graduate from a 4-year college that is ABET accredited to meet the first requirement for licensing. My school is Excelsior College, and they are an ABET certified school that specializes in distance learning. It's a lot of work, but none of the classes that I have taken had material that was especially difficult -- you just need to stay motivated and keep up on your studies.

Wow, thank you guys for insight. Honestly, I am highly surprised, I did not expect to receive this many responses =) It makes me very happy to hear from all of you. It looks like I have a load of work ahead of me. I was looking online at some of the prosthetic sites and career. I found Touch-bionics. That type of work would be fun and challenging. What I really want to do though, (I know this may sound a bit silly but from my understanding they are working on this technology), but I want to do what Winry Rockbell does, that type of "Automail" prosthetics. Even though, the connection of metal to flesh sounds painful and near impossible.. I kind of like the idea of service in the military, a few of my family members have done that and succeeded. Problem is, I have a very hard time following orders (I like being the one in charge or being independent, a issue i need to work on). That is a huge downfall of mine. I know if I was to join, they would break me of that issue in a day. =) Espelancer, thank you for the insight into your schooling. I was curious about the ABET accreditation, I had some of the universities and colleges telling me that the accreditation did not matter, a degree s a degree. I knew they were blowing smoke. I will do further studies into the branches and schools, and I will also check into Excelsior College since you say they specialize in distance learning. =)

... I don't really know who winrock rockbell is and what they do but biomed engineering is only starting to gain prominence. I would definitely do more research into programs but I do want to stress that it's going to be a lot of bio studies, especially of you want to do prosthetics. So much bio studies that many med school students use biomed engineering as a Pre med degree

Actually, some schools have distance learning labs that you can do. I did my chemistry lab using the Virtual ChemLab software provided by my school, and both of my physics labs were done online through Java applets. My school also offers a biology lab online, although I haven't taken it. You'd be surprised how much you can do online.