When I graduated in 1983, I had nothing. I begged the government for employment insurance benefits on the basis I of having worked every available day between semesters, and gave them the documentation to prove it. They accepted the argument, and that income funded what became a 56 week long job search. For a while, I was a labourer who made tents. 1200 applications - yes, 1200 applications - later, I got two interviews and one offer. The only reason I got the offer was because it came to me under the conditions of a government-sponsored employment internship program whereby the government paid 75% of my salary. Accordingly, the net cost to my employer was $3.00 CDN per hour. In the first of two years I was there, my job was to put numbers into circles on schematics that I didn't understand and list what numbers had been assigned where. It turns out, that was my introduction to P&ID instrument lists. Then, they made me read catalogs and prepare requisitions for the thingies represented by those numbered bubbles. I did all kinds of goofy things like recommending gas actuated thermometers where bimetallic were clearly intended, but they smiled, politely helped me correct mistakes, and let me work through it. Then, when everything was bought, they sent me to various shops and field locations to check off that the right thingies got delivered to the right places. By the time that year was over, I had physically seen and touched just about every on line instrument device that went into a heavy oil battery.
After that assignment, they sent me to a field location for 7 months to be a site inspector for canal embankment construction. Most of what I did was compaction testing on the various clay fills that were used, but I also shovelled random samples of armour and rip-rap into sampling buckets to ensure those materials were installed to specification as well. I lived in a rented single-wide trailer in a town of 1500 people through the dead of winter and drove about 200-300 km per day with shovels, buckets, spikes, sledgehammers and a nuclear densometer bouncing around in the back of a stripped out cube van. By the time I finished that assignment, I could pick up a lump of clay in my hand and, with uncanny accuracy, estimate the proctor, moisture content, density and whether it could be classified as Zone 1 or Zone 2 fill based on my assessment of its probability to be worked to 95% compaction.
So for two years, I put numbers in circles and played with dirt. Not exactly what I figured "mechanical engineering" was all about, but I hung in there. Indeed, I had unbelievably good mentors who were willing to drop everything to teach me stuff as long as I was willing to work hard. I understand it's harder to find that kind of mentor ship or employer commitment in these times, but I am inclined to suggest just hanging in there and looking for a mentor or two.
Interestingly enough, about 7 years later, I worked in a place where there was a guy who was hired for the sole purpose of being a document control clerk. This guy just basically assigned numbers to drawings, listed them, and tracked them, and he was good at it, very tenacious. But, for about 5 minutes every day, he would ask me, "Just curious, what's this?" and point to some detail or other on a drawing. He would take the explanation, file it away in his mind, and go about his business. In about a year, he could review those drawings for errors about as well as the responsible engineers, and I don't think it was much longer after that before he morphed his career into becoming an instrumentation technologist - which is what his schooling had intended for him to become.
So...I'd hang in there. It sucks now but it won't forever.
![[glasses]](/data/assets/smilies/glasses.gif "[glasses] [glasses]")
Just traded in my OLD subtlety...![[tongue]](/data/assets/smilies/tongue.gif "[tongue] [tongue]")
