The University of Sheffield is well known for its Mechanical Engineering, and coupled with the city's green reputation seemed like the ideal choice.

Read: our interview with Tsing Yu.

I’m from Malaysia, and lived a fairly ordinary life there until I was 19 at which point I came to the UK for my studies. If I had to name one person who influenced me into an engineering career, it would be my father; he had plenty of curiosity and was fairly into the sciences albeit casually, for example he liked to watch science and investigatory shows on the television. From him I discovered that I liked finding out and knowing how things work, and often had discussions about such things with him.

When I knew that engineering was what I wanted to do for a career, the next question for me was: Which discipline of engineering? I was still curious about many things and didn’t want to specialise too much too soon, but needed to come to a decision. In the end, I chose Mechanical Engineering because it is a broad field which still let me keep my options open. The University of Sheffield is well known for its Mechanical Engineering, and coupled with the city’s green reputation it seemed like the ideal choice. The course also offered a wide variety of modules which suited my needs perfectly.

The best thing about being an engineer is feeling like I’m making a difference; contributing to society by coming up with good solutions for every day problems, and inspiring the future generation to do the same.

Tsing Yu

Mechanical Engineering Alumna

I am now a mechanical engineer at Cundall, a multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy in the construction industry. I work with other mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, acousticians, fire engineers, and structural engineers in the office just to name a few. My degree has helped me gain an appreciation for other disciplines out there, due to the wide scope of the modules and I believe I understand my other colleagues better with some degree of background knowledge of their disciplines. The not-as-conventionally-engineering modules were incredibly helpful too, as they helped me understand the finance and law-side of things, as well as learn to manage my workload smarter.

To someone thinking about studying engineering I would say that it’s a challenging and fun field to be in. There are so many different opinions and different ways to approach problems. An engineering background will keep many options open for you, including those outside of the engineering field, because it cultivates problem solving which is a highly transferable skill.

In the future I hope to take on wider variety of projects with more responsibility. I have high aspirations and intend to work my way up to a leadership role but along the way, I will be working towards and applying for chartership with engineering institutions.

We interviewed Tsing in 2019.