I went into college pretty sure I wanted to major in Civil Engineering (shout out to the high school engineering camp at Missouri S&T), but I was still thinking I may want to be a teacher. One of the engineering college advisors recommended I start in Civil because, if I changed my mind, the engineering basic science and math classes would satisfy the requirements of the education college, but the education classes wouldn't satisfy engineering requirements. That made sense to me, so I started in Civil. I never had a desire to switch out of Civil.
Since I came into college with 45 hours of credit from AP courses, I had room to add extras without necessarily extending my degree program. I decided to add a Spanish minor my freshman year. Then I added a math minor. Then I changed my Spanish minor to a Spanish major. Finally, I changed my Spanish major to a full BA. I also completed all the Honors College requirements for earning honors degrees. In the end, I took 5 years to graduate along with a lot of my peers from my matriculation class. I was also able to use my tuition scholarship for my 5th year which is why I wasn't concerned about technically extending my program by a year.
If I could do it again, I'd skip the math minor. It turns out my love of math ends at Differential Equations and does not continue into Linear Algebra or it's evil cousin, Intermediate Differential Equations (which is linear algebra with Differential Equations instead of numbers in the matrices).
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Heidi C. Wallace, P.E., M.ASCE
Tulsa, OK
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-27-2021 02:08 PM
From: Alexander Granato
Subject: Majors and Minors While Getting Your Degree
In August of 2016, I was another freshmen at The Ohio State University looking forward to a major in mechanical engineering. My inspiration for this was from the club I was attending in high school. As the first and second year passed, however, I realized civil engineering was a branch that allowed for more versatility in career emphasis through focus on other interests of mine, like energy resources and the environment.
As that time passed, I considered getting a minor. I finished up an Environmental and Natural Resources Scholar's program in two years, so after looking at minors in Spanish, economics and surveying, I noticed statistics was available and offered an introduction to the master's programs I was considering.
What made you decide on civil engineering and what else did you focus on along the way?
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Alexander Granato A.M.ASCE
Student
Bexley OH
<maskemail>granato.3@...</maskemail>
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