What opportunities are available in the field of cardiovascular surgery?

What are the opportunities for a young student in the EE field?

• This  will be my 1st year in my university in Latvia, I applied for a   programm "Computerised control of Electrical Systems", which baically   means that i'm going to be a EE after I graduate.        What  i'd like to ask is what I should be prepared for working in this  field?  What can i do NOW to improve my "engineering thinking" / "inner   engineer" ? (right now i'm making mini-sumo robot and it   looks....horrible least to say...but it will be my second robot all in   all) What resources you would recommend as must-read / must-watch?  Maybe  some of you could share your expierience in this field? Insights,  ups and downs,  collaboration and research opportunities,  interships,...? How about the spectrum of job and research   opportunities? Right now I have no idea where this path may take me, I   feel like i might end up changing light bulbs in the street lights or   might as well end up in a energy station monitoring generators or   something. Or...maybe i will end up making processors in China o_O -  who  knows?  Also, this will be my 1st semester but i'm already  looking forward to  the topic of my final project for my Bachelor's  degree. I  looked up the topics offered by professors and they sound  boring as hell  "Modeling transportation flow on some particular  street", i believe there are some really neat topics for a research - I  just have to find one, prehaps YOU  could share some ideas, so I could  start working on it right away?  In general, i'm very interested  in lifetime education and research, so  if you could enlighten me about  research/scientific part of this  profession - that would be awesome!  Any kind of information that would  help me to decide what to do after  graduation would help a lot! In fact,  any kind of information about the  field would be appreciated!

• Answer:

  I was asked to answer this by in a private message. The world is very open to you.  Your career path isn't going to be stuck -- being an "engineer" isn't even close to written in stone. In private industry sticking to engineering, there are really three different paths you can take -- individual contributor, management, and marketing. But you're not even stuck with those.  You could end up in finance, software, or any other field. Individual contributorThe first is obvious -- continue as an individual contributor.  Keep solving engineering problems.  Let your expertise and your contributions grow in scope.  Become one of those magical graybeards who knows all and sees all in whatever technology you're an expert in. Or hop around.  Try out one job description, hold on to it for a year or two, and if you're interested in something else (say, you were in R&D and you want to try out manufacturing, or you were in IC design and you want to try out software) then jump on any opportunity to make a lateral move.  You're never stuck in one place. The typical career path of an engineer. "Right now I have no idea where this path may take me, I   feel like i might end up changing light bulbs in the street lights or   might as well end up in a energy station monitoring generators or   something. Or...maybe i will end up making processors in China o_O -  who  knows?" Nah, you won't be changing light bulbs.  But you could end up monitoring generators.  And then 2 years later you could end up in a Chinese semiconductor foundry monitoring the manufacturing tools.  And then a few years later end up in the USA building those manufacturing tools.  And then a year later end up building robots for something else entirely.  Who knows?  That's what's fun about it.  Don't worry about where the path will take you.  There is no set destination, and very few of them lead to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Michigan. Not that Hell is such a bad place. "What  I'd like to ask is what I should be prepared for working in this  field?" You're on the right track, building robots and whatnot.  Learn the material, but more importantly learn what this stuff means and what it does.  See:  https://xrayvisions.quora.com/EE-Math-phobia. Find people who are engineers and ask them what they do, what they like about their job and what they hate about it. Technical managerIn this role you'll start shifting away from having to know stuff and shift toward having to know people.  We need good technical managers who can still efficiently communicate with engineers without getting confused by jargon, but who can effectively keep the engineers focused on work by shielding them from politics. Joke:  I've heard it requires a lobotomy. Technical marketingOr as it's put by some,