I feel ya budmur. I am a degreed EE, and busted my **** out of college for nuttin... Been out about 10 years now, and am freaking BANKING, so engineering I would recommedn to anyone, but it's funny because at first you get that great starting salary compared to your non-engineering buds - but the HOURS!!! That's where they get you as an engineer... As for the uber-sensative premed guy - moparnasty.... Dude, are you really premed? Are you in that for the loop??? Dude, I got to tell ya - YOU'RE IN FOR IT!! I have 2 great friends who are MDs, and they ***** HATE their jobs... The salt in the wound is that I top both of their incomes as a contract engineer with a Bachelor's degree... Doctors don't get paid what they used to man... A family doctor makes about $80K-$90K starting out (After 8 years of school) and tops out about $135K... YIKES!!! Now - you can bank if you want to go back to school for another 4 years and another 4 years of residence if you want to specialize in something easy like OBGYN or something... Oryou can go back for like another 10-15 years if you want to be a heart surgeon... Bottom line is that doctors need to be doctors because they want to be doctors... Bunches of us make more annually than doctors... Hope you are loving it... With all that debt and all...

Bottom line? Engineers are set at about 30... Doctors are set at about 45, and have a job about 100 times harder than that of an engineer and may or may not make the same money as one... Either way you want to go - GOOD LUCK!!

 

hell we had to take a 40 hr course once a year for crash recovery for the air force. HAZWOPER TRAINING

 

In my day a "struggling college student" wasn't driving a 2 year old 25k truck. You were lucky if you had a 20 year old VW.

 

My suggestion is to get a job in a steel mill, we have operators that make over 100k a year with the company putting 20k in their 401k's every year.
Our maintenance mechanics and electricans make more a year than anyone working in our engineering department, with a lot of them having engineering degrees themselves.

 

I took my truck in to get smog tested 2 weeks ago, and when the inspector popped the hood and heard the ticking he immediately told me that engine swaps are illegal in CA, diesels aren't allowed in half tons in CA and that I would fail the test blah blah blah. I said man, its the cam phasors...my truck has the factory 5.4L, the guy checked it closer and said "oh" and just laughed.

Yes they are very loud and it is normal.