How to Prepare for your 1st Year of Engineering | Back-to-School Guide

For engineering students or even STEM students, I created this video as a guide with everything you need going into engineering. There’s definitely a lot of misconceptions about engineering that I hope this video clears up. I also tend to get a lot of questions about what’s the laptop for engineering students, so I talk about that in this video. Timestamps are as follows:

00:00 Intro
00:59 School Supplies
04:16 Study Techniques
08:12 Time Management
08:40 Internship Guide
09:25 Mindset

LAPTOPS:

NOTEBOOKS:

CALCULATORS:

MY SOCIAL MEDIA:

ABOUT ME:
My name is Tamer Shaheen and I am a recent mechanical engineering graduate from the University of Waterloo. I like to make videos about university/college, engineering, and personal development. Thank you so much for watching!!

[truckynforky]

Lemme tell you this:
1) nobody is gonna hold your hand anymore and Guide you thru assignments and stuff.
2) manage time effectively or else it’s over.
3) study
4)study
5) socialise. You’ll need these friends later for group project 2yrs down the line.
6) ask questions

[ridesafealways]

I'm a hospital pharmacist working graveyard shifts, so I take my engineering classes in the afternoon. I'm in my 3rd year in BS in Electronics Engineering. (I'm 26)

1. Study three topics in advance and try to find the hardest question possible for those topics and study how they are solved. If you can answer those, then whatever the professor will give, will be easy.

2. Get enough amount of sleep no matter what. It's gonna be worthless if you will grow a tumor getting 4.0 gpa in an engineering major.

3. After you pass the subject, always review it from time to time maybe an hour or two in a day off / weekend so that you won't forget it.

4. Take your minor classes in Summer and try to learn the next major subject in advance through other platforms (youtube).

Why I still went to school after becoming a pharmacist ( I did pharmacy for the $$$ and im doing engineering for the passion).

[NicholasMootoo]

I'm about to start my First Year of Mechanical Engineering Next week. Thank You Tamer for this video!!!

[selmannandap]

You're definitely going to be the reason I graduated with a first class/honours. 🤝

[abbasdharamsi]

I remember my first year of Engineering! It was really exciting but also stressful and scary at times. These tips Tamer has shared would have definitely helped me! Im planning to also make a similar video on my channel. Thanks for the inspiration Tamer and a quality video as always :)

[tk]

I’m going to start my first year of Petroleum Engineering next month! Super excited to achieve my childhood dream! :)

[okolol]

2:22 just wanted to get this warning out there, if you planning to use the new apple m1 stuff, such as the new macbook air, you CAN'T use bootcamp anymore because apple apparently decide to put their own stuff in it, which is not what other windows laptop expecting, however, it can be change over time and the development of new version of bootcamp, while waiting for that you can still use virtual machine, but with many limitations ofc, one of the biggest is the performance, I probably can make longass explanation about it, but I'll try to simplify it a bit for the sake of simplicity.

Let's imagine you use a software that made for os A on platform 1, but you have os B on platform 2, so you need to put the os A on a wrapper or container like a jar (in this case is virtualization).
But remember, you virtualize os A on a os B on a platform 2, so now you need to translate the code made for platform 1 so platform 2 can understand it.

After reading it all back, I think it'll be better if I explain it like what it is without any oversimplification.
But anyway, is there are any alternative?
Yes of course!
First, you can use vps (basically just virtualization, but instead of doing it on your mac on a m1 arm platform, vps is a big blob of cloud that live somewhere with (mostly) x86 cpu which is what most of windows machine use) like I did, however, it's quiet expensive for my liking. I use contabo vps with 6vCPU and 16gigs of ram and with no gpu (so you can't do advance simulation, you can do it with AWS, alibaba, or azure if you want), which cost me about $40 for the first month and around $33 for the rest. The down side with vps is, it is virtualization, so you can't use other virtualization such as Android emu on Android studio to test your app or even wsl, but since you use mac, you probably can still use those on you mac.
Second, buy older model of mac, this is the easiest way I think.
Third, why don't you just.., you know, use windows laptop, this would be cheaper than the other options.
Fourth, I haven't find one, so you can stick to vm until there are any other way out.

Cmiiw
Thanks a lot for reading btw.

[tvwears]

On the laptop, if you can't afford one you can get through the degree without it, assuming your university / college supplies computer labs. Nothing wrong with paper notes, just an issue when it comes to reports, CAD, coding etc. Also don't organise your workload by time i.e 'I am going to do 2 hours of study for statics today' because you will not know how much work that equates to, I found it better to divide my work into measurable success such as 15 pages of a textbook or 10 questions etc, added bonus is satisfaction.

[gloriasamanthalewis]

I am 17 yrs-old girl who is choosing major choice as mechanical engineering. I'm very certain about my decision and I will never back down.

[mikeearls]

Your handwriting is perfect....to me, that looks like the sign of an organized mind and one perfect for engineering

[georgiacatton]

your channel is so comforting for a first year eng student thankyou so much! will be sharing your vids with my classmates cause we all feel the same

[shubham_dev_]

This is my first year in Electrical Engineering. Your tips helped a lot. 🙂

[amaanattar]

Hi Tamer, I am watching your videos since long ago.I am studying Manufacturing Science and Engineering in COEP Tech. Your content is just mind boggling and seems like real life world .
I think you should make tutorial videos on skills required for mech people like AutoCad, Solid works, …
Genuinely your content have no replacement 🔩⚙️🛠 -
Love from India 🇮🇳♥️

[srisha.k]

Thank you so much for the z-library resource it has all the textbooks I need for my classes

[korrabel]

Great video! Wish I had these tips when I first started mechanical engineering in uni

[azmainoctate]

My ambition is to be an engineer don’t know if I am going to make it or not
Currently I am in high school
Your video was super helpful ❤️

[musfiq]

I have not done very well in my 1st year..but I will try these ideas in my 2nd year and hope I will do well..thanks man👍🖤

[FRO.]

I'm getting the Asus Zen book. it's about 1500. Has fast storage - a gaming graphics card - durable - MOST important TOUCH SCREEN if you haven't used a touch screen for math or physics you missing out it's so smooth. (doesn't come with pen $60) also Asus has amazing customer support

[emilianovb]

Love you Tamer! Had my convocation today, gonna binge your videos tonight.

[hishamredasalehsaleh]

Fantastic video, i have a request please
can you make a video about the most useful text books that engineering students need as a reference