Right now I have to study for 10 exams, it is my last Master Semester in electrical engineering at one of the best universities for this certain area in Europe. Currently I'm sitting in the library and trying to make myself learn stuff about battery management system, robotics, AI, mechanics, sensor-actor systems and so on.
What is the use of all this? I get a degree and have the security that I get an engineering job. The more I get into the engineering direction the less I am sure about my future. I have no idea where this study will bring me right now.
We are learning the whole day, when we are finished with learning we think "Man I didn't even reached my goal". The problem is that it is not easy to free your mind from the university. Our thoughts are getting engineered, there is no time where the pressure of studying is not upon us. We are getting educated to study for the rest of our lifes. That's not the problem at all, it is furthermore about what we are studying and what it does to us.
It's my 10th semester and I thought that it would get better with time but well I think I realized something really important for myself and I would like to share this with you. It didn't got better I just accepted it as it is. I can handle more things once, I learned to manage myself and there is no need for bragging about "Damn things were so good in the past....". The best part is that if I want to learn something new (when there is time next to university) than I can learn things faster and more focused than other people, because that is what we learn.
We learn to learn.
We think the things we learn in the university are the key to our job. Well I can only speak for engineers and in my opinion that is wrong. We learned some basics but most of the stuff isn't that important for out job later. Over the past 5 years I got the ability to educate myself in a certain area in a short period of time. Above that I can do multiple tasks at the same time. I learned to manage my time, set a tight schedule and just do what i need to do.
Anyway the good thing right now is that the amount of stuff i have to study for help me to forget about my worries! I try to make the best out of it at any time. Learning new things is the most exciting thing there is on this world even if we are not interested in certain things we "have" to learn.
I hope this helps some of my engineering colleagues to withstand the exam period in thought that you guys are not alone.
If you want to know what else I think this study direction does to me as a person, just make some comments. I would like to improve my writing and share my thoughts with other people and discuss these. I think there are many engineering students who are studying a lot and would like to talk about where this whole thing will bring us. :)