So I recently got a 100 on my Calc 3 exam, and my professor asked me to come to his office to explain my work.

While I was there, he gave me a few basic questions like, finding partial derivatives, and doing a cross product. I knew these topics, but I got really nervous and completely froze. I started sweating like crazy and couldn’t even think straight.

Apparently, according to his syllabus, if a student can’t explain their work, they have to take a “very basic (much simpler than the final)” one-on-one exam near the end of the semester. It’s pass/fail, strictly proctored, and he told me that if I pass, I get to keep my 100

He said it’ll only be around 15 minutes. I genuinely feel terrible about the whole situation. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, barely slept, and now I feel embarrassed to even show up to his class. What makes it worse is that the questions weren’t even hard, which makes me feel so stupid for freezing up.
I’m definitely gonna practice more, but I’m scared the same thing will happen again when I’m sitting in front of him.

Should I be worried, or am I just overthinking everything?

One thing I’ve noticed at my college in engineering is how comfortable some students are with making other people feel stupid for not understanding something or struggling academically.

A little background about me before the rant, I’m an EE student with a 3.7 GPA, so I’m not attacking those who do well in engineering at all, just the negative attitudes that can affect others mental health.

I literally don’t understand the obsession with comparing grades, GPAs, or how quickly someone can grasp a concept. We’re all here to learn and some students act like asking questions, failing an exam, or needing extra help somehow makes you less intelligent or less deserving of being in your major.

There’s a difference between being academically successful and having some sort of superiority complex because of it. Just because something comes naturally to you doesn’t mean everyone else is going to understand it at the same pace. And honestly, you never know what someone else has going on outside of school. People have jobs, families, financial problems, mental exhaustion, and other responsibilities. Some students are genuinely putting in their best effort just to get through the semester.

What bothers me most is that a lot of this judgment comes from the very people who are supposed to be your peers. College is already challenging enough without other students contributing to an environment where people feel embarrassed to ask questions or admit they’re struggling. Being able to pass a difficult class doesnt automatically make you smarter than everyone else and struggling in one doesnt make someone incompetent.

I wish more students understood that academic success doesn’t give you an excuse to look down on others. You can be intelligent, accomplished, and still be humble. Offer to help your fellow peers instead of shaming.

Here are some examples that I hear on campus:

"How did you fail that exam? It was easy."

"You only got a C? I barely studied and got an A."

Constantly reminding people how little they studied before getting a high grade, especially in a class environment talking extremely loud “OH YEAH I’M GOOD BECAUSE I GOT A 90 ON THE TEST HAHA”.

Other students going around campus telling everyone about another student’s low test score.

I've realized this throughout my semesters (still in engineering), you can study 1 week prior for a quiz, solve questions until your eyes pop out, then there's this person who studied the day before the exam and gets a better mark than you, the feeling sucks.

2.8 gpa mechanical engineering

I am a sophomore EE student and I have been a terrible student since starting college. I don’t study and half the time don’t even show up to lectures. I am the problem in this situation I’ve just been super lazy and more interested in my video games than my future. But anyways I am doing poorly in basically all of my classes or even in the ones I’m doing okay in I have missed too many days and will probably fail. So should I just drop most of my courses and sort of take the L for the semester and try to focus up over the break and do better next time? If anyone else has dealt with a situation like this I’d love to know how you handled it.

hey, i submitted a post on this channel last week and it absolutely blew up. we had so many applications go through. a bunch of the job postings shut down in the days following my post because of the large influx of applications that were going in. i've gone ahead and updated the job links in this new link. please make sure to apply as soon as possible to ensure that your application is at the top of the pile. i've pulled the freshest job postings that i could.

engineering internships are scattered across hundreds of company career pages, so i pulled them into free lists:

• engineering internships, all fields (444): https://github.com/mehek-builds/Hiring-Now/blob/main/lists/engineering-internships.md
  • 444 at 206 US companies (Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, GM, Allison Transmission, Micron, NVIDIA, Johnson & Johnson, Granite Construction, HNTB, Sierra Nevada Corporation)
  • about 87 electrical and 73 mechanical; 126 at employers with a visa sponsorship record
• mechanical engineering internships (159): https://github.com/mehek-builds/Mechanical-Engineering-Internships
• electrical engineering internships (143): https://github.com/mehek-builds/Electrical-Engineering-Internships
• aerospace engineering internships (50): https://github.com/mehek-builds/Aerospace-Engineering-Internships
• new grad mechanical, manufacturing and design jobs (167): https://github.com/mehek-builds/Mechanical-Manufacturing-Design-New-Grad-Jobs
• every summer 2027 internship we're tracking, all fields (7,271): https://github.com/mehek-builds/Summer2027-Internships

posting date on every row, rebuilt every monday.

comment which field you're looking for and i'll send you a list for it.

second year aerospace here. freshman year was SO bad but this semester things were looking pretty smooth with my classes and then boom I fail my aeronautics exam and both calc 3 midterms horribly. I thought I did well on my calc midterm 😭😭😭 I always tell my friends to not let scores get to them and keep moving forward but when I see these grades I just wanna die. I study I rly do, but I have two jobs that i cant lose and I’m trying to maintain my presence in my club. I just don’t know, everyone IS doing well around me, theyre not just lying. Fuhhh I need an internship and my gpa is hurting it :(

Ik that after uni it's designing moving bodies but what jobs do interns do when they're at their co-op job.

I'm in grade 12 btw.

Some habits I personally identified helped me mitigate cognitive offloading is just to use it only as a signal for pushback e.g: I first reason and write out my argument then ask it to poke holes in my reasoning or identify assumptions. This is just my attempt to mitigate sycophantism but even this has flaws since the critique it gives me can be biased to be light or easy to resolve.

A habit I've seen other people have is to be as vague as possible about its criticism eg: first construct your solution then ask if there simply exists a better solution and recommend an article or book.

Another effective habit I've heard is using it as a tutor but by only asking it to give you a socratic hint i.e the minimum amount of information to get you unstuck but not more than that.

What habits have you personally found to be effective to make AI a boon rather than a cognitive slot machine?

Hey!

I'm in an applied mechanical engineering undergrad program, and as a part of my grade we have to measure the performances of a device, such as, in my case... a damn screwdriver.

And I thought I was very smart to use torque wrenches to measure it because "hey it's definitily gonna work, i've a range of 2Nm to 50Nm, aint no way it doesn't work"

And it doesn't. The screwdriver's mechanism directly derails no matter what value I set on my torque wrench. And it's damn graded, i've to send videos and so on before the end of my vacation (which is next monday).

So if you guys have any idea of how on earth I can measure the torque before monday I would be very very very glad thank you very much !

ps : I can't find my screwdriver on the internet except on one secondhand resale website, and the guy says it has a torque of 30Nm, which is like absolutely in the range of my torque wrenches....

As a freshman who hasn't really developed any good study habits yet (unmedicated ADHD, classes this semester have been easy enough to just coast), how likely is this schedule fully kicking my ass next semester? Along with a once/week programming class and a creative writing course. Most likely to drop thermo if anything but would like to stay on track.

I'm a junior in mechanical engineering this year. This semester I'm in 16 credit hours and I'm likely to end the semester with about a 2.2gpa. This will make my overall gpa a 2.5 roughly. I keep getting rejected from internships just based off of gpa requirements alone. I've already had two internships in construction, but I don't think that's what I want to do long term. I worry that I have completely fucked up my future and quite frankly I'm not sure what to do. Not only that, I worry that I will have to bring up my ME gpa, because I'm not sure I'II meet the 2.2 requirement. Overall I'm genuinely just feeling helpless about the future career opportunities.
My peers are accepting these fantastic aerospace internships and I feel trapped. I feel like I spend all of my time studying for school just to come up shorter than my peers still. I feel like I'll never be good enough.

Hey guys, i need an advice.I am studying on my 2nd year in ***** university as an international student. Problem is they teach in traditional chinese and i don’t speak chinese. But the exam is in english which means i have to learn everything by myself. For example reading books,using AI,watching videos online. But i can tell it is really hard.You spend half of the day to sit in the class which you don’t understand then go study everything by yourself.Next problem,i have scholarship, i can’t lower my gpa under 70 by failing on course. Then i can’t study here.If i can’t study here i have to go back to my own country which is surrounded by full of abusive toxic people with no own home and no university education then i have to work to pay my living expenses.And i don’t want to give up easily. I know that i might regret if i give up for ChemE. And i decided to study hard, but i literally don’t understand anything because i kinda cheated on exams to not lose my scholarship.Now i am stuck between core knowledge , advanced knowledge in math, chemistry,physics. should i keep trying hard to learn those hard subjects on english by myself? Or give up and study in different major? or wait until how far i can go? i really don’t know, and i cried a lot of days just because i keep repeating words “i can study, i can get high score, i can graduate”. And i watched videos online engineering and get hope from them but the problems still in there. Comparing to my friends they are studying well on top universities and i am who took 2,3 years of gap to come here failing on courses felt hard.And i also have to pay rent, living expenses in here, i can’t just focus on only courses. I have big dreams to travel and do something exciting.Living in here sometimes feels like prison, like putting myself in hard situations. But it’s better than another options. And my parents can’t pay tuition, also they believe that i am being well, i can study. Of course I don’t want to lose their hope. What do you suggest? Which way is better choice? Should i sacrifice all my social life , dreams,happiness and time to study ChemE? Is it really gonna worth this much? I am not sure if i work as a chemical engineer.

Ive just left an electromagnetism lecture and even tho its the “basics” i have no idea what happened in that lecture, and this isn’t the first one. Almost all my lecturers cannot teach and instead make the topic they’re teaching feel even more complicated. I’ll watch yt vids after which are simpler but i still feel so lost and so behind, i cant do the homework without ai, i need to apply for placement years, attend society events and meetings (im in the executive)and i need to tutor a levels which im not as confident with. There’s just so much happening i just wanna lie in my bed all day and forget ab it all.

The lectures dont help
The placements take so much time for rejections
I feel like I lack so much technical skills and knowledge for the placements
I don’t even know if I wanna go down my field (microelectronics)

Ignore the grammar this is just a rant any advice wud be appreciated
For context I’m a 2nd year eee student

I've been a MECE major for the last 3+ years. I was a transferred student from a different university and major, so a lot of my credits didn't transferred. I had to start from really basic courses (i.e. College Algebra) compared to my classmates who'd taken AP classes by then and were already in Calculus 1 or 2 their first semester. Despite this, I managed just fine my first year and got involved in student clubs and even research while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. But after those first two semesters everything went downhill from there.

During my first summer here I was juggling summer classes (Mon-Fri lectures of 2+ hours), part-time research, a rocketry club working behind a very tight deadline, while keeping a very bad diet (less than a meal a day), and family + financial issues. All of this ended up taking a bigger toll on myself than I realized at the time.

From then on I was never able to see that version of myself again in any of my courses and it sort of became a matter of survival instead of the initial pursuit of curiosity that had driven me when I first chose this major.

On several occasions I considered taking a break, but due to my international status I was required to take at least 12 credits per semester to maintain it. I was aware that I was most likely burnt out by then, but I didn't see any other option for myself so I kept signing up to classes every semester while aware that I wasn't in the right mental space to deal with any of them.

During this time I was still doing research and the environment there seem more toxic by the minute, but bills needed to get paid and that was my only source of income. On top of that the financial issues with my family never really got resolved and they just kept stacking as we didn't have a good relationship going on at the time.

Two years in I go through a sudden and messy break up with my fiancé of over a year (we'd been together for almost three years), after I had already chosen not to renovate my lease because we were planning to move in together that summer. That didn't happen, obviously, and I found myself trying to find an apartment with less than a month left in my contract. I somehow managed to find something nearby, but to my good luck I ended up with a roach infested apartment where roaches fell on my back when using the damn toilet.

I broke my contract a month in and managed to find a good place afterwards, but all of this to say that I most definitely burn out and been trying to recover from it ever since, all the while trying to convince myself that this major matters to me the same way it did when I first started.

I'm about to finish my fourth year in this university without counting the year I did abroad, so I've been here for a long time and I haven't been able to figure out if this truly is just circumstantial burn out from all of it and there's actually still some excitement about the major, or if all of it combined led me to realize that this is no longer something I enjoy and want for myself.

I honestly cannot tell if I'm being too sentimental about the whole thing or if perhaps I've been too idealistic about what the world should look like. But 4 years in and my semester schedule still looks like a sophomore's because 2 years ago, the semester after the big breakup, I choose to sign up for statics and failed. I manage to sit down for all three exams, and somewhat kept up with assignments, but out of a sudden during finals week I mentally checked out and there was no way for me to rationalize my way into caring again. I was not satisfied with my performance, or my indifference, so I decided to miss the final hoping that in some future the excitement for engineering would come back to me and I'd be able to retake it with the same level of commitment I experienced during those first two semesters.

Fast forward to this semester, I chose to sign up for it again but I don't think this is working for me anymore. I've failed so many classes despite me having switched to part time the semester after that. And now, the semester that was supposed to be my comeback, I'm sitting here knowing I'm most definitely going to have to switch majors or drop out all together.

Not sure if there's a definitive answer to my situation, but I'm just hoping there's someone out there that could offer some advice, as I don't really have anyone else around that's gone through something similar.

For one question of my emag midterm (25%), I used two different ways to solve the problem and before handing it in I put an X over one of the methods.

Well now im realizing the solution i put the X over was the right answer.

Im trying to hard not to beat myself up for it but GOD is it hard not to. I cant stop thinking about it😭

(I wasnt feeling well before or during the exam and I just passed everything in before the stop time because I felt like I was gonna throw up. I also have an infant at home who is sick as well so I havent been getting any sleep because of it. I feel like this couldnt have happened at the worser time😭)

It sucks I did this too bc i know I did really well on the midterm in all other aspects. Ive spent so much time studying this and I understood it so well I was basically leading all my study groups. I hope he throws me a bone but I doubt it honestly. How do i stop myself from obsessing over this 😥

Hi all,
I just wanted to share this gamified autocad learning website I am in the early stages of developing (vibe coding). It’s a fun little free resource for those who want to learn or practice cad drafting and may not have easy access to the software.

It has the basic cad tools so far, some beginner lessons, 60 different drafting challenges of varying difficulties, a sandbox mode where you can make your own drawings, a CAD daily Wordle type challenge, a flashcard game that works on mobile, and more coming.

Honest feedback appreciated (including telling me it’s slop, but please try it first).

CADCADE.NET

Thank you

Luke

Registration for next semester is coming up, and I’m thinking of taking these classes as a sophomore civil engineer: Statics, Geology for Engineers, Calculus III, Physics II, Differential Equations and Linear Algebra. For some reason at my university, Differential Equations and Linear Algebra are offered as one combined course, so i think that might be my hardest class. Does this sound like a manageable schedule, or do I need to drop one of the math course and maybe take it in the summer ? I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who’s taken a similar course load. I think it shouldn't be that bad because its only 16 credit hr and I'm also a full time student and wont work this upcoming this smstr.

Hello Engineering Students,
I was wondering if anyone had any advice on figuring out what to concentrate/focus on when the time comes? I have so many interests and am having a hard time finding a specific focus that calls to me. How did you all figure out what you wanted to focus on? Did it just come to you throughout school or did you go into the program knowing what your exact plan was?

Interested in:
Construction management
Construction engineering
Civil engineering
Architecture

Trying to apply to this thing which would help get into uni but I've recently realized that the only thing I have going for me is my grades and grades are the bare minimum for stuff like this. Is there anything impressive I can do in 5 months (that's when applications are due) that I can put on to make me seem more impressive? Anything mechanical or physics related mainly.

How does this compare to the first one? In the first it was with a manger and he just asked about one project and based all his technicals on that.

Hi,
We are currently working on an assignment for our studies.
We need to design a measurement setup that can accurately determine the thickness of a skin graft during a skin transplantation procedure, for medical purposes.

We are currently considering using Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), a technique that employs an infrared laser to perform highly precise thickness scans of tissues such as the skin or the retina. We want to explore whether this measurement method can be adapted to calculate the thickness of a skin graft and, subsequently, be integrated into a functional measurement setup.

Our professor has specified several requirements: the setup must be cleanable, capable of precise measurements (down to 0.05 mm), provide repeatable results, and be non-destructive. In other words, the skin graft must be measured during the transplantation procedure while remaining suitable for subsequent use.

If anyone could offer guidance or suggestions on how to approach this project, it would be greatly appreciated, as we are currently feeling a bit stuck.

I'm a sophmore meche student and my internship search hasn't been going to well this semester partly due to me fooling around my freshmen year. I'll keep applying to both mainstream and more local firms however I had a question about what I could do if I don't get an internship. In the event I don't get one, would working at a machine/cnc shop or a manufacturing internship be a viable alternative? If so, how much worse or perhaps better would it look on my resume for future internships and jobs? I've seen alot of people on this sub praising manufacturing internships but not as much on machine shops. Thanks in advance