I am a senior electrical engineering major I must say that I wish I knew that I needed the mindeset you mentioned. I wish I knew sooner that I knew I had to teach myself. For anyone wanting to go into engineering please listen to that piece of advice because it is absolutly true. You MUST teach yourself, and your success only depends on YOU!!!! The sooner you take on this mentality the better and you will do and the more you will learn!!!!!!

"Regression" as a stress management tool is highly underrated. I've been working on software for over 15 years and when I am learning new things and I am feeling "untethered", sometimes I will do some basic coding exercises for the easy win. It helps to feel grounded in the knowledge I already have.

I am a retired mechanical engineer. These are all great suggestions. One of the things I can't emphasize enough though is the importance of a solid foundation in trigonometry. I knew a lot of engineering majors who struggled in every class that they took because of a luck of that foundation. Some high schools rush kids into calculus without making sure to establish that foundation. That is a mistake. I think a kid would be better off to not even go into calculus in high school in order to make sure that the foundation is good.

Being a retired engineer, I can tell you that being an engineer is like being a librarian. Both are custodians of a large quantity of books and know where to find what they are looking for in them.

This is the first time a mathematician giving engineers their flowers 😮

Very old EE major here. It took me a while to figure out, but the real purpose of engineering classes is to teach you how to teach yourself. There is actually only a small portion of the information learned in a class that I used in the real world. However, I can usually teach myself what I need to know to get the job done now. I do wish I had known that while in classes.

Engineering major is a DIY project for sure, this was definitely my experience, but no one tells you this ever. The professors will show you the concepts and problems but it is solely your own responsibility to fill in any gaps you might have moving forward. I majored in aero back in 2013. and although i was always solid in math i still struggled to get my head around different ideas & concepts, and had to study really hard. Top 3 hardest classes were Fluid mech, Thermodynamics and Aerodynamics & mechanics of flight. This, and also the sheer volume AND pace at which the classes were taking place is what made it very stressful. One thing i would really like to emphasize that has saved my skin in getting this degree many many times is my CLASSMATES. Yes. Absolutely yes. We formed a cohort early on and we had each others back at all times, and this was big part of the reason i even got this degree. No one could do this alone, it would be impossible. You have to talk to people and ask for help. The professors only have so much time on their hands, you cannot rely on them giving you full attention at your convenience so you have to find other ways to work through the material. So this would be my most important tip. Prepare yourself, study hard, but also help others and accept help or ask for help when needed and go get that degree. You can do it!

As mechanical engineer (I am from Italy) my passion for math made studying easier. But I can clearly remember the stress about the period I attended the university, especially during tests and exams. Yes, it is definitely harder! Thankyou!

Self disciple and self study are the keys for success in engineering. You'll make a lot of sacrifices to stay home to study, practice and get your work done. Anyone can do it. I started off by taking algebra 2 and then found success in all my math and engineering courses.

I am in my fifth year of both mechanical engineering and math and totally agree that engineering is harder than math. Don't get me wrong, math has lots of challenging abstract concepts, but overall engineering requires so much breadth of knowledge and the workload is no joke. I think just by the diverse nature of engineering, students have to be somewhat familiar with so many technical areas that it can feel like drinking from a firehose. Plus, the credit hours required for engineering vs math is night and day to me. Although, I think lots of people get wrapped up in the "what major is harder than the other" conversation, when honestly what's important is that you're studying something you enjoy and that will improve your future. Good to see an engineering vid MS! Keep up the great work

As an old Engineering major, whe I was at The Ohio State University, I wish this information and resources had been available to me. And you are right, the load is heavier, the classes, even the math classes, were more difficult, and the stress and pressure were much higher than for other students. So thanks for putting this out and to anyone considering Engineering as a major...listen up! Use these resources and it will lesson the pain and increase your chance of success. And Good Luck.

I definitely struggled for my mechanical engineering degree. The subject is really interesting, but you have to have a tremendous work ethic to succeed.

I majored in forestry. After graduation i went to a college library (didn't enroll) and learned structural engineering by reading books & doing exercises. Later in my career i learned electrical engineering, also from reading & doing. Get 2 or 3 books on the same topic & sit down to study. If the 1st professor's book isn't clear, read the 2nd on the same subject. If the 2nd doesn't clear it up, open the 3rd. Different authors do the write up enough differently that it causes you to look at the subject from a different angle. You have to commit to a guaranteed minimum of study each day, week, month. Easy peasy.

Junior year Mechanical Engineer here and I want to thank you for posting this!

Im a Junior in high school and I know that going for an engineering major is going to be hard. Knowing this I feel ready to devote myself to studying to have a higher understanding of what I want to do. Thank you for your videos.

Really happy with my engineering studies (EE at McGill U). Still have my main textbooks from the late 70’s. I do remember long nights with apparently impossible assignments, feeling like having to climb a vertical cliff. And then somehow you find a path. What a feeling when reaching the top. But most interesting are principles that somehow stick around, like the system approach, « for all practical purposes » considerations, and the so elegant methods of working in the Laplace domain, frequency domain, characterizing the impulse response of any system…. gives you the illusion you can control the world.

I’m a junior in engineering and the best skill possible is to make sense of marbles, essentially to take whatever is thrown at you and be able to learn it, understand it, and apply it all at a fast pace. This ranges from entire projects to concepts, in doing a physics minor I noticed the physics majors didn’t know what to do when they were explicitly taught it, this is something that is needed to be learned to study engineering

I like how you have the soft warm lighting on the left and cool blue in the right. Good touch, upping your production value.

My late father was an electrical engineer, working in fibre optics and PCM. Whenever I looked through his old course files, my eyes began to swivel. 😂

Thank you so much for this video. I'm on a similar boat as the person you're responding to. I did horrible in algebra when I was in high-school, and now being 31 I've decided to take on a engineering major. Just in a different place in my life. I will look into these books!

Thank you for making this video!! As a mechanical engineering student, we were expected to be able to do a little bit of everything from a technical standpoint at a high level (math, physics, programming, technical writing, design, etc). And then the teachers are so tough on us because the consequences of bad engineering is death.

I am a senior at ASU in Mech Systems Engineering and what you said about algebra was on point. I have never bought a textbook for any class (besides a Chem 1 required lab book) becuase I don’t learn fast enough to keep up reading (I have a 30hr/wk engineering job to contend with). But the advice regarding having simple math to practice nearby is incredibly true. When I was taking my Thermo 1 Weed out class I rember homework that took ~30-50 hours a week to work through, and after the library closed at midnight our whole study group went to Canes and studied until 1:30 and I remember getting stuck on impossible turbine calculations where it seemed like we just didn’t have enough information to finish it and multiple times we would step back to some simple algebraic manipulations and it triggered just the right mental connection to make a breakthrough on the the problem.

Great video and perfect timing for me. Coming from being a self-taught software engineer for the past 3.5 years, the highest math I’d completed is College Algebra. Recently I decided to go back to school in pursuit of electrical (possibly computer) engineering. Already picked up your recommendation for algebra and started working through it today for a refresher. These other recommendations will undoubtedly help me as I prepare to knock out the prerequisite courses needed

1st year chemical engineering - strong work ethics and ability to set your priorities right is a key to success. All other practices come as an addition and definitely can be helpful. However, without any appropriate discipline they will not bring any value to the table. Wish everyone to succeed in their courses ❤

I’m in first year of my EEE degree,and I have been struggling, now that I watched this video and definitely feels more motivated to learn and improve my skills to become a better learner and an engineer. Thanks a lot!

Computer engineer here. One thing I saw a lot of classmates doing was they fell into the trap of trying to learn everything. Engineering is very fast paced and the workload is high so your going to have to discipline yourself to learn what the professors emphasize. This is what you will be tested on and in the end is how you pass the class. So while you might be interested in a niche aspect of the subject you need to study smart. More often than not that means only focusing on old hw and quizzes before exams.

Students who have solid understanding of physics concepts will enjoy engineering. Most important thing for success in engineering is proper study habits and willingness to work hard. Without proper study habits the most brilliant guys cannot do anything great. One has to do lot of lot of calculations and should be patient. Engineering involves too much calculations. Resnik and halliday is the best book for engineering. Ones someone is comfortable with books like resnik and has solid understanding of physics concepts they will enjoy engineering. I suggest some more books for mechanical engineers. Like strength of materials- popov, books on finite element analysis by zienkiewicz thermodynamics by nag.

AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE: I was well prepared to dismiss vid this straight out of hand as yet another crap explanation of engineering, but I am quite happy to say he's hit the spot. What so many people miss is that engineering is fundamentally the art of *APPLIED MATH* as opposed to pure math or theoretical math. Fundamentally engineers take math and *APPLY* it to real world problems, but to get to that point we have to learn a staggering amount of math to have the skills needed. Aerospace is particularly brutal in this respect. I had to do 2 extra pure math classes than other engineers. One was in vectors & matrices which was fairly straight forward and I'd expect most engineers to pass it. The other was in advanced calculus which we needed for things like aerodynamics. It was brutally hard and we had a professor who was a real life Sheldon Cooper except he was even more arrogant. By far the single hardest class I took was Spacecraft Dynamics. We had to do 2 high level aerospace classes to graduate. All of us took Finite Element Methods because that's reasonably straight forward applied matrix methods. After FEM most people took orbital mechanics because that was a favorite of the satellite industry. OM isn't easy and involves a lot of differential calculus in 3-d and in spherical coordinate systems. 4 or 5 of us (wanting to be different) took Spacecraft Dynamics and regretted it about 5 minutes into the first lecture. There were about 8 or 9 post grads doing the higher level variant of the class which meant they had to do a term paper and by term paper I mean a journal type technical paper. The difference between orbital mechanics and space craft dynamics is that OM is about calculating orbits, transfers and trajectories while spacecraft dynamics is how you get a spacecraft to point where you want as is flies along its orbit/trajectory. The problem with spacecraft dynamics is that it involves free body mechanics where every action has its opposite response. Satellites are NOT attached to something large and solid like a planet. So if you do something like turn the antenna on a satellite then the rest of the satellite wants to go the in the opposite direction. Since a lot of satellite stability involves gyroscopes or reaction wheels then that math gets convoluted very quickly because of precession. What makes it truly ugly is that a satellite typically has 6 degrees of freedom - X, Y, Z and roll, pitch and yaw, which as the X, Y, X suggests is done in cartesian coordinates.*BUT* if the roll pitch and yaw is done with gyroscopes or reaction wheels then that part of the system is in cylindrical coordinates and need translating into cartesian. The problem is that satellites move in spherical coordinate systems. So you have a convoluted set of differential equations 1/2 in cartesian and 1/2 in cylindrical that need translating into a spherical coordinate system AND THEN you have to solve that system for what you actually want to do. And for those who are wondering this is what makes keeping the ISS in the right orientation so damn hard and what made the US Star Wars program so close to impossible they gave up. And so you all know I did that class in1987 and ALL of the postgrads were on DARPA funded scholarships doing Star Wars stuff.

Your video really speaks to me. I started college as an aerospace major in the late 80s. At the time, the ethos of the school was cold, empty, and humorless. No concern for student quality of life, depth of understanding, or any creativity whatsoever. It was all about the grind and weeding people out, not motivating them to stick with it. My math was also shaky, because I’d had a bad relationship with my high school math teacher, and my first college calculus professor and the TA were visiting foreign nationals who basically spoke no English. I was not ready. I struggled. I needed a tutor (none were readily available). Student advising was literally just leaving your requested class schedule in an envelope stuck on an anonymous professor’s closed door and picking up the rubber-stamped copy a week later. I hated it. I switched to humanities and loved it. Now, in midlife, I’ve gone back to visit the place, and it’s completely changed. They have new engineering buildings with a thriving student life. They have student mentors. Signs everywhere encouraging creativity. New majors and degree plans that emphasize design and emerging topics. If it had been like this when I was a student, I’d have stayed and loved it. The old school, sink-or-swim, autistic grinder mentality ran me off, and many others. Teaching yourself is an excellent mindset, but students also need an encouraging and supportive environment. If I’d encountered even one professor with your encouraging, helpful approach, it would have been like finding water in the desert.

I am doing (civil) engineering (not on intention but because of being forced by family) but I've wanted to be a mathematician instead. It's so stresseful in this environment I don't like it at all PS: thanku to everyone who tried to make me motivated about engineering but i apologise nothing can convince me about it

9:26 really resonates. I was suspicious at first that I would need to teach myself but hearing it makes it go down easier. I’m glad I was able to watch this and digest it early on in my engineering student days rather than be near graduation and hear it.

In Mexico usually the technical carreer paths are the ones who pay the less in engineering. The administrative aspect of the major is the one that actually pays well, but the general idea of what being an engineering is (design, calculation, etc) is super heavy to learn in college and ultimately you only use 1% of all that beautiful maths and physics behind the work. Engineering is an amazing way to learn interesting stuff and to get a pretty good sense of how counter-intuitive knowledge works.

Engineering is hard because they dive into quite a number of almost distinct courses with moderate to extreme depth. I was an EEE student (Now Quantum AI researcher). And we had to take all kind of courses from Power and electric machines which are very heavy on description and manuals and theories on how machines work, power is distributed and so on evolving huge amount of memorization to electronic courses which were endless amount of diagrams and circuit solving with a quite moderate in breath but deep in application of solid state physics to signal processing which were essentially just Laplace and Fourier transform classes (also z transform, wavelet analysis, complex analysis, coding theory, functional analysis a friend of mine had to take differential geometry for his image processing class) and computer programming in python or Matlab and at the end it became just machine learning and deep learning for my undergrad thesis. The funny part is we had to work on things which had very little in common. From learning how to wind the coils to make Induction motor, to making electronic projects involving arduino and machine learning to making emotion detecting machine learning bases projects. This diversity makes engineering hard and at times a bit enjoyable. The same is true for other Engineering majors I know.

I love that in the stack of textbooks you got behind you, there's an Ultimate Bodybuilding book there as well. From one math loving lifter to another, respect!

I'm according total with you, engineering major is much more intense than other courses, so sometimes i think that we are going to much time involved in theorical activities e don't go to the practice, to make, commit errors and learn with them. It's a little frustrant because the undergraduate courses apparently demonstrate that you dont learn necessary competencies to solve the problems of the real world or become the type of professional that the market is looking.

I'm studying Aeroespace engineering and this is true, I am struggling to get my head around the new topics. I'm now almost getting into my 3 year and is been tough. Teaching yourself is the best you can do.

When I was in school for my EE degree, math through calculus 3 and physics through calculus based physics 3 was required. I also had a physics lab for one semester. A Kreyszig engineering math book was used extensively. It is not student friendly, but if you did the homework assignments you would pass the exams. I would also learn Matlab. It was my work with Matlab that eventually caused me to go on to get an MSCS degree. P.S: You have to really want to do this stuff to be successful at it. P.S2: I still have all my textbooks.

It’s been one thing to do the math and science but another to use all of that knowledge then figure out how to apply it to real-life situations. That’s been the most difficult part.

I think that it'd be kind of cool if you did some videos on math books that aren't textbooks but for general interests. For example, fermat's enigma, a mathematicians' apology, proofs without words, those sort of books.

I'm a junior in an Electronics Engineering Technology degree. Back in High school I failed math so often that I actually never took an Algebra class until college. I also didn't go to college until I was like 26 and hadn't done math since high school. I'd say a lot of those math limits are easy to overcome. Do all the homework on time, go see tutors if you need it, use all the online recourses you can, and study as much as you can and you'll make it. I thought I was bad at math, but like any skill in life, once you exercise it you'll get better at it.

A first year computer engineering student here, and I just happened to pass by in this video while taking a break from studying. Tbh, I failed both my cal and chem in midterms first sem, and the finals are coming, I'm trying to pull this off. The reason why I'm struggling though is due to my weak foundation on math. I had to go back to the algebra cause I can't keep up with calculus. My parents really never forced me to study Math back then so now I kinda regretted it. But past is past, I'll keep moving forward. Thank you for this video! And the comments here in comsec were all inspiring and fun to read❤

8:50 This mentality is the key to success in any field, you will realize the only limitation is what you set for yourself.

Mindset is everything. The most important I learned during my study in marine and electrical engineering was "how to learn". No matter what you need to study you need to learn how to learn ! -if you know how to learn everything is possible 👍

Engineer here. If you want to succeed and gain the respect of your peers and move up the ladder DO NOT VE AFRAID TO GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY. I will hire an engineer who can wrench over a theory number cruncher any day.

As 3rd year ME somethings that I learned later, off the topic of books and foundation, is making friends with classmates for you will be in the same classes with many of them as your major gets more focused. As much as we would like to do everything ourselves (maybe just me), get some phone numbers and bounce questions off classmates and go to office hours! Be there enough to have your professors know your name, it will help you showing effort and opportunity’s can open from it. Get more involved with people in your lifestyle with the same work ethic or better. This really helped me with feeling like I didn’t belong in engineering. I hope this helps someone who reads this and needs it, and just don’t give up. (P.S. I am an engineering major not an English major, I can’t spell or write so sorry in advance if there is non proper punctuations or spelling)

Mannn…I’m currently an electrical engineering major and good Lord…it really sucks having the right work ethic, correct time management and then struggling to keep a high GPA and meeting employer demands for requisite and prerequisite skills while trying to balance all else. My number one advice to all prospective engineering majors all across the board: DO NOT BALANCE. School is always first and friends and family (yes, it’s controversial) come second. Work yourself to death. You only have a finite amount of time in university, just my opinion and I’m open to being wrong…good video Mr. Math Sorcerer.

I think it all comes down to a students interests and passions. If you enjoy engineering as a youngster, you probably will do well as an engineer. The books and classes will help you be a better engineering, teaching you ways of viewing and solving problems, and give you new skills and tools you can apply to the problems that interest you. If you try to get into engineering because you want a high-paying in-demand job, it's going to be harder. Regarding books, Halliday and Resnick is a very approachable physics book (still have mine). My advice is take a year of physics and calculus in high school, then take it again when you get to college. It's an essential foundation for engineering.

I started out as an Engineer (EE) and finished as a Math Major (which was mostly self-taught from the textbooks). I felt like Math was so much easier, Engineering would constantly throw entire high level disciplines at you that you just had to take in stride with little background or history, and the professors wouldn’t even know how a lot of the things came to be. It drove me crazy. Math was a logically clean buildup to me (at least after university calculus level, which is when I switched).

I'm taking statics this term. You sure are right about that mindset. My instructor has a full time job and I'm definitely having to learn on my own

I graduated with a BS in Computer Science and Engineering from Northern Arizona University in 1992. I can tell you that for the first year I almost didn't do anything 'in my major' - I had 1 programming course. Physics 1 2 and 3, chemistry 1 and 2 w lab, enough math classes for a math minor, statics and dynamics, electronics 1 and 2, lots of comp sci, all on top of liberal arts classes like English classes, tech writing, Shakespeare, western civ 1 and 2, Sociology, Psychology, etc. Oh, and working a part time job at the same time. It's a lot of work, very heavy on sciences and maths as well as applying it.

Hi, It's great to be back here after, idk, a year I guess. I'm doing research in my PhD on medical image analysis using deep learning for 4 years already. But I still always found new math while reading literature. Math really is the key to develop a new thing in science and engineering. I never know enough math for my work. And I think the best way to learn math is to learn from teachers that you can ask difficult questions. You can't know by yourself when you're doing math wrong.

My engineering advisor told me "Advocate for yourself, because no one else will" and that is something that I've found crucial and is similar to your point to teach yourself. Great video.

Have been a structural engineer 40 years, could not agree more about physics, it was my favorite class, more so than the later engineering classes, as being the "foundation" for learning everything else about the world in which we build structures.

You make some great educational videos and I just want to add that the next best engineering video you can watch are the OSHA work hazard injuries and fatalities so viewers understand the risks of cheating or not verifying work you think is good enough. It depends on your chosen field of course so maybe viewers won't need to see such things. I've been altered by some serious mistakes made by engineers that put lives at risk. Surviving an electrical shock on a back-fed neutral was the start of all my health problems. A city engineer decided we did not need the panel unlocked because they already verified according to print it was off. Well the prints were wrong, someone altered a circuit somewhere without verifying the work done for the city and several people nearly got killed. It was at a public pool DCR city job. The senior wireman I was with said they should never forget what happened that day and all the lives put at risk. If that starts to stress you out more than the studies than maybe choose a field that doesn't require protection of life and property.

I'm in my 2nd year of Electrical Engineering and i found this video very helpful. The ending statements were just very good and kind. It helps me to motivate and really strive harder. Ill share this to my fellow Engineering friends. Thank you so much Sir!

Have you considered reviewing Stroud's (not Kreyszig's or Bird's) _Engineering Mathematics_ and _Advanced Engineering Mathematics_ sometime? It's a British series which seems to have quite a big and faithful following on that (this) side of the Atlantic.

This is great man. Alot of people, including me, do not know what we're getting into. I have vague idea with both my parents being engineers and I feel many of my classmates expect it to be a walk in the park. It won't. I pray it goes well.

I love how he tests them out with a sniff, definitely a vital part of the process.

You’re mindset portion, I feel is valuable for any major in school. I am in kinesiology and courses like anatomy and physiology are very intensive. Thanks for the great video

Yes!!! Speaking as an undergrad chemical engineer the issue was this: engineering departments assume, because that is what engineers do a great deal of, that you are already a pro at science and math fundamentals: i.e. 200 level physics, chemistry, and math (like ODEs and Linear Alg). When you encounter the 400 level engineering courses you're expected to not be phased by all of the applied methods. To add, they'll crank up the leg work by several factors because the objective is to design something that actually works: i.e. meaning that you will have to 1) grind through the relatively monotonous calculations (something like say 100-200x decimal-intensive ODEs/week, remember sigfigs!) 2) use whatever engineering software needed for all of the messy equations/modelling (e.g. hyperspecific software for that phenomenon), which has its own learning curve, 3) write many reports, communicate clearly and make presentations because of the business/corporate aspects of the engineering culture. The difficulty is not in the advance level of the applied-math methods: there actually quite average compared to any senior level science/math courses (no sets or groups, just plain old numbers). Rather the challenge is in the time-management constraints. To say the least although working hard is good, it doesnt help when the quality of the work begins to suffer. Meaning imposter syndrome hits hardest with engineers IMO. There are some engineering majors that are a bit more chill like say civil or mechanical (it varies alot) but for the hyper specific undergrad majors like aerospace, nuclear, chemical, and maybe electrical it can really kick your ass. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldve stuck to part-time studies, mixed with more coops and real-life engineering work (which is sooo much more steady, even boring) so I could hyper-focus on one class at a time and untangle all of those wonky assumptions (I believe Finnish education has tapped into this but US predominantly uses 20th education fundamentals). Financial aid usually demands full-time i.e. 3-4 engineering/science courses at a time so its tricky to do but not impossible, you just need a good relationship with an employer while in school; this is what graduate lvl engineers do actually. There's a fundamental difference between engineering theoretical/design work and day-to-day engineering corporate work. The former is much harder but the latter is more common. One last critical aspect to point out about most undergrad STEM programs/majors in 2023: few besides the obvious ones prepare you for software competency. One of the ways to stand out when you have no experience is what skills you actually have besides calculus and good writer of reports when looking for employment: wa$nt that the whole point of the engineering grind$?. So yes programming fundamentals are a must. At least learn Python and with it you are now constrained to only your imagination of say outerspace, more or less. We're living in an ever growing software age, meaning tech for science/engineering as well. The short answer is the most successful engineers are in fact also software experts as most businesses lean into that. This may actually be capitalism in a nutshell and why US went to the moon with a big old Saturn V and the Soviets did not. The nature of profits and optimization are basically one in the same: its all about energy optimization (in Joules, SI units!), including human labor. Our economy may be imploding / going into debt because of this fundamental yet-to-be-resolved global deficiency. A true engineer is still a bluecollar/technical job; albeit many work on the management, administration side of things. The latter is not as cool as building reusable rockets but hopefully by sharing this any prospective engineers get a better sense of what they're getting into. Be strategic and understand that the most exciting engineering jobs demand the best of the best. Godspeed. Rant complete.

BS and MS in EE now teaching in a college prep and Pre-Engineering program. My brother gave me his old copy of Stewart's when I was in High School, so I remember that text fondly. My university used the Rogawski Calculus text when I was a student. It sufficed, but it is not my favorite. And nowadays when I teach calculus (HS and college students) I use Larson. But I love your emphasis on Algebra as a foundation. I tell all of my students "The hardest part of Calculus is Algebra. You are NOT as good at algebra as you think you are." Trigonometry is also very important, both directly for its subject matter, and because I think it is a key to opening up the mind in preparation for Calculus. My best semesters of Calculus were when I had students that I previously taught Trig/PreCalc.

Absolutely marvelous video Math Sorcerer!!! Thanks for your recommendations and I couldn't agree more about owning your own success in learning, as I myself have had few wonderful teachers. It sounds like you are one of the few truly great teachers. Much appreciation for your videos, as I can't seem to get enough.

As a Computer science major math was probably the easiest part in terms of major specific courses. What I used was mainly the organic chemistry tutor and other math playlists on KZfaq, then if it didn’t help I just read the required class text book. When taking calculus 1-3, physics, and chem; most of it is just algebra; the integral or derivative just tells you how to approach the problem.

Thank you, professor.

This is helpful especially a man who goes deep down to earth for those that want to get into engineering, but there is something missing. I am a New Zealander, I failed at school and now heading into major with a level 6 diploma in Mechanical Engineering. I succeed because of Nikola Tesla. His life lessons and theory behind engineering made me very powerful. Yes I am great at Maths, but not in physics. However, if you understand how the universe works and who you are as a human being. Nothing can stop you. It may take you one year, may take you three years or six years. You will succeed as long as you don't give up. Good luck engineers and understand that you are powerful and nothing can stop you as an engineer.

Thank you so much for your advice, and also props to all the guys sharing their advices and experiences in the comment. I just passed my fifth semester(I guess I'm a second or third year student idk how that works on other countries) and man, I just couldn't stop thinking about the what if's. What if I actually studied these concepts and try to grasp them? What if I actually gave time to re-learn algebra and, most importantly, geometry and trigonometry? What if I prepared for x class during vacations?. Stress can get to you so freakin' easily by these types of thoughts, in fact 6 months ago I had a kind of skin allergy cuz of stress. But, besides my inability to control some of my emotions, specifically stress, it feels good to be interested in topics from a class, or just a class in general, and feeling that way enables, at least in my experience, the ability to actually dedicate time to that topic, and understanding it (at least like 70% of that content cuz jesus christ there are really abstract things). If anyone reading this is tryin' to get to an engineering major, I would 100% recommend all the things covered in the video, especially getting a rock solid foundation in geometry and trigonometry, but also u should be careful with yourself, taking care both physically and mentally, and try to get in touch with a ton of people, that definitely helps when ur trying to get a job, and for me, the most important thing of all, be an open minded person. A lot of people already talked about the middle-highschool classic phrase "when am I gonna use this". Do not think like that when you're preparing to be a professional that solve problems, cuz it's better to know it and not use it than needing to use it and not knowing.

Make it your life, let it consume you. If youre an older, non traditional student...or just nervous and anxiety prone around math...consider going to a community college and taking all the pre reqs and Engineering department transfer requirements. They are the same in most states. College algebra, precalc alg/trig, calculus1-3, physics 1+2 w/Labs, , differential equations, chemistry+Lab and intro to Python. A full year is actually 3 semesters. Take calculus in the fall or spring with 1 other elective. Calculus classes are 4-5 credits. You must get all A's, a B+ is the floor for a good engineering program to accept your math credits. Now heres the great news, all of the classes listed above are entry level freshman/sophmore...but you must know all of that material going forward because its the bedrock and foundation of engineering classes going forward. Also, these can be tough classes if your not an honors student fresh out of high school AP calculus...so guess what...1/3 the way in, the class size drops, half the way in it drops again. Ive had classes with 3 students. Thats your study group ...not those people who show up the class before an exam. Show up to class prepared. Do the practice examples, do all of the homework. Engage your professor/TA. Finally, Engineering, math and physics courses are not designed like english, sociology, history, humanaties ect.Sub sections build into sections and sections build into concepts. Please dont wait the last minute. You must do the opposite and start studying semesters in advance. Operate like a professional. Use your time wisely. Stay away from lazy, disorganized, unfocused people. Great luck to you all.

Very straightforward and on on the point. Thank you for this simple essential advise

I am a retired Electrical Engineer. When I went to Engineering school I was shocked at how hard it was. They gathered the entire freshman class of Engineering students in a large lecture hall. There were about 240 students in the Freshman class. The Dean told us to look at the student to the right and the left. He then said that only one of three will statistically graduate from the Engineering program. In the first year there were basically two core courses designed to weed out the unworthy, Calculus and Chemistry. Calculus was presented at a merciless pace three one hour lectures per week and two scheduled tests. If you did well on the first test you need not take the second. The second was your chance to improve your score but that means you have to devote 0:19 more study time that would take away from what you needed to learn for next weeks first test. Don’t fall behind. Very little of what was tested in Chemistry bore much resemblance to what was lectured on. Again you had to drag the rest out of the Chemistry text yourself. At that time “mid to late 1970’s”, half of the faculty members had English for a secondary language. Some did not even finish out a semester without having to go home to their Native land. I had a Taiwanese professor who left before giving any exam in the two subjects he was teaching. Our Department Chair took over and observed that we hadn’t had a test yet. So he went through the chapters and articles in the text telling us what the most important things were to study for the test. I remember that in the Transform Theory book he told us that the Chapter on Ideal Filters would NOT be emphasized on the test. This was a mid term and 3 of the 4 problems on the test were from that same Chapter! You can imagine what that did to the grades. When the class complained after the test, the Professor justified this by saying that he believes that Tests are “learning experiences”. We learned that he was a liar. After that if he assigned us to work on the even numbered problems we would do the odd numbered ones before the next test. This man had tenure… I learned few great insights from a Professor I taught an Electronics lab class for as a Graduate student. The first was, the best way to master a subject is to have to teach it. When you teach a class you quickly have to answer questions from students who are brighter than you. You have to stay ahead of them. The Second was about Office hour management. You can post your office hours but if your students catch you in your office they don’t care and no real respect for the time you need for everything else you are doing. Only show up at your office during office hours! if you need to Grade, Plan or Study for your graduate classes go to the Main University Library (not the Engineering One) and get that work done where the students can’t find you. It’s hard, there is not much is any help, you have to learn this stuff pretty much on your own.

Thank you, I’m getting ready to go to college for Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, this was a huge help!

Engineering is also the most fun!

It would be cool to see a video from you like this one or the ones about physics and math but talking about economics. Some of us are also using math in our study, as much as engineers (or even more)

I really needed to hear that last part of the video, I sincerely thank you, because you don't know how awful I felt about this, so yeah I'm going to teach myself, I'm in control, I'm going to teach myself. Thank you so much. I ain't giving up yet.

Licensed professional engineer here in NY, civil engineering, bridge design. Love the field, glad to be where I'm at

I have a feeling that some students struggle in calculus becayse their geometry or algebra foundations aren't so strong. Theres other reasons, but for me, it was because I forgot alot of algebra skills, as well as some geometry/trig basics

Muchísimas gracias por la información brindada y sobre todo por la motivación!! Tambien ví su video en español y me parece admirable su desempeño y voluntad en él, simplemente gracias.

Engineering teaches you to view the world in what is for most, an entirely different way. To see it in terms of math, and physics. I remember asking my differential equations prof, if I had enough points for a D, I was trying to graduate that semester and taking 19-semester hours of senior level math and engineering, while working 30-hours a week. I told him I was going to be a construction engineer, andwould never see a differential equation after I graduated. I had been out of school less than two months, and was trying to analyze issues we were having with asphalt pavements being to wavy, and discovered all of the actions of the paving machines screed, were damped sinusoidal curves. I wrote the math prof a letter of apology. Later when I was building pipelines, it turned out that water hammer waves, are also damped curves.

Junior ECE student 🙃 he’s not lying, it so much work, you gotta learn to learn, start teaching yourself and find the roadblocks or gaps in your knowledge early before it’s to late for exams and HMW.

Thank you sir for information and helping people around the world

I used to have an engineering job designing HVAC systems. I got tired of the stress, the endless meetings, and the zero actual free time because of constant emails/calls even on vacation. Now I service HVAC systems instead, make more money, get paid for the actual time I put in, have almost zero stress and actually do work instead of talking about the work I should be doing in meetings.

Good general advice! You, yourself should be the prime mover of your career in engineering!

Beyond the math it takes a new way of thinking. Error tolerances and abstractions to not have to think about everything.

for anyone scarred of engineering because of math, here is my experience. I mostly got F and rarely D on math when I was in middle and high school. I later went on to do totally different things in life that do not need any kind of education. One days 16 years later, I decided to go back and study Electrical and Computer Engineering. I was skeptical at first because always thought of myself as incapable to understanding math or any kind of logic due to some imaginary limitation in my head. I had to re-take basic math in community college first, starting with very basic algebra/trigonometry and geometry before I even started engineering math classes and which I excelled in, and which were literally like a walk on the beach. I never got less than A on every single math course. There were other classes that I found much harder than math but still managed to graduate with 3.6 GPA. I always wonder the reason why I could not comprehend math when I was young

I recently graduated with a Kinesiology degree. I just happened to stumble across your video and you gravitated me to become interested in engineering. I also wanted to say respect to all engineers, this shih ain’t easy. It takes a passionate dedicated person to even think about getting in this career field. I don’t care what anyone says about you all despite politics and mechanics calling y’all stupid or idiots. Many care about y’all and just know that many stand behind and admire the work y’all do.

I’m a young guy (17) and I really love math and all the branches related to it (especially physics). But I’m also quite bad at them, so what I wanted to ask you today is: what’s the difference between a work book and a text book? I’m asking you this so that I know whether I’m gonna buy a good book or a bad one to learn the things I genuinely want to learn

I have been in the industry for over 22 years now. My first major was Electrical Engineering, it was tough and I liked it to some degree but I really didn't enjoy it deeply and wanted to try something else. I switched to Finance even though I was nearly done with EE, finance was so utterly boring in comparison, I not only found it unchallenging but I was able to complete 6 courses in about 10 hours a week where as 4 electrical engineering classes would take sometimes 60+ hours a week. I then switched to Computer Science and fell in love. Computer Science was the hardest degree I had ever done but it was worth it, it was challenging but very rewarding. I found Computer Science more difficult than EE because when building software projects, a simple error could take hours upon hours to find, but then when you did find it....great joy would overwhelm me, at least until I moved to the next error lol.

i’m looking into maths & physics but this vid really helped, thanks 🙂

He is absolutely correct. I did mechanical engineering. I graduated top (ish) of my class because I begun preparing months before the first semester begun. Even when classes begun, I ensured that I did not go for any lecture until I was certain I could give the lecture myself. You have to teach yourself everything. You should look at the professors and lecturers as guides and are only there to help when you’re stuck. They are not teachers.

I’m a junior in Mech. E. Here’s the best advice I can give: know for a fact that you find what you’re studying interesting because if you don’t and studying is a battle, you won’t do well. Also figure out a way to make working problems more interactive. For me: I work out problems and talk to myself like I’m some sort of insane person. It works for me 🤷‍♂️ Then just realize that there is always a resource somewhere on the internet to make you understand any given topic. They might be a bit obscure so doing an extra 10-15 minutes of internet sleuthing usually works out positively.

love this!

It's not my parents who want me I'm the one who wants to be an engineer. I loved engineering before I got to school. I was a child and always saw engineers working and i wanted to be like them when i grow up. Now I'm in middle school and still want to be an engineer. I'm trying to study math out of school just for engineering because I love it for the math and physics not for anything. Even though everyone says that I shouldn't be an engineer because I live in iraq qnd here tou can barley find a career unless you study medicine or any medical majors. But I don't care I will study engineering when I get to college. You motivate me a lot❤

Thank you very much, i need this sort of motivation, I'm at my 3 year now in engineering, never failed a subject yet, but I'm close to failing one right now, and i find engineering mechanics to be very difficult specially when there are a lot of forces involved. I often think a lot also, which is a distraction in the proper way of solving, I want to be organize.

Mechanical Engineering major here, about a minute in the video and I got a boost of excitement in finally hearing engineering is no joke. Still love it 😊 It’s not easy, but how bad do you want to be in this field? 🤝🏽

One thing that's crucial for engineering students: passion and interest. You need to do more than hunt credits, you have to enjoy this field, or at least aspects of it. Whatever you're into, dive deep in and apply it to your classes and degree. My interest on machining made some classes a breeze. It helped me relate to other high level classes, enabling me to connect concepts i learned to real world situations. It led to internahips, and industry connections. Without that interest, school wouldve ate me alive xD

A like for the honesty you showed clarifying your own profit, and a ❤ for the suggestions you made without thinking about your profit 🤠

I work in the medical field and seeing patients die in front of me made me think we as humans came so far and have all these technologies to save lives. Still we see people suffer. I was tired of it and realized engineering is a way to make humanity better and advance our technologies. I’ve decided to get my second bachelors degree in engineering and this is the first step to do so and I am glad KZfaq recommended me this video. Thank you so much for this.

Aerospace engineer - from memory of University: the tempo, the variety and (sometimes) disjointed course planning - basically lands a heck of a lot on the students shoulders. Talk to professional engineers in areas you're interested in and swallow the fact you'll not use 6o% of the course content but what you do use, you'll need to be proficient in - not just to pass the exam - good luck and if you graduated without a caffeine or alcohol issue, you're the 1% -

I love how you smell the books when you pick it up. Always a great smell.

Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics and a good P.E. Reference Manual.

I initially did a double degree, first in science (mathematics, physics), then in electrical engineering. I later went on to do an arts degree part time (history, just out of interest), then a masters in quantitative finance. I never got around to starting a PhD but that's another story. Let me say that I've never worked as hard as I did when I was doing electrical engineering, I was wrecked by the end of that degree.