Summer – a small break from engineering

It’s officially been the end of term for a good month, and yet I only just feel like I’ve finished second year. I know why, of course – results came out on the 22nd (this was just my year – it varies for degree courses and what year you are in). In this past month off, I was gearing up to have to resit one of my module exams, but was pleasantly surprised when it turned out that that was actually my best result, when I was expecting it to be the worst!

So, now that I’ve overcome that happy surprise, and finished finding out how everyone else did and what their reactions are, I can focus on the next couple of months ahead. I have an internship this summer, and it started this week.

For anyone applying to do engineering who may read this, I entered the course on a BEng, which had lower entry requirements than an MEng. At the end of second year (as it currently stands), if a student has passed everything and amassed an average of a 2.1 (that’s a minimum of 60%), then they are eligible for a transfer to the MEng degree. If the student hasn’t passed everything, then resits are available – you are allowed to fail up to two modules before the title of BEng or MEng is reduced to BSc or MSc. The difference is that BEng and MEng are accredited degrees, whilst the BSc and MSc are not. Because I have passed this year and my average is above these minimum requirements, I have applied to swap to MEng. This is actually something that I think is sort of odd; if I had applied for MEng when I applied to the university, my entry requirements would have been higher than when applying for a BEng, and yet the first two years for everyone are the same, regardless of which course they applied for. And even if you enter the university on the MEng course, you still can’t actually do an MEng unless you pass the criteria I listed above. So it seems sort of like a cheat mechanism; applying to do a BEng and then swapping to upgrade later on! Obviously, you still have to work hard and put in the effort to be able to be eligible for the upgrade once you’re at university.

It feels very odd not to be doing any engineering work/assignments/revising. During the start of the summer, I realised that I actually felt guilty when I wasn’t doing anything productive. I didn’t like sitting down and picking up a hobby, because while I was doing the hobby (e.g. embroidery), I felt this sense of doom telling me that I was wasting my time and that I should be doing something productive instead. This applied to cooking, journeying, reading, and a bunch of other stuff. It didn’t apply as much to learning new skills, though – I think because I was teaching my brain something new so it didn’t feel like a way to pass time that didn’t have any meaningful impact for the future! However, I also realised that this wasn’t a good side-effect of only-doing-work-and-not-a-whole-bunch-else for the past year.

So, now that I am conscious of this, I am actively working out how to get around this by working out what needs doing right now and how desperately it needs to be done. If it can wait, and now isn’t the best time to do it, then I’ll let myself have free time with no guilty conscience! So, happy summer!