Application Process - Deciding the major

I am not an expert, and I do not claim to be one. But I just wanted to share a set of ideas, and possibilities which helped me narrow down my area of interest. 

Here is my story -

I met an Aerospace Engineering graduate student right after school. I loved stars, planets, and all of their interaction. More specifically, I wanted to work on the technical side of things, how can I help people interact with them, reach outside space etc. So, joining ISRO or NASA seemed like a good plan. But I wanted to explore a bit more and decided to go with a Mechanical Engineering degree, and then explore the option of an Aerospace Engineering later. 

I joined BITS Pilani as a Manufacturing Engineering Major, and got involved with a Formula Student team called Inspired Karters. They worked on building a formula-style open-cockpit vehicle. I worked with design, and actual assembly, manufacturing various components of the vehicle. Slowly though, I started to explore automation, learning more about self-driving vehicles, and programming. A robotics course, and working with actual robot programming for a manipulator seemed fun. And hence, I decided to go ahead with Robotics and see how it goes. 

Here is way for you to go about it all -

Now, if you are trying to understand where to go with it - 

Work on projects - 

1. If you are still in university, go and meet with Professors whose research seems interesting, take a few courses, and work on a few projects with them. You will get an idea of navigating the way ahead, sometimes you work on a course, then a project, and later extend the work via a research project.
2. If you have graduated - still work on projects, whether guided or on your own. There are so many amazing people, you can ask within your organization, for example, I wanted to explore Space systems, I reached out to teams within CGI working in the area, attended common meetups and understood the working. Then took part in various internal idea submission and product development events to learn more about the Space Industry. Knowing and understanding working of teams across geographies, and across domains, could help you grow, and innovate in your present roles. In case you want to explore research, for example, I wanted to work with Neuro-Robotics, I just reached out to Professors, and asked them for guidance. 

There are a set of pretty amazing and helpful people out there, don’t worry, go ahead, ask for guidance and keep on learning. 

Learning through projects, you would find your conclusions and actual areas of interest. For me, specifically during my Bachelor thesis at Festo, I realised I loved Robots. And it was an ideal workplace for me, someone working with vision, some one testing the robot, someone working with design or vision, or developing a controller.

I believe in not to stop exploring, you know, explore, work on ideas, and you will find a direction!