What do you wish you knew (but didn’t) when you contemplated this career?

The thing that I wished I knew, that I didn't know when career decisions were being made, was who I was and what careers would be best suited for me, my special strengths and weaknesses and the kind of person I am.

There are three resources that I recommend to help you figure out the type of person you are, what your strengths are, and what your special talents are. After you know this, you can find the careers that are best suited for who you are.

One is the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This measures how you (as a person) take in information, how you process it, and how you output it. Engineers fit into certain categories of personality types. A good book to read about this is Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger. Your school career center may know how you can take the MBTI assessment, and may be able to provide help in interpreting it. Even without taking the assessment, the book can give you a good idea of the personality type you have, and you can read about the kinds of careers that people with that personality type do well in.

Another resource is Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath. The cost of the assessment is built into the cost of the book, so if you get a used one, be sure it has an unused access code. The basic idea of this book is that you come into the world with certain strengths, and it won't make much difference on how hard you work on your weaknesses, you will get a lot more results by putting the same effort into working with your top five strengths. Page 9 says, "You cannot be anything you want to be, but you can be a lot more of who you already are. " It does not give as much advice about what careers to choose, but if your strengths are different from those that are supportive of engineering, you should look elsewhere for a career.

Third, in his book, Goals, How to Get Everything You Want - Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible, Brian Tracy tells how to find your special talents. On pages 123 and 124 he lists 8 ways to discover what your special talent is. Notice how one of them is "easy for you to learn and easy for you to do"
1. You love to do it.
2. You do it well.
3. This talent has been responsible for most of your success and happiness in life up till now. (Something you have enjoyed doing from an early age.)
4. It is easy for you to learn and easy for you to do.
5. It holds your attention (naturally you talk about it, you think about it, you learn about it).
6. You love to learn about it and desire to excel in this area.
7. When you do it, times stands still for you. You can go for long hours without eating or sleeping because you are so involved in it.
8. You really admire and respect those who are good at what you are most suited to do. You want to emulate them.

Another thing I wished I knew when I was starting my career was that, whatever career it is, is that you are getting paid to solve problems. The more people you help, the more you get paid. The better the solution is, the better you get paid. Integrity is highly valued, the more Integrity you have, the more people will trust you to solve their problems that are within your skill set.

I think you should receive read what your first reply was cause he said it all and nothing I could add. Good luck