i am starting to get where i need to be looking at colleges. i want to work in the field of electrical, wiring stuff and all that. i am confused as to what an electrical engineer actually does. i want to work with my hands and work wiring stuff. does an electrical engineer do that or do they check other peoples work and make sure things are right. i am confused. please help me.
Electrical engineers do not typically do hands-on work. Electricians or electronics technical workers do that sort of thing. Electricians are one of the highest paid trades, especially considering pension and retirement health care benefits. An electrician or power lineman in Alaska, where I live, can earn $150k to $200k per year. If you enjoy hands on electrical work, go down to your nearest IBEW union hall and have a talk with them. You can work and do the training at the same time and after four years become a journeyman and make a very good salary without a college degree.
You might be thinking of an electrician. These are the people that install electrical utility wiring in buildings. Their jobs are both technical and physical. On the other hand, an electrical engineer also does some hands on wiring. For example, I've built many experiemental circuits using a breadboard (an object to help design circuits), small wires, transistors, capacitors, ICs, etc. This is very different than what an electrician does. It is hands on, but I sit at a desk to do it, whereas an electrician would work throughout the interior of a building structure. Most electrical engineers these days who build circuits do so using software. It's similar to the way a mechanical engineer might use a computer to design a car. You might call this a sort of hands on process, but it is completely virtual.
No. Engineers are often mistaken for mechanics, technicians, electricians, and machinists. Engineers are problem solvers that use their field of knowledge to design, develop, and implement solutions to various issues within a process, product, or company. In many companies, especially those who have a union staff, engineers are not allowed to use machinery or do hands on work.
No, they DESIGN other people's work, invent electronic devices, maintain large-scale power grids, figure out the math needed for signal processing. It's a figuring-it-out job, not a wiring job. You may want to be an electrician, and you probably need a trade school rather than a college.
There a lot of jobs that are done by electrical engineers. Many are managers and legal consultants so you need to be good at the stuff lawyers do to get a degree. Very few do any kind of design work. If you want to work with actual circuits then you should go to a technical school. If you are good enough and also have the academic skills then you can get a engineering degree. Also note that some colleges see their job as your character judge rather than your teacher and deliberately make succeeding difficult. This is why it is important to pick a good school. Better schools are concerned about your success and not their own.
