EE Basics
Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise
This chapter will get you started with the basics of Electrical Engineering. We won’t go into the technical details of any subject but rather would focus on providing the hawk eye view of the most important parts of EE in the most non-technical way possible.
This guide will cover everything from start to finish but if you’re not much of a reader, you can instead take the short-course linked below which will touch upon all the important parts mentioned in this guide.
Getting Started with Electrical Engineering
Your step-by-Step video guide to get you started with Electrical Engineering
First Year Courses
Three courses that are essential to your degree are LCA (linear circuit analysis), FOP (fundamentals of programming) & ENA (electric network analysis). Other than these three courses, there are about 10 more courses. All the other courses are basically time-fillers. The university doesn’t know how else to keep the students engaged.
You’re not going to study or apply the Physics you learnt in Applied Physics course anywhere in your degree or professional career. Nor the Pakistan Studies or Mechanical Workshop or Mechanics. All these are literally just to keep you busy in your degree and keep you in an illusion that you’re gaining some value out of your degree.
So, here’s your Step No. 1: Focus on that three main courses and just try to not fail in other courses. Most of you would say “But i will lose my GPA”. This guide isn’t about how to get 4.00 GPA in minimum time. This is about how to be a successful electrical engineer and climb up the ladder of competence in EE in least amount of time so that when you graduate from bachelors, you’re already ahead of most of Masters in EE students and can get any job or start any startup you want.
Assignments
There are a few things in Electrical Engineering that most students waste their time on. And not just a little time; literally hundreds of hours they waste on these things. Step No. 2: Give assignments and quizzes the least amount of time. If you write an assignment in 30 minutes, you’ll get 8 of 10 marks. The topper of class writes that same assignment in 3 hours and gets 10 of 10. Seemingly, he has beaten you in that subject. But actually, that topper is as stupid as he can be. He just wasted 2.5 hours of his life for 2 marks in assignment which then amount to less than 0.0001% of his total CGPA.
If you learn the value of priorities and discipline in your life, i.e., you know the value of each task and give your time accordingly to it, you’ll be way ahead of your competitors. When i first started to analytically decide how much time i should spend on my assignments and quizzes, i found out that even 10 minutes for each assignment is a total waste of time. I won’t suggest you all to leave your assignments and quizzes but what i will suggest is to give them the least time possible. If you can get 70% of marks by giving it 5 times less time than the topper, then do it. That is in your best interest.
Essential Skillset
As discussed in chapter about skillsets required in degree, there are some crucial basic skills you need to exist in any degree. Then there are skills you specifically need to survive in Electrical Engineering. Finally, there are the skills you need to excel in Electrical Engineering.
Let’s discuss all of them one-by-one.
Essential Skillset of any Degree
- Basic Computer Usage, WhatsApp and Social Media
Almost all the nerds and geeks today know these. I haven’t met anyone in university except myself who didn’t know how to use a computer or whatsapp before coming to university. So, i’ll assume all of you know aswell. If you don’t, ask your friend
- Typing
Almost 90% of students in my batch don’t know the full-hand typing. They type real slow looking at their keyboard. Even the Computer Science and Software Engineering students do the same. If they spent about 30 hours before their degree learning full-hand typing, they would have saved more than two thousand hours of their degree. But they don’t because they’re stupid.
- Microsoft PowerPoint
Most of the students coming to university have never given a multi-media presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint. So, When they start with the presentation here, they end up wasting a lot of their time experimenting with the Software and designing their presentations, etc. Instead, if you take out about 15 hours to learn the PowerPoint, you’ll save a lot of hours in your degree and would avoid such situations.
I’ve added the link to a bestseller PowerPoint Udemy course below which is completely free on my website. I would recommend you to take that course.
[Udemy] Microsoft PowerPoint From Beginner to Advanced [Kyle Pew]
This course has been designed for students who have little to no experience with Microsoft PowerPoint or for those that wish to fill in the gaps within their PowerPoint experience
- Microsoft Word
Same issue as above, most students don’t know how to use word or how to type. So, they end up wasting a lot of their time in typing the lab reports and assignments on word. They don’t know how to format their reports or what formatting techniques are there. I would suggest you to take a course on this aswell so you can avoid that wastage of time aswell. Below is the link to bestseller udemy course on microsoft word from the same instructor as the previous course. Do check that out.
[Udemy] Master Microsoft Word Beginner to Advanced [Kyle Pew]
This course is intended for students who wish to expand their skill set within Microsoft Word You will learn how to take full advantage of Microsoft Word
Essential Skillset of Electrical Engineering
There are multiple basic non-technical skills you should learn before Electrical Engineering if you don’t want to waste your time during the degree trying to discover those.
- Basic Python
Even if you have no interest in software, you still need to learn basic python. It is used everywhere. In your engineering animations, basic process automation, basic visualization, you name it and python is there. So, it is a must-have skill for you. The Udemy course below would provide you the essential knowledge of Python to apply it to your domain. It is a short-course and i highly recommend that you take this course.
[Udemy] One Week Python [Colt Steele]
Don't waste your time with 60+ hour behemoth courses that you never finish! Instead, try this quick and effective pathway to Python that was designed with your sanity in mind.
- Microsoft Excel
You can complete your whole EE degree without knowing Excel. But it is one of the most used softwares for data organizing, tables, marksheets, and stuff like that. If you learn this, you can use it in many of your own personal chores aswell.
[Udemy] Microsoft Excel - Excel From Beginner to Advanced [Kyle Pew]
This Microsoft Excel courses will take you through 4 levels of Microsoft Excel topics (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Macros/VBA).
- Git & GitHub
This is one of the most important software to learn for Engineers. It is a version controlling system. In simple words, whatever project you’re doing, you need to track its progress, different versions, share it with other team members, collaborate with them, etc. GitHub allows you to do that. It is absolutely essential and the most important in this list. See the link below for its course
[Udemy] The Git & GitHub Bootcamp [Colt Steele]
The following sentence is annoying, but also true: the best time to learn Git was yesterday. Fortunately, the second best time is today!
- Engineering Animations
It isn’t as important as the ones above but still a very handy skill to have. If you know basic engineering animations in python, you can make your project presentations, pitches, proposals and other presentations much more attractive and convincing.
[Udemy] Python engineering animations: Bring math & data to life [Mark Misin]
How would you like to have an idea for a scientific animation and be able to actually create it and show it to other people?
- Visual Studio Code
You need to know some code editing software. I would recommend VSCode because it is really user-friendly and the most used editing tool for code. You won’t need any course to learn it. It is super easy.
- MATLAB
MATLAB is used in all engineering disciplines. It isn’t very important to learn this before degree. You can learn it whenever you need it in any course.
[Udemy] MATLAB Master Class: Go from Beginner to Expert in MATLAB [Nouman Azam]
MATLAB (matrix laboratory) is one of the fundamental and leading programming language and is a must learn skill for anyone who want to develop a career in engineering
