Looking over the fence
My husband, Mr.ME and I often compare notes on what it’s like being in industry versus graduate school as part of our “how was your day” discussions.He graduated the year before I did, so it’s interesting to see what it would be like if we’d taken the other route after graduation. Of course, not all graduate schools are the same, nor are all jobs the same, but we decided to offer some tag team insight into what our experiences have been like. Describe your job Miss MSE: I’m a graduate student in materials science at a major research university. My research is to study the structure of amorphous solids by molecular dynamics simulations. This is a major departure from what I did as an undergraduate, which was classical metallurgy. Mr. ME: I’m a mechanical engineer responsible for the design of a key subsystem for a consumer product produced by a major OEM. …
I’d like to thank all the big people
This week’s theme on Engineer Blogs relates to networking and finding jobs. I have both worked in the Real World™ as well as being a grad student and an engineer in an academic research group. My experience getting jobs before I returned to school in my mid-twenties was almost bi-polar. People didn’t go so much on recommendations, and most of the jobs I applied for were in the paper. (Yes, back before the internet became the world’s largest classified ad.) I was living in southern California at the time, so that meant, of course, that I had a hard time getting jobs because I was usually competing against several hundred applicants. I had an easy time getting jobs that I didn’t want and that didn’t pay well, but it was very difficult to find jobs I actually enjoyed. The low spot was spending a year working as a secretary at…