For me, it was the requirement to do so many calculus problems. I could have sown I was going to be doing comically difficult math problems out of school, and I don’t think I’ve done a single calculus problem in nearly 15 years. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done tons of pretty intense math (mostly fluid mechanics), but I just expected calculus to have such a bigger footprint in the engineering world.
I did a class in control systems years ago. I swore to myself I would never get into that field lol. To each their own. It’s not as bad as you think, were primarily doing fluid flow along pipes and permeability stuff. Darcy Weisbach Equations, flow loss, and few dozen other minor equations. We primarily use mathcad to do a bunch of fuzzy math to get a decent estimate of performance.
Ha, I said the same about fluid mechanics. One of my professors in college asked if we wanted to see something “fun”–he proceeded to write an equation that fully spanned the 12ft whiteboard. But he wasn’t done–it was an integral, and the limits were also equations that ran the length of the board. Apparently it was the equation for the volume of an air bubble as it rises through a rotating cylinder of liquid. Said he used it in propeller design. Scared me off for good.