How do y'all Veeky Forumsentists stay disciplined? Currently studying Mech. E...

How do y'all Veeky Forumsentists stay disciplined? Currently studying Mech. E. I made it this far (junior) however I'm just not putting in the effort like I should be. Nothing has been technically difficult however my grades are showing my lack of effort. I need to change but I'm just wasting my days senpai. My peers are putting in work and seeing them succeed is putting me down. I need that competitive drive but it's just not there.

Anyone ever hit this mental state?

Remind yourself daily on why the fuck you are there and why the fuck you are paying 20k per year to be here.

That should keep your head in the game.

I was like this my freshman year after smoking a lot of weed and being an overall degenerate. Seeing my friends in my field who had their shit together and were getting good grades really inspired me. Basically just changed who I hung out with and stopped doing drugs and sat down and did the work. Its still a work in progress, but my GPA is slowly improving.

Also, the biggest difference for me was when I started finding genuine interest in the subject matter. For some classes it came easy but for others I had to larp and pretend I was a prodigious mathematician. Basically just try to find joy in it, youll get a lot more out of studying and learning that way.

I actually don't pay a dime. Get's covered through financial aid. But if i'm honest it would really help if i had to pay.

I'm in the same situation, only thing that keeps me going right now is thinking about future opportunities that could be lost because of shitty GPA

I'm a junior in EE and have a 3.9 GPA. I never really had good grades until I got to college and did well my first semester (it was an exceptionally easy semester, as I hadn't yet declared engineering and was just taking gen eds) and then got "addicted" to succeeding. When was the last time you killed a test? Gotten the highest grade in the class? Got a perfect score? Remember that feeling before you study. It should help - it helps me, at least. I also start my study sessions off by telling myself it's just 1 hour. After that is just another, etc.

Still investing time, and time is even more valuable than money.

I had that really bad my second junior semester and my senior year. I was a 4.0 student through sophomore year and coasted off of it to the end. I think I got burned out and lost vision of why I was there. It turned into just checking boxes until I got my degree. After graduating, working a few years and going back to do some grad school I finally realize and appreciate the opportunity but I certainly didn’t back then.
I think my advice to you would be stick it out and try not to fuck your grades up too bad. You’re probably a bit burned out. Try to remember why you’re there, hopefully it’s for the love of your discipline. I know this is cliche, but these should be your best years, don’t become too complacent and let it slip by you. There’s a whole layer of corporate bullshit that obscures the fun part of engineering that you’ll have to deal with in the “real world” which makes it harder to crack open a book and continue learning.
Also, as a side note, you need to find a way to instill a love for learning on your own. Being able to pick up the latest scientific literature and apply it to an engineering problem is the probably one of the top 3 most important skill you can have as an engineer. Being able to do that takes curiosity that you have to maintain across the life of your career.

Feel this so much

My first quarter at Uni I got a 3.0. Fucking percentage scales fuck you over. The worst part is since I transferred I don't really have a gpa cushion to rely on.

What helped me get through college was four things.

Do your homework. Just do it, even if its due in the morning and you will get like two hours of sleep. Most classes, the homework is how they intend you to learn in engineering. You don't get better at engineering by studying, you get better by doing the problems.

Go to class. Don't skip classes unless you have a reason to. Being lazy and wanting to sleep in or whatever, isn't a good reason. It helps build a future work habit as well.

Get a part time job. I worked at walmart while going to college. It was a huge motivator because if I didn't graduate and finish, I would at least have a job for the rest of my life, one that is hellish and suffering. The look some of the older people who were on year 20 was one of a dead man. It also meant some money and chance to completely shut off your mind and rest mentally.

Hang out with the shitty students and try to do homework with them. They will think you are amazing and will constantly ask you questions, letting you learn the content better. You will feel like an elite student when comparing that B to D+'s and C-'s rather than A's. It was a big ego boost and helped me stay calm.

You also have to ask yourself, "Do I really want this?" If you answer no, stop and find something new. If you hate what your studying now, your going to hate it more once your doing it every day. If you are worried about grades, don't. As long as your getting B's and A's, nobody will care what your GPA was. A couple C's won't hurt you as well. Just don't fall into the "c's get degrees" trap.

Unless you dropped under a 2.5, figuratively nobody will care. Most employers I interviewed with liked a less than perfect GPA, it implied I failed and then later learned from those mistakes. Its all about how you spin it.

And if your worried about your dream employer because you don't have a 4.0, you go work for some other company for a couple years, get experience (the thing that matters more than anything), and then apply to where you want to work. Almost nobody cares about your GPA from the start, and even less people care past your first year of experience.

Have you considered that you simply aren't interested in the material? It shouldn't be a competitive drive. It should be a drive of genuine interest and passion.

I struggled with this through nndergrad as well (and with a number of other problems, too, mind you), and eventually I decided not to go to graduate school for mathematics because I simply don't think I was interested enough. In order to make it in such a field, you have to wake up and WANT to study the material. It's going to be an insufferable climb up hill if you have to force yourself to learn. I ended up getting a manual labor job for a couple years until I figured out what it was that I actually wanted to study.

I'm also in mechanical engineering, user. It's a depressing field... I had a 4.0 GPA at the end of my sophomore year and I'm on track to end this semester with a 3.0 (junior 2nd semester). The classes are actually easier than freshman/sophomore, but I just can't force myself to care anymore. The work is repetitive and boring and I'm just ready to get a job. I'm 22 and haven't dated throughout college because of the stress and amount of work, and I'm lonely and depressed.

rant over

I must warn you user. You will hate your job, yourself, your life and evryone around yourself if you continue down this path. Mechanical engineering is OBVIUOSLY BORINGGGGG (it is baby tier math used on a few nuts and bolts (your job for the next 5 years unless you have absolut passion) Then its more abstract contraptions but still overly boring and unfulfilling.

Its not that you are incompetent you are unwilling. Swap for something else or get into something else after or just end your life if you dont do that since youll hate it if you dont do anything.

I'm in EE right now, and I'm thinking of switching into MechE. Can you guys tell me why you don't like the field?

Its not that its a boring field or bad or anything. But more likely than not you arent so passionate about it that youd revolutionise the field meaning you are basicyl wasting your time there donig something that is not so interesting (since your somewhat inteligent) you strive for creativity and youll be stuck doing simple retarded and repetetive proesses for the rest of your employment while worknig long hours and being to tired o do anythig productive. (imagine working in excell for 4 hours straight. gets boring.)

If you have passion/are not so intelligent /like stability on the other hand youll like it alot due to the previuos reasons.

Intelligent is a rather relative term, but I see what you mean. Your criticism is against engineering as a whole rather than MechE though. You could also go all the way for a PhD and try to get a position in design or research.

>EE junior
>3.98 GPA
>Overfunded by 8k a semester
>Blessed with amazing professors at a rather obscure state school
>Doing independent and honors college sponsored research in stuff I’m interested in
>Applying for the accelerated masters
>Really hoping to get into a nice PhD program afterwards
Am I making it? This all feels right but I still feel incomplete

how the fuck do you manage to get research positions by 2nd year? What is this bull shit?

>3.98 GPA
>Thinking high GPA correlates to actual engineering success

Paul Erdos was addicted to ADHD type medication (was it adderall?), and when challenged to give it up for a month said that mathematics was set back a month because of the challenge.
>feel like I'd be 1000% more productive on ADHD meds
>worried about becoming a complete addict like him

>venn diagram with elided intersections and resulting nonsensical implications of dependency
Ok, I'm triggered

Discipline is for brainlets

Amen brother

I actually don't know how I made it through undergrad equivalent. Thinking back, it was 6 years of madness and depressing carrot/stick scenarios. I think the reason why I didn't snap is that I always had a goal or perspective - just finish it, hold on, and you'll get to the next level.

Same with my PhD. I was close to losing it at several points, but since I've had postdoc offers halfway into my PhD, there was always something to work for.

Maybe it's justified hope that things will get better soon.

>He didn't get financial aid
>He didn't get scholarships or grants
>Paying to go to school

>tfw don't need money all the money they give you but take it and dump it into buttcoin

It might not but I can’t possibly imagine it’ll do me wrong

Junior is third year

Basically, unless you do shit outside of classes for fun (building electrical circuits for shits and giggles is an example), you are going to be a massive burden on any company you work for because you will do everything "by the books". Contrary to the popular opinion on this shitty board, theoretical and mathematical equations are pretty shit tier when it comes to actually designing something because for the math to work, you have to know what you are analyzing. Academia does an good job of teaching you how to use the math to analyze problems that are predefined, but it does jack shit to teach engineers how to actually design and build something. Too many 'smart' people are only good at crunching numbers and follow a cookie cutter procedure for each and every problem. When presented with a challenge outside of their comfort zone, they panic or flake.

I have found this to be true with every single person who had a gpa above 3.6. They are all what I call "academic retards" because they are so fucking full of themselves and yet they can't even solve simple problems outside of their comfort zones.

That being said, you can avoid this by just going and building things in an uncontrolled environment. By that, I mean find something outside of your comfort zone to build that interests you. For me, I like electronics so I build circuits and vacuum tech for shits and giggles. Then try to build this system without any "irl" assistance. Looking shit up online is perfectly fine, but you should try to build something in a unique way to challenge yourself. You will make a ton of mistakes, but these mistakes are what teach you the most.

If you do that, you will thank me once you get out of academia, and so will your boss.

This is good advice if youre going to be a bitter grunt for the rest of your life

For anyone with ambition and the desire to create something beyond whatever junk product a corporation can get a patent on, you have to understand the math and theory behind engineering.

May as well be an electrician then if youre just going to be doing basic engineering work forever.

You cal call them academic retards if you want, i'll continue to call you an actual retard

>you need to understand the math and theory behind engineering
Thats real nice considering that analytic solutions to many engineering problems either do not exist, or are too time consuming and complex to make it worthwhile to complete. Knowing the "theory and math" behind engineering is a good method for analysis of existing systems, but even then so many assumptions have to be made because the mathematical models can't account for everything. The reason why the theory and math is garbage is that it only provides results to what you put in. You CANNOT model a system in it's entirety. It is way too complicated and time intensive and you can never input all the arguments that need to be accounted for. You can, however, fabricate and test the system and come up with empirical models for the system, something that is used continuously. Again, this is because "math and theory" is only good for ideal situations, things that don't exist off paper.

Physically building a system also shows you many of these things that are too complicated to model, and will teach you some of the do's and dont's of the systems you are working on.

>For anyone with ambition and the desire to create something beyond whatever junk product a corporation can get a patent on, you have to understand the math and theory behind engineering.
May as well be an electrician then if youre just going to be doing basic engineering work forever.

Perfect example of someone who either has never touched a physical system or who has done so under extremely controlled environments. Smug and arrogant over academic "achievements" where you contribute nothing other than being a massive prick to everyone around you. Sure, you may publish a paper on something new and interesting but you will never do anything useful with it. You'll just sit at your desk sniffing your own shit all day while someone else takes the crumb of information you found and turns it into real results.

also forgot
>reddit spacing

Oh my bad mate. I mistakenly believed the objective was to be more than a soulder n glue monkey. You are right, carry on

how'd you do it?

The honors program at my uni offers discipline-specific research as a 3 or 0 credit class so I've been doing that, I just asked my DSP professor to sponsor me through the program and we've been working on some meme eye gaze tracking. For independent stuff, I just asked the same professor and the dean to refer me to the director of the DSP labs since I wanted to do some cellular-automata based image segmentation for image processing.