Accounting or Engineering? WWYD?
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A little bit about my school history.
Initially when I started college, I was planning on going into accounting. I had taken a few accounting classes in high school and did pretty well in them. One day I mentioned nursing to my dad, and then I started taking pre nursing classes. I got an associates in general studies before I went to nursing school. Absolutely hated nursing school and dropped out after the first semester.
A few years later, I decided I would try again, but I still wanted to help other people, so I decided I wanted to go into bio chemical engineering. I taught myself Algebra and Trig so I could take Calc 1. Took some chemistry classes and loved them, but I hated my genetics class.
Now the college I'm planning on going to doesn't even offer chemical engineering, it just has mechanical engineering and civil engineering. Thought I'd do mechanical engineering but here I am trying to plan out the degree requirements, and I've calculated that I won't be able to get a bachelors until at least 2021 (at least 4 years) if everything goes perfectly, all my credits transfer that i need transferred and I don't need to repeat a course.
Then I decided to calculate how long it would take me to get a bachelors in Accounting, and I can do that by summer 2019 (2 years) if I take 12-15 credits a semester and some classes in the summer.
Thing is I know I can do the accounting program. It will be hard but I would be able to do it. I don't know if I'm smart enough or even if I can make it through the engineering program. And this is probably my last chance to go to school, and I don't want to end up with no degree at all.
My boyfriend just tells me to do what I want and I don't want to be miserable in a career. Its sweet but I'm more worried about the job market and stability than being in love with my job. Also work life balance / school life balance is pretty important to me.
Basically my question is if this was in you, would you go with the path that you'll know you'll get through (guaranteed) and get a pretty good reward afterwards, or would you take the riskier, harder path knowing it could really ruin your life and you won't be able to try again if you fail, but if you succeed you'll get a really cool exciting reward afterwards.
It's honestly a tough call and only you will really know what the right path is.
I'll give you some personal experience if that helps you at all! Putting it in a spoiler so this post doesn't go long; feel free to read if you'd like!
SPOILER (click to toggle)
When I first entered college, I was a Music Education major. I would've loved to be a band director, preferably for high school. But I was already behind in my courses before I even officially became a student my freshman year. Things were overwhelming and for music majors, the amount of credit hours you receive for a course is pretty dang low (I had courses that only gave 0.5 credit hours) so you had to take more courses to even be considered a full-time student. I eventually decided to drop the major, because I wasn't enjoying it and I wasn't sure how the market would be after graduation.
My next choice would've been in Graphic Design for sure. My uncle was a graphic designer but lost his job and couldn't find another job for 2.5 years. My friend's mom was also a Graphic Designer and she struggled to find a job when she was let go.
Although I wanted to do something related to that, I chose a "safer" route I guess you could say. I graduated with a Marketing degree last May. I felt that it was a business major that would allow me to still use some creativity. Even with it being a major that I felt more confident in finding a career with, it still took me 8 months after graduation to even be offered a job. I put in countless applications, had numerous interviews (some even taking me to the second and third rounds) but I always felt like I was the "backup choice." I'm just happy with where I am now that I do have a career.
In the end, we could give you suggestions but it's ultimately up to you. I actually do have a cousin who just graduated with a chemical engineering degree last week. He's been searching since the start of his senior year and still hasn't found a job, unfortunately. And he had a couple co-ops and had a really good GPA; he's just a smart guy.
Overall, the job market right now is pretty lousy, unfortunately. I remember peers desperately posting on Facebook, months after graduation, asking if anyone knew of places hiring with X degree. Course, idk how it'll be in a couple-four years! Hopefully things will improve.
From my experience, I chose the "safer" path where I felt like I wouldn't take too long to find a career. Although I think I would've enjoyed my work more had I chose the "riskier" path, I am still happy with where I ended up and don't regret my decision.
Mechanical engineering is a LOT of physics-y courses (statics / dynamics, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, vibrations), which, well, either it comes to you intuitively or you'll struggle a ton. I'm really, really good at math but I've always struggled with physics-related courses - I did okay with statics, and sucked at dynamics and thermodynamics, and those were only the required intro-level courses for my industrial / manufacturing engineering course plan. So if you don't have any experience in physics, that's another thing to consider while deciding if you want to do Accounting or ME.
Also, I don't know about other universities, but at mine, it was fairly common for people to "fail" at least a couple of courses and have to retake them. (Ds =/= degrees for us, we had to retake any courses we got less than a C in, and if you got an F or more than a handful of Ds, you got kicked out of the program). And depending on the course, sometimes it could tack another year onto your degree plan because that course just happened to only be offered once a year, and was a prerequisite for all your remaining classes. I graduated HS with a year of college credit and had planned to get my degree within 3 years. It took me 5, and that was with taking 15-18 credits a semester and taking summer classes as well.
Not sure how it's gonna be in 4 years, but the job market currently sucks, especially if you live in an area where oil / gas is prevalent. I'm in TX, so pretty much 75% of jobs in my city are oil / gas, with medical making up the majority of the remainder. At least the people in my graduating class have been laid off. Some have been jobless for a year or longer. I know a petroleum engineer who signed with a big oil company, got a nice sign-on bonus, and then 4 months later her entire department ceased to exist. I had multiple internships while I was in school and one of them was extended into a full time job, but I was laid off from that after a year. I survived 3 rounds of layoffs doing a global manager's job on an entry level engineer's salary, but I didn't survive the 4th round. And then it took me the better part of a year to find my current job - I work in tech now and the only reason I even got the job was because I'm fluent in Mandarin.
I'll second what Norther says - Mechanical Engineering is a lot of physics and lab work related classes. I'm actually an ME and Systems Engineer, currently employed with the same company for almost 8 years now. None of the ME's I know had problems getting a well paying stable job - but I live in the Silicon Valley and it REALLY depends on the market directly around you where you live. So do your research - do you have any large defense industries around you? Are there a lot of tech companies? Can you move to where the jobs are? Accounting is everywhere.
ME work is really fun (at least for me) and worth all the very hard work I put into it. I adore what I do and it does make a difference in my general life. Yes the school/life % split was hard during college, but now after college, I have a very good work/life balance and a job where skills are valued highly and so I have good benefits and flexibility.
But that is only my experience. :) Ultimately, without knowing your full situation you need to decide for yourself. All I can say is - my life has gone directions I never would have predicted. And the cross roads where I thought everything was falling apart led me to really good opportunities once I got over that particular hill. Keep an open mind, a deep breath and know that no matter what you choose or what happens, you chose the best you could given the information you had and that you have the strength to adapt and roll with this crazy thing called life. Nothing is set in stone.
Honestly, the choice is up to you but I just wanna nudge you slightly away from accounting due to personal bias.
I was majoring in accounting before then deciding to try splitting it with a major of Accounting and Information Systems (which required so much less accounting) before dropping accounting completely. Truthfully, I went into accounting because I thought it was the thing I could do. I passed all my starter classes with flying colors and thought it was the easiest thing ever.. until the upper division classes where things get significantly more difficult, textbooks become more expensive (along with the programs you have to pay for most of the time) and homework just becomes your life. I nearly dropped out multiple times and had several emotional break downs due to the work load of having 15 credits worth of classes and a job.
Accounting is a very VERY time consuming path and you might not be able to pull off the number of credits you planned for per semester in your calculation due to work load without being extremely stressed. And don't forget to factor in getting your certification. Sure, you can work a job without a certification BUT some jobs don't roll that way and only hire fully certified accountants. And the certification isn't a walk in the park (or at least it wasn't for everyone I know that stayed in the accounting program and went for that as their career). You might not get yours on the first try so just keep that in mind.