Hi All!

I'm Navika and I'm currently 20 years old and am in my Freshman year of college in America (currently undecided)

I always thought I wanted to be an engineer, but recently felt that my skills aren't purely technical. I found an assignment in college is  exactly what I want to do: 

-Address a global challenge

-Create a profile of the problem - who it impacts, who are the stakeholders, does each group have conflicting needs etc. 

-Design a solution - state intent, delineate observations and concepts one is building upon, 

-Iterate on the solution, seek feedback, implement a working solution. 

I want to do this for a variety of global challenges, and ultimately end up working directly with Elon Musk. 

Each of his companies is built around addressing a specific global problem. 

Who does this kind of work in real life? People at my college said its mostly entrepreneurs. I see 80,000 hours essentially does a version of this related to careers- I'd love if I could talk to one of the people on the team and see if I could conduct research for 80,000 hours.

What should I study? I am a very interdisciplinary person. 

Someone told me that it is engineers, lawyers and doctors that solve the toughest problems, so I was thinking it might be better to study engineering. However I do not want to be in the technical details, executing on someone else's vision, I'd rather create the vision and then oversee its implementation. 

Thanks in advance for any replies!

Hi All!

I'm Navika and I'm currently 20 years old and am in my Freshman year of college in America (currently undecided)

I always thought I wanted to be an engineer, but recently felt that my skills aren't purely technical. I found an assignment in college is  exactly what I want to do: 

-Address a global challenge

-Create a profile of the problem - who it impacts, who are the stakeholders, does each group have conflicting needs etc. 

-Design a solution - state intent, delineate observations and concepts one is building upon, 

-Iterate on the solution, seek feedback, implement a working solution. 

I want to do this for a variety of global challenges, and ultimately end up working directly with Elon Musk. 

Each of his companies is built around addressing a specific global problem. 

Who does this kind of work in real life? People at my college said its mostly entrepreneurs. I see 80,000 hours essentially does a version of this related to careers- I'd love if I could talk to one of the people on the team and see if I could conduct research for 80,000 hours.

What should I study? I am a very interdisciplinary person. 

Someone told me that it is engineers, lawyers and doctors that solve the toughest problems, so I was thinking it might be better to study engineering. However I do not want to be in the technical details, executing on someone else's vision, I'd rather create the vision and then oversee its implementation. 

Thanks in advance for any replies!