Graduation... and plans for the future

Serendipity

So this Wednesday, May 25th, I'll be graduating from my University with a BSEE in Electrical Engineering. My senior thesis was related to audio (yay!) and I spent a good amount of time here learning about signal processing. I also enjoyed the numerous courses on electromagnetics and power systems. But the most fun was being a TA for Intro to Electrical Engineering last semester - I learned a lot teaching and it was TONS of fun!!

Looks like grad school will be in my future... but right now I am focused on starting a recording studio business. Have some friends over in NYU in the arts. Will post more about this later.

Gotta sleep... too tired from finals!

toucanet

Congratulations on your Double "E" endeavor. I would highly recommend trying to get on with one of the large environmental related consulting firms with the expectations of them paying for your graduate school. There's quite a demand right now for "EEs" currently.

Look into firms such as CH2MHill, Black & Veatch, MWH, AECom, Jacobs, Parsons, etc. All of these firms are currently working on projects and programs that could use the talent of an "EE" mindset. Most of them still provide some form of education reimbursement.

They are always looking for new recruits. That's how I got started. Back then, they were paying 100% of advanced education costs.

Congratulations again!

Good luck!

BlueFox

Good job. My roommate in college was an EE, and I could not believe all the calculus he had to take. Made me glad I chose Computer Science. Anyway, when you get a chance, take your knowledge and discover why different cables make an audible difference in systems. Thanks, and good luck with your career.

joeparaski

Congratulations! Recording studio huh? How will YOU deal with the "loudness" war?

Joe

fatchowmein

Congrats and good luck.

Serendipity

joeparaski wrote: »

Congratulations! Recording studio huh? How will YOU deal with the "loudness" war?

Joe

Simple, record two versions of the song and label the first as "Radio Edit" while the second one will have all the dynamics. Or, design a signal processor that allows the user to have a choice between dynamic or compressed. Of course this will be highly dependent on the source material, but I don't see why it can't be implemented.

cnh

Congratulations! Oh to be 20 something again and have the whole world open up before me! Must be an 'exciting' time for you!

Best of luck in your endeavors. I spent my Grad School Years in NYC so I can identify, a little, with where you must be at this point in your life.

cnh

exalted512

Congrats. I started as an EE, came out with a Business degree...couldn't balance working 40 hour weeks to continue school and the time it takes to devote to getting that degree. Wish I could do it again. Met my wife in physics though, so it wasnt a complete waste
-Cody

Serendipity

cnh wrote: »

Congratulations! Oh to be 20 something again and have the whole world open up before me! Must be an 'exciting' time for you!

Best of luck in your endeavors. I spent my Grad School Years in NYC so I can identify, a little, with where you must be at this point in your life.

cnh

Where in NYC? I used to work in Midtown Manhattan (3rd Avenue) and enjoyed it greatly but the commute into the city (especially during rush hour) was no fun...

cnh

Manhattan, Upper West side between Broadway and Amsterdam. I had a ton of part time jobs when I was a student. One involved working as a Beta Tester for Mac programs for a firm that had office space on Madison Ave. in the 30s. Also did adjunct work out at Hofstra U. in Long Island and City College of Staten Island, CW Post, etc. I even taught ESL in Chinatown for a year for the NYC Board of Ed, I also spent a couple of years commuting to their Headquarters in Brooklyn where I was a Cultural Consultant on Bilingual Ed in the City of NY. And worked as an assistant to the curator of Asian Collections at the American Museum of Natural History for a few years (part time). I've been around the NY scene but that was 20 years ago now!

Have you been to Korea town in the mid 30s, a bit west of your former job. Good food at a low price. Is it still even there??

cnh

Serendipity

cnh wrote: »

Have you been to Korea town in the mid 30s, a bit west of your former job. Good food at a low price. Is it still even there??

Nope, I haven't. But the food in Chinatown is amazing and so are the restaurants in Little Italy. My favorite place to eat is at a Thai restaurant in the Village called Prem-on; the food there is awesome. Peter Luger's steakhouse is good also. There was also a great Japanese sushi buffet that I used to go to, but can't remember the name right now. Minado(sp) I believe that's what it was called?

Have you been to some of the Greek restaurants in Astoria, Queens?

Serendipity

toucanet wrote: »

Congratulations on your Double "E" endeavor. I would highly recommend trying to get on with one of the large environmental related consulting firms with the expectations of them paying for your graduate school. There's quite a demand right now for "EEs" currently.

Thanks for letting me know. I'll definitely look into some of these firms as it would be great to have assistance with paying for grad school while working at the same time. My plan was to first get my recording studio business started and then go to grad school part time, but if I can do both and work at the same time it would be even better. Again, thanks for the info!

BlueFox wrote: »

Good job. My roommate in college was an EE, and I could not believe all the calculus he had to take. Made me glad I chose Computer Science.

Well, the calculus wasn't the hard part... it was knowing what to do with the equations you had and manipulating them to find the solution. I agree there's a lot of math in EE (most of the courses I took were heavily calculus-based), but at least it was quite fun. Some of the applications were quite interesting.

I'm sure you had to do a lot of math too in Computer Science, such as linear algebra?

exalted512 wrote: »

Congrats. I started as an EE, came out with a Business degree...couldn't balance working 40 hour weeks to continue school and the time it takes to devote to getting that degree. Wish I could do it again. Met my wife in physics though, so it wasnt a complete waste
-Cody

Congrats on your Business degree. Great degree to have these days. I'm sure it was no cake walk either. My father studied real estate management in grad school and the business classes he took were a lot of work! He suggested that I go for an MBA sometime in the future.

cnh wrote: »

Manhattan, Upper West side between Broadway and Amsterdam. I had a ton of part time jobs when I was a student. One involved working as a Beta Tester for Mac programs for a firm that had office space on Madison Ave. in the 30s.

That's funny, the first thing I plan to do is to purchase a Mac Pro and start recording from there. It's amazing what you can do today with computers - Pro Tools and Final Cut Pro have changed the way the recording and film industry work. Remember the days in which you actually had to splice film? Even sound mixers today are increasingly digital with only analog looking controls.

steveinaz

Congratulations, you should be proud of yourself.

cnh

Serendipity wrote: »

Nope, I haven't. But the food in Chinatown is amazing and so are the restaurants in Little Italy. My favorite place to eat is at a Thai restaurant in the Village called Prem-on; the food there is awesome. Peter Luger's steakhouse is good also. There was also a great Japanese sushi buffet that I used to go to, but can't remember the name right now. Minado(sp) I believe that's what it was called?

Have you been to some of the Greek restaurants in Astoria, Queens?

It's been a long time since I've been to Astoria. You know when I was a kid, all the best Greek Restaurants were on the West side of Manhattan on 9th avenue up from Port Authority! (But their leases all went North during the Yuppification of NYC and they all relocated to Astoria). I did spend one year in Astoria before finding a place to live in Manhattan. And I don't remember the names of restaurants at this point, but I do remember that some of the best Greek Restaurants were on Ditmars boulevard--so I'd stroll down that street and ask some of the locals or check reviews.

Here's one I do remember that seems to still be around--back in the day it was best known for its meat dishes?

http://www.queenstribune.com/archives/diningguide/reviews/tavernaroumeli.htm

cnh

Gadabout

My father studied real estate management in grad school and the business classes he took were a lot of work! He suggested that I go for an MBA sometime in the future.

It's not a bad idea. I think that if you ask some EE's, that have been for working for some of the larger companies awhile. that after 5-10 years you will spend more time managing than doing actual engineering (YMMV). Also, let some company pay for your masters while your working for them. ~ my .02

Congratulations!!!

Scott

Serendipity

Gadabout wrote: »

It's not a bad idea. I think that if you ask some EE's, that have been for working for some of the larger companies awhile. that after 5-10 years you will spend more time managing than doing actual engineering (YMMV). Also, let some company pay for your masters while your working for them. ~ my .02

Congratulations!!!

Scott

Thanks, I have heard from a few that a good number of EE's go into project management vs. doing actual engineering. And they love what they are doing (management, that is). Others went into patent law (lots of money there, although I'm not in it for the money). As a result, grad school in engineering + an MBA is probably what I"ll do.

devani

Congrats on getting an EE degree....when I got my EE degree 11 years ago, I thought I was finished with school....but I am itching to go back for PE or Master's...Siemens provides Cont'd Education so that's plus....

I like engineering better than management at the moment because I have so much to learn...get your feet wet first and see how you like it....

I usually go to NJ Minado for all you can eay sushi buffet...

Jstas

devani wrote: »

I usually go to NJ Minado for all you can eay sushi buffet...

Where's that at?

Serendipity

devani wrote: »

Congrats on getting an EE degree....when I got my EE degree 11 years ago, I thought I was finished with school....but I am itching to go back for PE or Master's...Siemens provides Cont'd Education so that's plus....

I like engineering better than management at the moment because I have so much to learn...get your feet wet first and see how you like it....

I usually go to NJ Minado for all you can eay sushi buffet...

It would be great to have work pay for continuing education in the future. I always remind myself that engineering is just a professional designation, not a job description. There are EE's going to law school to learn patent law, or even in the arts to work at places such as Disney. A good number of them go to business school also.

That is why I want to start my recording studio business - to get back in touch with my 3 main passions: Music, film, and electronics.

Thanks again!

exalted512

Serendipity wrote: »

Congrats on your Business degree. Great degree to have these days. I'm sure it was no cake walk either. My father studied real estate management in grad school and the business classes he took were a lot of work! He suggested that I go for an MBA sometime in the future.

The math was a cake walk after having taken calculus. In fact, on a test our teacher had a W-shaped graph where the ends went to infinity. She had taught us in class on how to find the maximums, but not of graphs that went to infinity. Either way, the domain was not restricted in her question, so I worked out the problem not even thinking that she hadn't taught us that yet, but I already knew it from when I was taking engineering calculus (I was taking a business cal/stat class at the time).

I get my test back and notice its wrong. I raise my hand and ask why it was wrong. She gets mad at me and tells me directly that "I'm not going to let you use a calculator anymore if you're going to cheat"

I don't like being called a cheater so I'm not too happy at that point. I go up to the board without asking, grabbed a marker, and did the problem on the board showing how to do it and find the TRUE maximum. I then wrote her original question on the board with a restricted domain and put the answer under it that she wanted us to get and told her that's how the question should've been worded if she wanted us to come up with that answer.

She ended up giving me credit for the question, which I'm surprised since that was kind of a dumb thing to do, but I was pissed. Either way, she never apologized for calling me a cheater and I never apologized for being an idiot and proving her wrong in front of the entire class.

Anyway, business is a different animal...a whole other mindset from engineering and I've noticed there are some engineers that can't grasp some of the basic concepts of business because its not mathematically correct or something. I can't remember specifics, but just other day an engineer was pulling 18A through a cigarette lighter with a 20A fuse and wondering why he was melting the plug in for the cigarette lighter. I told him you shouldn't pull that much current through that, its not designed for it. "Well Ford wouldn't put a 20A fuse in it if it wasnt designed to handle it". No, thats for spikes like when you plug something in and the capacitors are instantly filled and draws a quick peak current and you don't pop a fuse because of it.

I might go for my MBA someday, but I've heard its pretty tough to do, so I'm kinda leaning away from it. Plus, I just really don't want to be in school anymore at this point.
-Cody

cnh

Don't be lulled into thinking that Degrees are the ticket to a more 'secure' and better paying job. The future of jobs in this country will NOT require a multiple array of 'degrees'; in fact, you'll probably price yourself out of a job doing that! What you should do is get a job, like Devani suggests--one that would pay for your future education while you can still work and then look to get promoted or move from there.

I know 'far too many people' with far too many qualifications who are unemployed because they don't live in Asia? lol

You know what I mean, the guy, Bill Gates, who tells us that we don't have enough people trained in engineering and science in the U.S. Why doesn't Bill give 'me' a call. I know of at least a dozen people who have those degrees and a couple of decades of work experience and need a 'real' job. What a JOKER!

Good Luck!

cnh

devani

Jstas wrote: »

Where's that at?

John,

it's in Little Ferry NJ....off RT-46, not the best sushi but acceptable and lots of them...

Serendipity

devani wrote: »

John,

it's in Little Ferry NJ....off RT-46, not the best sushi but acceptable and lots of them...

It's not the best sushi in the world but the best sushi I've eaten at a buffet.

Jstas

devani wrote: »

John,

it's in Little Ferry NJ....off RT-46, not the best sushi but acceptable and lots of them...

Oh, ok. That's way up there. Might as well be New York. There is a place in Moorestown, next to the mall, called Mikado and they have or at least had a sushi buffet that was pretty good. Thought maybe they were one in the same and you had a typo.

Best sushi buffet I know of is "Yama" on Rt38 in Lumberton. The buffet is a lunch buffet for like $8 or $9 so don't expect super outrageous stuff. Not like sitting down and getting a plate of something specific. But the only buffet where eel is a regular item and they do have the complex rolls like a dragon roll. I've seen some reviews where people say it's expensive or that the quality is like tuna out of a can. I've eaten there many times, not once did I have a problem nordid I experience sub-par food. So if you're in the Lumberton-Mt. Holly area, check it out. Hell, gimmie a call, I'll meet you there!

Serendipity

I'd go just to see Jstas' pickup truck

Really like the new Mustang GT, but Lightnings are awesome!

Too bad you have to look on the used market for them now.