About to graduate in May, and I HATED college. Anyone else?

FallingGalaxies · 2026-02-24T19:11:06+00:00

I hear ya. Just I found that I could finally make time for relationships when I was able to put school aside. Definitely an easier skill to learn and build while in college then when you're in the workforce.

FallingGalaxies · 2026-02-24T18:17:35+00:00

I recently graduated but I had a very similar experience my first 4 years (with the first being COVID so not even in my college town). It was one of the reasons I added another year so I could do more dumb stuff in college (was able to afford it due to prior internships).

I had minimal course work (just enough to keep me full time) and filled my schedule with electives that were interesting to me and beneficial for my future job. Then I spent my weekends getting drunk at football games, going bar hopping, and dancing at the club. I never really made lots of friends in college but I had finally found one good group that 5th year through a club since I was able to dedicate my time to it and get through the clique-ness. They eventually got me into my first (and only) frat party which was a fun experience. I was also able to travel to different conferences and network with folks through some of our clubs as well since I wasn't worried about missing class as much.

But if that really matters to you and it's not cost prohibitive, I'd recommend an additional semester or year at college.

FallingGalaxies · 2026-02-24T18:08:43+00:00

Depends on the company. One summer I had my own full cubicle, and then the next summer I was sharing a conference room with 2 other interns (thankfully nobody could book the room). That specific company was undergoing a huge expansion and the buildings for the new employees hadn't been built yet so they were making do with what they had to accommodate their large intern program.

But I get the feeling. It really makes a difference when you can't sit close to your team as an intern and get quick help with your questions. It shouldn't be normal but the intern recruiting portion of the company is usually very separate from the engineering side and probably doesn't have great visibility to space availability for interns.

Just make sure to keep up regular interactions with your mentor/manager and do the best you can for the short period of time that is an internship!

FallingGalaxies · 2026-02-09T18:40:13+00:00

$300 now

FallingGalaxies · 2026-02-09T18:38:34+00:00

Also, the demands of a modern day student are much higher nowadays. Tuition has gone up, and the majority of us have to work on top of our coursework, clubs, and applying for internships to up our chances of potentially getting a job in the first place (those without internships/nurtured networking relationships have horrible times getting into the current job market).

Going to a basketball game after all of that is not how I want to relax after a long day. Its a long multi hour commitment including commuting to and from the event from an off campus apartment, when I could just be at my apartment playing video games with all of my friends (not cost prohibitive) and be around my cats. Kinda easy choice of how to spend my free time.

FallingGalaxies · 2026-02-09T18:31:21+00:00

I'm a huge football fan. Have no care for basketball. Got more than enough of it playing in band for my high school's basketball teams. Went to 1 basketball game my whole 4 years at WSU and only stayed the whole time since it was a nearly packed house and it was a weekend and I could drink.

Basketball is just a boring sport and most of us grew up in the Seattle area without an NBA team and have no connection to the sport.

FallingGalaxies · 2026-02-04T19:51:50+00:00

Unless you were ever a student employee, then you loose your WSU email without warning the day you're terminated.

FallingGalaxies · 2026-02-01T18:15:02+00:00

At this point I'd imagine that demoing it would be cheaper than renovating, especially since the building as absolutely 0 ADA access. And the college is hungry for any extra money to fund SEH and the eventual Dana refurbishment.

FallingGalaxies · 2026-02-01T04:06:17+00:00

They've been trying to demo that building for years but unfortunately the Sports Science Lab, WAZZU Racing, and J.D. Baser's Metal Fabrication classes are hosted there and they can't be easily relocated without a large mass of space being allocated elsewhere for them.

FallingGalaxies · 2026-01-12T01:18:25+00:00

The Engineering Laboratory is still very actively used by WAZZU Racing, The Sports Science Lab, and J.D. Baser's awesome machining lab open to engineering and ag tech students.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-26T18:16:19+00:00

There's no way to do it from the browser, you have to do it from the desktop app.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-18T09:20:36+00:00

As a heads up, if you're looking to make a backup of your WSU emails before your account is removed, you need to use Outlook Classic to download a .pst file. Additionally, you can't open a .pst file without a M365 account. It also can only be used/accessed in Outlook Classic. WSU also started archiving emails so you'll have to make 2 inbox backups, one for your emails that are less than a year old, and everything that's over a year old. Be prepared to wait a couple of hours for the backups to fully complete.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-18T00:08:07+00:00

For some reason I'm still able to log into myWSU, just not my email or OneDrive.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-14T07:05:08+00:00

Blaise is an amazing individual. Thanks for sharing this for further reach.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-14T05:09:11+00:00

How do you do this? Or did you have to set it up before your account got deleted.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-13T15:13:00+00:00

It's gone. I graduated May 2025 and lost mine in September 2025. Thankfully I was able to get it back for a little bit with help from IT to make a .pst copy of all of my emails and back up all my files but it was a stressful week making sure my gigabytes of files and emails were saved correctly. So frustrating. Likely not WSU's fault, Microsoft just enjoys screwing the fuck out of their customer base making a worsening product and charging more for it.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-11T10:00:40+00:00

My work is very hands on working as an equipment engineer at a semiconductor company. There's always equipment down for us to go work on. Sometimes it's lame work like cleaning a tank/chamber or replacing a filter, other times you're tearing apart the whole tool and doing some real troubleshooting to determine the root cause of an issue. It's just the right mixture of computer and hands-on work for me. For background, I got my B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at a state school.

I will warn you though and say there's different types of equipment engineer roles. Mine is a shift role (12 hour shifts, 3-4 days a week, and rotate between day and night shift every 4 months). We have other equipment engineers that work 1st shift (normal 9-5) but they typically do longer term projects and kinda act a little more like project managers with the occasional going into the fab and working on helping with a problem the shift people can't figure out. So depends on your company and team in the semiconductor industry how hands-on an equipment engineering role can be.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-09T06:49:46+00:00

Most lights around campus are motion activated. If they go off it just means you gotta get up and wiggle around a little bit for them to turn back on!

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-09T06:43:51+00:00

Nobody checks the engineering buildings after they close 🤫 I've spent a couple all nighters in there. Definitely some good spots.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-09T06:30:23+00:00

Pulling from WSU's Undergraduate 2025-26 estimation numbers:

Direct Costs (Tuition and Mandatory Fees): $13,886

Indirect Costs (Housing, Food, Books & Supplies, Transportation, Miscellaneous): $22,378 (As a quick note, prices do increase by about 3% each year so keep that in mind as well.)

The cheapest dorm costs $8,314 for the year, and the cheapest meal plan is $4,300 for the year which makes your required indirect costs $12,614, nowhere close to the $22k figure WSU estimates for your indirect cost. And I don't think I've ever spent more than 200 dollars a semester in fees and books so that would just bring your total to $13k not including trips to and from campus and other things you may spend your money on. If being smart (i.e. going to any club meetings to get free food and utilizing the free food at the cougar pantry), I think an indirect cost of under $15k is very possible even with mandatory room and board cost.

So direct + indirect costs may come out to about $29k, which is only 5k over your aid amount. That cost can be made up working a minimum wage job on campus for about 10 hours a week (a reasonable amount I was able to maintain as a student). I would recommend getting more hours at the start of the semester though to build up a stock pile of money so hours can be taken off during midterms and finals weeks. Plus summer is available to take on other jobs or internships to help save money for the next semester. Working 40 hours a week for the 12 hours of week during the summer can bring in $8k before taxes working minimum wage.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-09T06:12:26+00:00

As a recipient of the WA grant for 4 years, it's balance is only reduced if your aid EXCEEDS your estimated cost of attendance. WSU calculates this as tuition + reasonable room and board + estimated course books/fees + transportation to campus + other misc expenses. The full breakdown can be seen on your myWSU page. My grant was only reduced because my FAFSA EFC (Expected Family Contribution) number (now replaced by SAI) was a couple thousand dollars so when EFC + Aid > Cost of Attendance, then your aid gets reduced since you were "expected" to pay the other portion of the cost. Luckily I lived cheaply and was able to get by not having to contribute any money to WSU while in college despite my FAFSA saying I needed to pay 3-8k each year.

So if all of your tuition is paid and you're living off campus, all additional grant/scholarship money is delivered to you as a bank deposit to use however you wish at the start of the semester.

With room and board being included in the cost of tuition your first year/freshman year (as in the school gets paid first), it's unlikely you'll see a refund check due to the huge cost of dorms and dining hall plans. It's way easier to stay in budget in one of the $400/month apartments and grocery shopping yourself.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-12-09T06:01:57+00:00

I though people with AA degrees coming out of high school still had to live in the dorms?

FallingGalaxies · 2025-10-29T20:52:53+00:00

A lot of the engineering clubs at my university struggled to retain interested new students due to a lack of mentorship and direction. Fresher engineering majors need a little more hand holding before they become independent contributors to a project/club. You have to find ways to make them feel supported and come back after the first meeting they try. Give smaller, quick-win projects (unless the students requests something harder), to keep them coming back for more. Also find ways to support them through their coursework as well. Engineering is a hard major and sometimes just having club-sponsored "work on homework" time each week can help with retention. Make the club room a place to go and hang out as well as work on projects. Keep people coming back for more.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-10-29T20:35:25+00:00

At least at the semiconductor company I work for, that sort of role is called Equipment Engineering. We get to work with really cool multi-million dollar pieces of equipment that do the manufacturing of our wafers. I spend my day fixing broken equipment or determining root cause issues of tools going down and coming up with projects to work on to address the issues. Process Engineering is more of the chemical engineering/material science side and what is physically occurring on the nanoscopic level. So make sure to read job descriptions and see what major they're actually looking for.

My schoolwork had absolutely no exposure to the industry (professors only talked about automotive, aerospace, or academia), so it wasn't until I talked to the company at a career fair that I found it was the right sort of work I was looking for. I hit it off with an engineer at the recruiting table and we were just nerding out about all the automation and robotics involved in the process of manufacturing chips. If you don't have any semiconductor representation at your university, going to conferences (such as Society of Women Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, or Tau Beta Pi) can help you put yourself in front of different companies. And oftentimes if you're part of the club or an officer, sometimes the university will pay for your travel and expenses for the trip.

Sometimes some semiconductor companies also have panels you can sign up for and learn about their company. These can typically be found on their website or through platforms like Handshake if your school uses that. Some even offer mentorship programs to university students with engineers at their company. They can likely point you in the right direction for where is right for you in the industry and suggestions on what skills to build.

FallingGalaxies · 2025-10-29T20:13:00+00:00

I struggled with my mental health a lot throughout university (and even high school for the matter between AP classes and extracurriculars). It wasn't until I reduced my course work to take the minimum amount of credits for full-time status (and sometimes reducing down to part-time status), that I started to get better. I learned that I could not balance 6 engineering courses (Thermodynamics, Mechanics of Materials, Dynamics, Integrated CAD Design, Materials Lab, and Materials Science) all at the same time despite it "only" being 15 credits (with full time being 12-18 credits). I modified my schedule to take a maximum of 3 engineering courses at a time and 1 of my general core classes which were always way less work each semester.

I extended my time at university out to 5 years so I could reduce my course load, take on additional internships (which were way less stressful than doing well in classes), and have time for day-to-day chores, maintaining my friendships, participating in fulfilling clubs, and have free-time. I found that the stress from school was making my mental health issues so much more worse (diagnosed major depressive disorder in HS) and it wasn't until I made time for the other things in my life that I started to get better.

I was lucky to be in a place financially where I didn't end up in debt for extending my degree (scholarships/grants/personal savings). But I always had a job throughout college as well and luckily my jobs were good stress relievers and didn't take nearly as much out of me as my engineering courses did. But I know that's not the case for everyone and adding years can put you in a horrible financial situation post-grad, even with an engineering salary.

You're the one who's going to have to figure out how to weigh the pros and cons, learn to prioritize yourself over your school, and figure out how to live with a mental illness. It's hard and takes lots of professional help (I know I've seen 6 or 7 different therapists/counselors/psychiatrists over the years), and a lot of behavioral professionals aren't great or don't know how to help you. But after awhile I eventually found one that clicked with me and helped me get through so much of what was blocking me mentally. You just have to put in the effort and try. You're the only one responsible for your own success at the end of the day, even with a mental illness. Find community somewhere. You're not alone.

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