Why I chose Mechanical Engineering

Do you know any child who says that when she or he grows up, she or he wants to be an engineer? None! Exactly. When you were a kid, I bet you dreamed of being a football player, an astronaut, a pilot, or even a garbage collector. Just admit it, there was a time when you had wanted to ride on the garbage truck as they do. Moreover, if you are born and raised in India like me, your parents must have only given you three choices for your future jobs which are a doctor, an engineer, or a lawyer. My parents did not tell me to choose one of those three choices. Instead, they asked me to pick whatever I wanted as my future job. This came as a shock to me as I had no idea what kind of job I wanted to do. It would have been easier for me if they had given me those three choices. I asked them to pick my future job but they refused. They kept telling me that if I didn’t pick something that I would genuinely enjoy, I would never be happy. A quote they always say until now is “pick a job you love and you will never work a day in your life” and I agree. Have you ever noticed in every sitcom shows, the husband or the father always comes back from work, exhausted, sick of everything, and always complaining about how his co-workers take a day off and make his works piles up even more? That’s an example of working a job you don’t love. Because of shows that, I knew I had to choose something that I would love, something that I would never regret. Little did I know that engineering would be the one that I chose. To be exact it’s mechanical engineering.

When I was in primary school, whenever people asked me what my dream was, I would confidently reply “A Millionaire”. To which they would reply, “Good luck, you are going to need it”. I thought I would be a millionaire without knowing how. I was ten years old at that time, so what else can you expect from a 10-year-old kid? Anyway, secondary school came and I knew I could not be a millionaire unless I joined a game show or something. I was engrossed in aliens at one point in my teen years. Yes, aliens. I would sit and watch ancient aliens movies for hours every day, wondering if there were otherworldly beings out there in space. One of the scientists who were on the show was Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist. I know that theoretical physicist sounds like the coolest job ever. After all, the guy was on TV! How much cooler could a job get? Then my dream during secondary school changed, I wanted to be a theoretical physicist. Well, it mostly because of the aliens. The stuff they talked about on TV was mind-boggling. They theorized about what aliens would be like, what their planets would look like, whether they had breathable air, and whether they were more technologically advanced than us. When a 15-year-old boy listens to this stuff, it would blow his mind. I know you have heard of Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest scientists the world has ever known. This man researched about black holes and found out that they emit radiation and he immortalized himself by calling the radiation “Hawking Radiation”. How many people have radiation named after them, I mean come on. By the way, Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist too. I tried to read his book, ‘A Brief History Of Time’, but could never get through the first chapter because I got bored quickly. That’s how I knew that this wasn’t the job for me, although maybe someday I might dabble in it. You will never know.

Then came Form 4. Everyone called it the honeymoon year for some reason. Although it never felt that way to me, Why? Because every year is a honeymoon year for people who don’t like studying. Anyway, it was at this age when I started getting serious about what I wanted to do in the future. I still remember one of my seniors coming up to me and ask me, “What do you want to do in college?”, to which I reply, “I still don’t know yet”. He then gave me some advice that a 17-year-old should have never been able to give. ( By the way, he was 17 at that time). He told me that if I didn’t choose what I wanted to do in college that year, it was going to be very hard for me the next year. He was right. My final year in high school came and I still did not know what I wanted to do when I graduated. Besides, I had to get through SPM first to figure out if my results would be good enough to pick a job that I liked. During that year, I went to multiple career fairs, private and public universities, and even considered joining Form 6 if I still could not figure what I wanted to do. But by some luck, I stumbled across engineering. The closest thing to theoretical physics. I had come to learn that all the great scientists were mechanical engineers, especially Bill Nye the Science Guy! If you don’t know who that person is, get out from under your rock, please. Engineering seemed to pique my interest a lot because I liked physics and also building and fixing things, which are essentially mechanical engineering. So it was a match made in heaven. Mechanical Engineering was the one I chose because it had a little bit of every engineering aspect in it, such as electrical and electronic. Besides that, it took my interest as it would be a pathway to aerospace engineering, another step closer to seeing aliens. Moreover, it has a very broad job scope. I could work anywhere I wanted and that made the deal even sweeter.

After my SPM results came out, I attended the Star Education Fair. There, I saw many universities that made me interested but I knew I could never attend them because of my family’s low income. Surprisingly, I had never come across UCSI during that time. I always thought I would go to a university that was nearby my house, so by default, it would be in Subang. However, as I was applying for the Star Education Fund, the only universities that were offering Mechanical Engineering in Subang were Taylors, Sunway, and UCSI University. UCSI was a university that I had never heard of. So, hoping for the best, I applied to all three universities, and by God’s grace, I managed to get into UCSI University. It wasn’t until then that I did my intense research on this university. Finding out that it is one of the most prestigious universities in Malaysia and well known for its engineering programs. I was ecstatic, finding out I would be going to a well-regarded university in its engineering and with a full scholarship at that.

Now, I know that the career I’ve chosen is the one for me. Each subject that I take confirms it as they all resonate with what I am interested in. What I’m trying to say is, you should choose carefully when it comes to something that you will be doing for the rest of your life. Do not let other people dictate your future. It’s yours and yours alone to decide and to take control of it. For your information, another reason that I ended up choosing engineering over theoretical physics was because of the salary. Thus end my life story of choosing an engineering program. Thank you for reading this!