protocol covered questions about the student’s post-graduation career plans and job search related activities. If the student had professionalengineering co-op or internship experiences, they were asked to describe what these experienceswere like and how they may be informing students’ career-related thinking going forward. Eachinterview was approximately 45 minutes long, conducted by phone, recorded, and transcribed.Further details about the overall study and the interview data collection process are provided in[14] and [15]. Because the current analysis focuses on experiences within engineeringorganizations, the data set includes interviews with students who reported having engineering co-op or internship experiences, only.Data Set 2The second
will enjoy the challenge of working with difficult technical issues in the context of advanced technology. The results of our study, particularly the relatively small proportion of time devoted to solitary technical work, have helped to explain some of the frustrations I have so frequently encountered among engineers. Many felt frustrated because they did not think that their jobs provided them with enough technical challenges. Others felt frustrated because they thought that a different career choice might have led to a job that would enable them to make more use of the advanced technical subjects they had studied in their university courses. Many of them were actually planning to leave their