school, engineering, and life questions

I haven't had time to read the full thread yet - some terrific input so far - but I want to comment on a trend I see in many posts, as well as in the OP.

It may be just me but I don't think that doing what you love professionally is all that important. I like what Jay Leno said. Paraphrasing: I don't race cars. I love driving them and working on them. I also love sex. But I don't want to find out how bad I am at either by trying to get paid to do it. Turns out I'm pretty funny and I like doing that so I get paid to do it.

I believe it's far more essential to have a job that you are good at, that is fulfilling, challenging and pays well enough to support you in doing what you truly love to do. Then you can do that stuff on your own terms, like Leno. It doesn't matter how good or bad you are at it, how talented.

Personally I'm a software engineer. I've always enjoyed messing with computers, I was good at math, the degree was challenging and interesting but it's not any kind of passion of mine. I'm good at my job, it's interesting and challenging, and it pays enough to let me do stupid things like turning money into noise.

With regards to boring, all work will be boring, I don't care what you do. That's a big part of why I would never want my passion to be my work. If you want to get paid, there will be days when you don't want to do something but you will have to. In a lot of cases, especially in advanced technical professions, boring has more to do with the state of mind a person chooses, rather than the work itself.

And big props for the cahones to even consider it. I would shoot myself if I had to go back to school. It's been 6 years since my last exam and I still have nightmares where I walk around campus and realize that I have a final next week for some stupid elective that I've never attended a single lecture for, let alone know any material (and like many nightmares, these are not unfounded lol).

BigD wrote: I still have nightmares where I walk around campus and realize that I have a final next week for some stupid elective that I've never attended a single lecture for, let alone know any material (and like many nightmares, these are not unfounded lol).

HAHAHA I have the same nightmare. The typical scenario is someone comes up and says "Bob, are you ready for the English Literature exam tomorrow". I check my schedule and realize that I forgot I was taking that class and hadn't gone since the first class, so now I've got 18 hours to read 6 books. It's always an english class or art appreciation or something, never a math or science class.

Bob

From what I've experienced in 27 years, an engineer that doesn't get his hands dirty building/living with the goofy contraption he just designed is only half useful. There are way too many "academic" engineers out there, in all industries - brilliant tho they may be - that design systems that can't be built/maintained/repaired, won't last 20 years, or are too expensive to buy. Designs that do all that for a price someone will pay require hands-on experience.

Ya gotta get your hands dirty!

Schmidlap wrote:

BigD wrote: I still have nightmares where I walk around campus and realize that I have a final next week for some stupid elective that I've never attended a single lecture for, let alone know any material (and like many nightmares, these are not unfounded lol).

HAHAHA I have the same nightmare. The typical scenario is someone comes up and says "Bob, are you ready for the English Literature exam tomorrow". I check my schedule and realize that I forgot I was taking that class and hadn't gone since the first class, so now I've got 18 hours to read 6 books. It's always an english class or art appreciation or something, never a math or science class. Bob

Or how sometimes finals are held in different classrooms than the regular class. In my dream I come to campus, fully aware that I have a final starting in 7... no, 6 minutes, yet having no idea what room it's being held in. And of course the campus is deserted because everyone else is already taking theirs...

Another practical part of being a good engineer is knowing not just what's available, but what's appropriate. I got good advice recently from a mechanical engineer that THE hardware to use on turbo components is Nitronic 60 fasteners. There was one flaw with that superior material selection - it's simply not available to you and me. Doesn't matter that the equations say it's perfect if it's impossible to find...

The point is that pactical knowledge - typically learned with hands-on experience - can avoid all sorts of trouble in a career.

SVTF wrote: There are way too many "academic" engineers out there

I would argue by "too many" you mean 99% of. I have to deal with R&D designs all the time that make me shake my head. Like the analyzer shack a certain oil company up north wants to sit outside... and it has water inside of it... and it gets down to -50*C in the winter. One power outage, and a couple million dollar shack is toast. We "might" have convinced them to put it in a building. Beyond that, I am the one who will repair and maintain said unit. We are currently in the process of finalizing everything before it ships out in September, and I keep running into stuff that makes me frustrated to know it will be ME fixing it.

In reply to HiTempguy:

Is the shack vs. building question a cost choice or engineering?

I work in a facility with a production line and there's a lot of things the production area could do to help engineering correct issues with released documents that they use to build with, but instead you find out they've worked out a solution and been building products not to spec for any amount of time because it works better. Instead of helping drive improvement.

In reply to HiTempguy:

That happens to people who have plenty of hands on experience, too. Hands on for what they do, but not exactly what the product really does.

"hands on" and "getting dirty" does not mean that they know 100% how and where it works. Just as much as "book smart" does not mean that they know little about life. Practical knowledge is bound to be wrong as much as right.

What I meant to say was that academia is only a small part of your education. I learn a ton everytime I have to install and commission my own creation. I turn the wrenches and learn; and, I listen to the technician as he cusses at the unnamed fool who designed this E36 M3 device - and learn.

SVTF wrote: What I meant to say was that academia is only a small part of your education. I learn a ton everytime I have to install and commission my own creation. I turn the wrenches and learn; and, I listen to the technician as he cusses at the unnamed fool who designed this E36 M3 device - and learn.

I think that is more clearly what I meant as well I actually just had a conversation with an enginerd who is assembling a different analyzer unit. Even though both units will be used at the same plant, one must use stainless steel tubing vs the easy-peasy hi-temp PFA tube we used in our shack for instrument air delivery. Needless to say, he's spent days bending 1/4" stainless tube while we just ran PFA to our hearts content I asked him why they didn't spec PFA, and he said the client's engineer for THEIR project said "no" (almost the same shack in close to the same place mind you, based on similiar technology for a different measurement). While I'd like to think there was a reasonable idea behind the no, I think it will probably come down to the specific engineer calling the shots.

And if anything ever goes wrong, I get to completely disassemble the backpan to replace one line on his shack. Yay!

One engineer could have used a safety factor of 4, while the other used a safety factor of 5, and thus the stainless tube was written into spec... So who is the better engineer?

Taiden wrote: One engineer could have used a safety factor of 4, while the other used a safety factor of 5, and thus the stainless tube was written into spec... So who is the better engineer?

Wait a few years, if there's a real difference it will be obvious. Balancing ease of installation/upfront cost vs. req'd time in service or other functional criteria is the crux of engineering. Theory tells us what SHOULD work, practice tells us what DID work, and people that are good draw from both.

The danger is in falling all into one side or the other, at the extremes are engineers who only know theory, but don't know what actually works, vs technicians who only know what has worked, but not necessarily why.

A good technician isn't so different from a good engineer, the biggest difference is their working environment and the tools they use to do their job. But no matter what, the good ones listen and learn from the people on the other side of the building, whether that's an office or shop.