Guidance needed regarding engineering degree

[Prim3]

Hey guys, this is going to be a bit long but please bear with me.

I'll start off with how everything started.

I've always wanted to do engineering. My dad is a chief engineer of a merchant vessel and growing up, I guess it brushed off on me. I was fairly decent in high school. I gradded with a good percentage (we don't have GPA here in Canadian high schools) and also received a scholarship from a university (didn't go to this one).

The engineering I'm interested/taking is mechatronics.

In the starting of 2008 September.. which was my first semester of my first year at a university, I took 6 classes. I didn't know the course load would get me so bad. The classes were: Chem, phys, calc 1, c++, drafting and this writing class Yeah I know dumb but I took 'em and realized later. I dropped chem with a withdrawal on my transcript. Left me w/ 5. I thought I could do it. When the semester ended, I ended up with passing everything except physics and got a D in the drafting class (surprisingly the drafting class is not a pre-req to any other class).

In my second semester, I took calc 2, linear algebra, another writing class and retook physics that I failed. This is where I messed up bad. I failed both, calc 2 and linear algebra. I don't blame anyone but myself for this. I was lazy and yeah. I was on probation and required to withdraw however I was given another chance by the school. In the next year, I took some other courses and bought up my GPA.

Now this summer of 2010, I retook the calc 2 and linear. I just got a new job a few months ago (april) and was working an hour away from my house. It took a lot of time and stuff. I just received my final grades where I got a C in linear algebra but a D in calc 2. I'm quite disappointed. Again I'm going to blame myself for this but truly, this time I had to work a lot for student loan payments which set me back. My gpa right now is at 2.06.

I'm at a standstill. My schools policy is that you need to get a C- or higher if you want to enter engineering classes. I got a D though. They also have another policy. The policy is that if you have a D, it will still be accepted if you have a CGPA of 2.4 to support it (i have 2.06..). So I'm not sure what to do.

I like to do math. I really do. My dream is to be an engineer and then earn some work experience for MBA but if I keep going like this.. I'm screwed. So please, any guidance or any help regarding this would be greatly appreciated since I'm stuck.

Thanks.

 

[General_Sax]

Obviously, you need to change how you take these courses, or else you can expect nothing but the same results. Your post seems to imply that you're not spending an appropriate amount of time studying/doing home-work. I would recommend either spending more time studying/doing home-work, or forgetting about majoring in Engineering.

Your work-load seems to be on par with what I did in my first year, so I don't think that it was/is unmanageable. However, some couldn't handle the work like you couldn't handle your work. I'd hate to say it but maybe Engineering isn't for you. It's not the end of the world.

Basically: try harder or give up.

 

[sandplasma]

That sounds like what I went though when I started in CompE. As time progressed I started getting more serious about it but it was a little too late. In order to just graduate on time I changed my major to Economics and used most of my math/physics courses for a Quantitative Econ degree. I blamed it on not being as interested in CompE as I thought.

I started College studying for an exam the night before (because grades came easy for me in H.S) to studying 2-3 weeks before the exam towards the end of my college years.

I'm working now with my Econ degree but I'm starting to look into schools to give Engineering another go. :) Take your time and get together with other students.