Electronics Engineering Study Next Year

[GeekGirl]

Ok so next year I am going to do a Degree in Electronics Engineering, this is a not the problem, my problem is trying to choose between two different streams, I am interested in both lol. My Choices are between Maritime Electronics Engineering and Biomedical Electronics Engineering.

Now both appeal to me as I have worked both industries as a tech. I love working on boats (and if I do the Maritime course will get the chance to work in Adelaide on Navel boats and subs) I also like medical industries, I have worked a lot in hospitals doing various jobs from biomed tech (repairing ECG's, IV pumps etc) to Nurse call systems, patient tracking systems etc.

I have tried to research job opportunities in AU, specifically Adelaide as my partner wants to move back home. Apart from being a hospital employee I do not see much calling for Biomed engineers (maybe I am not looking in the right places). I am worried that Maritime engineering is going to be like the Electrical engineers I have worked with at Austral ships in Perth, 99% of their work was ok we will use company a for this project, so we need a coax between box a and b it will be labelled J101-K20-C1 etc. This would bore me to bits, I want hands on Development work doing schematics and PCB's.

Does anyone have any pointers ?

(BTW the Maritime Electronics Engineering course I am looking at is at Flinders Uni, this is the first year it has been offered, only down side is spending a year in Tasmania

[EEVblog]

Adelaide is where plenty of military marine action is at, or not, depending on contracts and the cycle of the military white paper budget planing.

I've worked in the marine engineering business (military and civilian) for a long time, and it's either boring as bat shit, or working on a cool project when the budget is fresh.
But the cool projects are rare, so it's going to be 90%+ boredom guaranteed. Yep, it's all paperwork, and wait five weeks for coax part J101-K20-C1 to complete your trivial task.
The trick is to only get in on the new development projects from the beginning, then once it hits the trial phase, run like hell!
Never ever join a "refit" project.

Biomed is mostly big in traditional spots like Sydney and Melbourne, lots of companies around. They are pretty anal places to work for. Half my former colleagues ended up at biomed companies, and the ones that were happy to trade boredom for cushy are still there.

For marine it won't matter what degree you get given your past experience, but biomed are more picky. The trick to getting into Biomed is to not be too dumb, and not bee too smart, you have to be just right and tick all their silly HR boxes.

Dave.