Engineering is Like Riding a Bike

One of the Mechanics Lab assistants wore a hoody today which said:

“Engineering is like riding a bike. But the bike is on fire, you’re on fire, everything is on fire, and you’re in hell.”

I’m not saying that’s always accurate but there are times I would have to agree.

Engineering is up there with Medicine as a notoriously demanding subject and so far, yes, the course has very much lived up to that reputation. Where as other subjects eased back into normal lectures gradually, we were given the task of writing a CV, from scratch, for a engineering role on day three! We were told about it at 10am and it was due in 11pm the same day. We’re used to it now though; while most courses have the odd introduction lecture in first year at the start of freshers, we were given a 9am test on the second day back.

All of last year I hated the heavy work load. Some of my friends had weeks with less contact time as one of my days. But to be fair I’m glad they worked us as hard as they did now. I feel I’ve got a good general grounding of knowledge and that wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t pushed hard early on.

I’m in a house with four other engineers, and I sometimes wonder if the late nights which rolled into early mornings finishing formal reports or revising for blackboard tests helped us bond in a small way,  like the men in the trenches who become close in times of  need. Certainly medics seem to me to be closer as a department than any other.

All the late nights demanded a fair few cups of coffee and I’ve developed the perfect iced latte recipe which I’ll post on here one day if anyone is interested.

So if your a first year engineer- I can confirm it gets no easier in year two. But as JFK said: “Don’t prey for easy lives. Prey to be stronger men.”

And know you’re getting a bit more bang for your 9000 bucks!

So I’m really enjoying the engineering and would love to answer any questions potential Leicester engineers might have, just comment below.

Thanks!