A welcome note from me =)
.gif){kind=small}
Read about why these two aspiring freshman decided to take up Civil Engineering
Read about how to go about choosing modules in year 3
An Overseas Community Service Project organised annually by our very own CE Club
Check out our new CE Forum where our CE community can share online
Previous volumes
Why Civil Engineering?
By, Liew Zhen Guang, CE1
Why civil engineering? It isn’t that hard to choose when one like structures and want to have a career in something that one are interested in. Don’t you ever wonder how a structure can stand so tall, while withstanding strong winds, earthquakes and other natural forces? It’s more or less trying to defy nature.
It all started out on simple games of stacking something over the other, like Lego. After building it higher, it always falls somehow. Hence, creativity comes into play. Designing then became my interest. First, it was to create something that stands tall. Then, it’s something that looks nice. So my interest wandered, and I began looking into architecture.
Architecture, it’s like a fashion show but buildings as your models. It’s fun to personalize a structure the way you want it to be. But, somehow it doesn’t feel right. I want to be creative, but not too creative. You tend to run out of ideas after making a few good designs. I just don’t have that creative sense in me to keep on churning something new.
So what happens? I don’t want architecture; I want to have something to do with structures. Then there comes a point in everyone’s schooling life, your teacher would ask, “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” And most kids would reply, “I don’t know.” I would have the same answer too. Luckily for me, my mother told me about my uncle’s profession, civil engineer. That’s where I found the link, I get to design, build and it has something to do with structures.
That was the little me deciding. In school, it wasn’t that surprising that I like physics and maths. I like science overall, but biology and chemistry is not really my thing. Thankfully, civil engineering doesn’t focus too much on those two subjects. There I go, confirm, I want civil engineering.
Few years down the road, as I matured, getting to know civil engineering, learning its career path, I am pretty sure of what I want to be now, a structural engineer. It didn’t diverge too much. Structural engineering is one of the many branches in civil engineering. It’s needed in almost every field. For instance, the new and bigger Titanic II needs a good structure to make it stand tall to bring back the Titanic glory days. Best part of all, structural engineering has all the elements that I’m interested in.
Hence, here I am in NUS studying civil engineering.