I graduated 1982 and started work 1978. I worked 45 years, and every company I worked for was either bankrupted, sold off or mortgaged to the limit. But I was always working, except for 6 weeks of voluntary unemployment, and of course several years (in total) of rather fabulous holidays. Anyway, Mr No Attitude has had his 2 days of 'fame'. Byeeeeee! PSA there is now an ignore option for a given user.
Don't knock digging ditches and qa testing. That is how many engineers got started, me included. I have spent 23 years as a civil engineer working my way from a lowly design engineer to a District Engineer with a major domestic water provider. All of that started with digging ditches, installing pipelines, fixing and repairing leaks, and generally learning how things work. It went a long ways to landing me my first job as an engineer. I was able to show a willingness to work hard and common sense knowledge that many entry level engineers don't have in their respective field.
Engineering offices are difficult places to work. Not only is the work difficult, mentally tiring, and requires constant personal development/growth/training, but its an environment ruled by logic with little regard for emotion. You could be technically brilliant, highly motivated, etc but if you're not emotionally dead to criticism, second-guessing, or having your mistakes pointed out then you'll be run off. Design reviews are literally a group of managers/peers/colleagues spending hours poking holes in your work. Nobody will pussyfoot around, your work either meets every requirement or it doesnt, alternative designs were considered or not, analysis/testing has been planned and completed or it hasnt, etc.
The direct answer to every "I cant..." is usually "Keep trying or find another job," regardless if you're trying to find a job or design a rocket. That's not an engineer being unkind, just direct.
You started this post with simple one line rather rhetorical question which we all thought was just a simple throwaway whimsical comment.
Since then you have failed to provide any background information requested by me and others by which we might be able to offer you some specific advice, but nothing is forthcoming, instead you seem to be (despite your protestations to the contrary) rather thin skinned and come across more than a little bit aggressive and angry. Maybe that's why you didn't get and internships. However moving forward it won't come across well and you may well need to do some digging of ditches or more lower level work in order to demonstrate that you can actually work with people without appearing to be a human hand grenade with the pin about to pop.
The next set of applications might yield something, maybe they won't, but I think we're not capable of doing much more here unless you open up a bit and lose the perceived attitude.
Resist the tendency to become bitter, as justified as you would be. Hang in there. See if you can attend some job fairs for a range of companies you'd like to work for. Meanwhile, go through your Uni textbooks in your free time and pick up on skills that you think may set you apart from the crowd instead of drowning in despair - how about getting a self teaching text on engg differential equations ? Good luck.
I graduated in electrical engineering quite a while ago - to put it into perspective, I was among the last few classes to use punch cards for computer programming, and there was no such thing as a "personal" computer, or unwired phone. The manufacturers were still ironing the bugs out of optical disc storage media.
However, there WAS a great interest in electronics - specifically those devices used in computers and their programming challenges. But there are also other areas of electrical engineering: antennas and signals, power generation and transmission, rotating machines, controls and protective devices, electromagnetics, bioengineering (all those little electrical doodads that help with prosthethics), etc. Our grad class had 680 students (and that's EEs alone, not counting Mechanical or Civil or Chemical or Geotechnical). Of those 680 grads, 4 of us had done a lot of work in rotating machines and power transmission. A handful followed the bioengineering path. 6 went straight to a Masters program. The other 97 PERCENT (660 students) were all in the computer programming and chip design group. The job market was pretty evenly spread, with roughly the same absolute number of jobs in each sector - so who do you think had a harder time getting hired? The 4 of us looking at 20 openings in machines or transmission? The 10 looking at 15 openings in the bioengineering field? Or the 660 looking at 30 openings in their area of "expertise"? Also recall that those 660 engineers were vying with another 480 Computer Science grads for the same employment opportunities.
And if you're not ready to go where the job (or at least the employer) is, that can affect how "employable" you might find a specific area of study, too.
Face it. Engineering can be a tough thing. If you're in it for the money or prestige, you're in it for the wrong reasons, IMO.
Drafting. You can readily skill yourself up in drafting software and get a foothold in the engineering world. That is what I did when I graduated with horrendous marks a a GPA that was through the floor. (I wasn't stupid. I had other challenges. But I eventually graduated.)
I started out drafting. A few years in I took on more challenging structural design work and I've continued to do that ever since. Learn and improved and never stop. I've rapidly improved and I'm able to name my price in the job market.
