IB Career Profile
The following account provides an example of the excellent preparation that the IB provides for life at university and beyond.
I studied Physics, Maths and French at Higher Level and Business Studies, English and Design Technology at Standard level. I then went to Imperial College London and studied for a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. After my third year at Imperial, I was offered an internship with Shell, in Norway. I spent 3 months living in Stavanger working within a project team. At the end of the Internship I was offered a full time job with Shell. I am now a Rotating Equipment Engineer for Shell Exploration and Production (E&P) in Europe. Basically, I work with all the mechanical equipment used in E&P, i.e. turbines, compressors, pumps and engines (all with rotating parts, hence my job title). I am on a 4 year graduate training scheme which is accredited by the IMechE, so at the end of the scheme I will be a Chartered Engineer. The scheme is mostly on the job training, with some training courses thrown in. I'm actually leaving this week for my first course, four weeks in the Netherlands.
So how did the IB get me to where I am now? I suppose a different question to answer would be "what did the IB give me that A-levels would not have?" The obvious first point is the extra subjects. To do a mechanical engineering degree you need maths and physics, but I feel the other subjects I studied gave me an advantage. Studying English improved my literacy, obviously an advantage for writing reports. There are a lot of principles in Business Studies that are closely matched in engineering, especially in Manufacturing. Also, as a part of my degree I had to take a number of business electives. I also had to take a humanities and I chose to continue with French for my first year at uni, and then decided to take Spanish ab initio. Learning a language to HL in IB has really helped with learning new languages since, as I understand how languages work and how to learn a language. With my job I am travelling a lot, mostly to Norway and the Netherlands. I have learnt Norwegian in the last two years and I guess Dutch is next! The subjects I took have all helped, but I'm not suggesting I took the perfect combination to get into engineering. Any additional knowledge or experience helps you, not only in engineering, but in everything in life!
The next bit is the other parts of the IB, CAS, extended essay and TOK. I think the Extended Essay is the first thing you do that is anything like writing a Research Thesis. It was a great opportunity to learn the skills needed for writing that kind of thing before having to do it at uni. It certainly took some of the pressure off. I saw my peers struggle where many of them had not written an essay since GCSE English. TOK had similar advantages, learning to properly set out an argument in essay form was something I would have barely thought of beforehand (English was not my strong point). There is also the team working aspects, very useful for later in life. The IB also indirectly teaches you valuable skills, like time management, the ability to forward plan, to avoid conflicting deadlines. With having so many different subjects/activities you almost learn this subconsciously, you may not get it right first time, but you start to change your approach. The skill you need for engineering that I cannot emphasise enough, is communication. I spend just as much time, if not more, communicating with people as I do doing technical work. You cannot function as an engineer unless you can communicate with others, not just other engineers, but other technical people, customers, workmen and managers. All these people require information from you and all need it in a different way. This is possibly the most difficult aspect of my job, especially when it involves motivating people to do things. An example of this can be found in my current project. I need to install some additional devices to some compressors we operate. This involves shutting down the equipment, which means a reduction in production, which the people in charge of production don't want to do it and try to stall the work. It's all about compromise!
I really only have positive things to say about what I got from the IB, and from the above it seems I have a lot to say. To summarise I'll list some of my key points;
- Engineering is not just Maths and Physics – broad education from IB helps to give you additional knowledge and experience (no matter what the extra subjects are).
- Extra curricular activities are just as important as the subjects you study
- The IB gives you skills that you use throughout life that you may not even notice. These include interpersonal skills, confidence, time management and general organization.
