nukchebi0
Пушкин, наше всё
+387|6293|New Haven, CT
As an engineering major I am eminently qualified to make assertions about the nature of an engineering education. It teaches you to approach problems systematically and logically - useful indeed - but it exercises none of the intellectual faculties; the engagement of ideas, the ability to read and analyze, to craft an argument and express it eloquently. Engineering is painfully focused on the practical, on the details, on the minutiae of any situation. While engineering is essential to society, studying it amounts to depriving oneself of the opportunity presented by a proper liberal arts curriculum. I believe every engineer realizes this at some point in their academic/professional career (I recognized this at the start of this year) and then copes with it by assuming the defensive position of engineering superiority. I would be despondent about my Yale education had I not paired engineering with another major.
AussieReaper
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
+5,761|6122|what

Nobody wants to admit they have wasted years of their life persuing a useless degree.
https://i.imgur.com/maVpUMN.png
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224

AussieReaper wrote:

Nobody wants to admit they have wasted years of their life persuing a useless degree.
you did computer studies. now, in the context of what a university education is supposed to entail, and has done historically and traditionally, do you really think you should be talking about "useless degrees"? by all accounts you spent 3-4 years at university doing a degree that opens less doors than one that reads medieval poetry. your 3 year 'university education' was basically a glorified, over-charged vocational training, specifically tailored towards one job/one field of work. i'd think very hard and carefully about what all those people at the universities in sydney, melbourne, anu etc. are doing before calling academic degrees 'useless'. the plain fact of the matter is that they open more doors, to more prestigious careers, and all actually involve learning something from a corpus of knowledge, and some level of intellectual activity. THAT may be the painful truth you don't "want to admit". the base equation of 'university education' with 'something useful' is philistine and gravely stupid. in 10 years' time when the indian subcontinent is producing 10x more IT professionals/graduates than anywhere else, for 1/2 the wage labour, then whose degree will be 'useless'? essentially your 'university education', traditionally a process of personal development and refinement, was 3 years learning how to be a code-monkey.

don't be so hastily arrogant about matters that are clearly way above your head and ability.
Cheeky_Ninja06
Member
+52|6702|Cambridge, England

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

a-levels are marked different to gcse. uni is marked different from a-levels. why it that a big deal? and no, you should just accept that 100% in a history essay is an absurd concept - that means you 'got everything right' on a topic with no exactly defined right answers. it's not exactly a mind-bending concept to get your ahead around if you just aim for a 70% (i.e. a first-class, the highest degree grade you're going to get if you maintain this at an average).

and the course content/difficulty all depends on where you go. university isn't one-size fits all. a 2:1 second-class from a top university will be considerably better/more achieved/harder than a 1:1 first from a lower-ranked university. if you went to a not very good uni with medium/average/poor entry requirements, of course the content is going to be tailored for people of 'average' intelligence. especially if you are taking a course with someone like the open university, who have such a wide and impossibly diverse student-body (almost entirely studying part-time/from home)... well then the course content has to cater to that. repeat: there is no 'one size fits all'. to discredit university or a subject because your own experiences were not great doesn't really make a lot of sense.

and you must be hard of hearing/reading. i already told you that i have plenty of friends who got history degrees from a good uni and now have very respectable graduate jobs. "does not translate to the workplace" is total bullshit. any good degree from any good university in the UK will get you onto those graduate fast-track schemes. the (literal) stipulated entry requirement for even the most prestigious grad courses in london is "a respectable 2:1" (read: a 2:1 'good' honours from a top25 university). as for "i'm already earning 25k a year"... yes, so are my friends, straight out of university. at the start of their careers, too. i'm a little exasperated here. i can't help but feel you're being a little willfully blind. university graduates earn more than non-graduates, on average, it has just been said before. someone with a good history degree is likely going to climb a career ladder further than you, have more opportunities/doors-opened (especially at mid-career management levels, where a degree becomes 'necessary'), and they're going to have actually had the intellectual/social experience of university, too. this may suck for you to acknowledge, but don't try and twist the reality to make out a history degree is 'useless' in the UK. it isn't. if you had followed all those people from your sixth-form to oxbridge for history, the world would literally be your oyster. most of our senior politicians/lawyers have oxbridge history/related degrees.
But I will have a degree, I just had my employer pay for it. Im saying that I am better off than I would have been if I had got a history degree, got a job and then had to take further training to be able to do that job.

Ill put it this way, I am 23, im currently buying my first house in one of the most expensive areas of the uk outside of london and I have no student loan at all. I would struggle to have improved on that. To be fair if I hadnt fucked up with a crazy ex I would probably have got a house 18 months ago but oh well.
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
well, in the uk i suppose the property issue raises more questions than answers... suffice to say most people who opt for degrees, and even get the best degrees/graduate jobs, end up having high-flying careers without even getting on the property market... london and 'high graduate work' zones are prohibitively expensive. mind you, i am 23 also, and i would never want a mortgage at this age! i still want to visit and live in several other countries before i 'settle down'. i don't see the rush. and i couldn't think of a better way to spend my 20's than throwing money/financial worries to the side and enriching my mind
AussieReaper
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
+5,761|6122|what

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

AussieReaper wrote:

Nobody wants to admit they have wasted years of their life persuing a useless degree.
you did computer studies. now, in the context of what a university education is supposed to entail, and has done historically and traditionally, do you really think you should be talking about "useless degrees"? by all accounts you spent 3-4 years at university doing a degree that opens less doors than one that reads medieval poetry. your 3 year 'university education' was basically a glorified, over-charged vocational training, specifically tailored towards one job/one field of work. i'd think very hard and carefully about what all those people at the universities in sydney, melbourne, anu etc. are doing before calling academic degrees 'useless'. the plain fact of the matter is that they open more doors, to more prestigious careers, and all actually involve learning something from a corpus of knowledge, and some level of intellectual activity. THAT may be the painful truth you don't "want to admit". the base equation of 'university education' with 'something useful' is philistine and gravely stupid. in 10 years' time when the indian subcontinent is producing 10x more IT professionals/graduates than anywhere else, for 1/2 the wage labour, then whose degree will be 'useless'? essentially your 'university education', traditionally a process of personal development and refinement, was 3 years learning how to be a code-monkey.

don't be so hastily arrogant about matters that are clearly way above your head and ability.
Thinking that an IT degree tailors towards one job / one field of work is hilarious.
https://i.imgur.com/maVpUMN.png
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224

AussieReaper wrote:

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

AussieReaper wrote:

Nobody wants to admit they have wasted years of their life persuing a useless degree.
you did computer studies. now, in the context of what a university education is supposed to entail, and has done historically and traditionally, do you really think you should be talking about "useless degrees"? by all accounts you spent 3-4 years at university doing a degree that opens less doors than one that reads medieval poetry. your 3 year 'university education' was basically a glorified, over-charged vocational training, specifically tailored towards one job/one field of work. i'd think very hard and carefully about what all those people at the universities in sydney, melbourne, anu etc. are doing before calling academic degrees 'useless'. the plain fact of the matter is that they open more doors, to more prestigious careers, and all actually involve learning something from a corpus of knowledge, and some level of intellectual activity. THAT may be the painful truth you don't "want to admit". the base equation of 'university education' with 'something useful' is philistine and gravely stupid. in 10 years' time when the indian subcontinent is producing 10x more IT professionals/graduates than anywhere else, for 1/2 the wage labour, then whose degree will be 'useless'? essentially your 'university education', traditionally a process of personal development and refinement, was 3 years learning how to be a code-monkey.

don't be so hastily arrogant about matters that are clearly way above your head and ability.
Thinking that an IT degree tailors towards one job / one field of work is hilarious.
there is no contest here. a 'traditional' academic core subject has a relation to the job-market in that it banks on prestige/acknowledged difficulty/class factor to wing fresh graduates into graduate work schemes that then train them on the job. all of the worlds top financial, pr/advertising, consultancy etc. firms will recruit from a pool of graduates with completely vocationally unrelated degrees - from physics to ancient history - because the 'good' degrees denote a certain level of intelligence/education in the candidate that 'carries weight'. after that, a career is made in-itself. 'good' degrees from 'good' universities will open more doors than a vocation/industry specific degree, period. if you think an IT degree from a technical college is going to get you more opportunities than the sydney english major, you are either incredibly naive or sadly deluded.

and an IT degree is far more narrow in scope than a 'traditional' academic degree - both in its course content and its future applicability (think of those who have mid-life crises and want to change career-path/direction altogether). you can laugh at the fine details, but you're the guy that made out 'communications' majors mainly went on to become "news-anchors". (ok dave).

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-26 17:47:32)

Macbeth
Banned
+2,444|5555

Take it to the college thread guys.
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England

nukchebi0 wrote:

As an engineering major I am eminently qualified to make assertions about the nature of an engineering education. It teaches you to approach problems systematically and logically - useful indeed - but it exercises none of the intellectual faculties; the engagement of ideas, the ability to read and analyze, to craft an argument and express it eloquently. Engineering is painfully focused on the practical, on the details, on the minutiae of any situation. While engineering is essential to society, studying it amounts to depriving oneself of the opportunity presented by a proper liberal arts curriculum. I believe every engineer realizes this at some point in their academic/professional career (I recognized this at the start of this year) and then copes with it by assuming the defensive position of engineering superiority. I would be despondent about my Yale education had I not paired engineering with another major.
None of the intellectual faculties? Engineering school is about learning how to think critically about how to solve problems. It pulls stuff from everywhere, psychology, business, and a bit of philosophy. If you're focusing on just the formulaic problems you're tasked with in the core classes you're missing the point. Yes, the formulas matter when you're learning, but the how and why that goes into solving the problem is infinitely more important. Wait until you reach your senior year and have completed your senior design project before passing judgement. You can design anything in the world on paper, but the most critical skill is being able to sell your idea to others, and that requirs economic justifications and the ability to write clearly and persuasively. The formulas you learn ultimately don't matter in the real world, design software like Revit and SolidWorks do that for you. Communication trumps all.

Last edited by Jay (2013-04-26 17:53:08)

"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
i'm sure engineering school involves more "critical thinking" and "stuff from everywhere" than a humanities or liberal arts degree, which are focused, oh, you know, largely on critical thinking/analysis, and reading source material from everywhere to synthesize original arguments behold: the engineers' myopia.
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England
Are you chem, mech or EE?
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
i think jay is also forgetting that he linked one of his 'critical thinking' essays here on this forum before, and it was literally a high-school level reading assignment. clearly a complex intellectual mind sculpted by the engineering course.
nukchebi0
Пушкин, наше всё
+387|6293|New Haven, CT
I'm mechanical engineering. Your response proved my point - the core classes of an engineering degree have little value other than teaching you how to approach a problem. That's useful in a job environment, I suppose, or at home when you have a broken gutter, but its not the point of your undergraduate education. It seems pretty clear to me that studying engineering ruins your undergraduate experience by making it miserably hard while depriving you of the critical thinking and writing provided by the humanities and social sciences.

I'm writing this as a senior who is three weeks from graduating from Yale; I think its a fair time to reflect on the nature of the engineering study. I would be truly depressed and completely (rather than partially) destroyed by regret had I not decided to do the less intensive engineering track and major in something else as well.
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England

nukchebi0 wrote:

I'm mechanical engineering. Your response proved my point - the core classes of an engineering degree have little value other than teaching you how to approach a problem. That's useful in a job environment, I suppose, or at home when you have a broken gutter, but its not the point of your undergraduate education. It seems pretty clear to me that studying engineering ruins your undergraduate experience by making it miserably hard while depriving you of the critical thinking and writing provided by the humanities and social sciences.

I'm writing this as a senior who is three weeks from graduating from Yale; I think its a fair time to reflect on the nature of the engineering study. I would be truly depressed and completely (rather than partially) destroyed by regret had I not decided to do the less intensive engineering track and major in something else as well.
So you're not even in the ABET accredited program? What a waste of time. No wonder you're bitter
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224

Jay wrote:

nukchebi0 wrote:

I'm mechanical engineering. Your response proved my point - the core classes of an engineering degree have little value other than teaching you how to approach a problem. That's useful in a job environment, I suppose, or at home when you have a broken gutter, but its not the point of your undergraduate education. It seems pretty clear to me that studying engineering ruins your undergraduate experience by making it miserably hard while depriving you of the critical thinking and writing provided by the humanities and social sciences.

I'm writing this as a senior who is three weeks from graduating from Yale; I think its a fair time to reflect on the nature of the engineering study. I would be truly depressed and completely (rather than partially) destroyed by regret had I not decided to do the less intensive engineering track and major in something else as well.
So you're not even in the ABET accredited program? What a waste of time. No wonder you're bitter
should have gone to suny maritime
nukchebi0
Пушкин, наше всё
+387|6293|New Haven, CT

Jay wrote:

nukchebi0 wrote:

I'm mechanical engineering. Your response proved my point - the core classes of an engineering degree have little value other than teaching you how to approach a problem. That's useful in a job environment, I suppose, or at home when you have a broken gutter, but its not the point of your undergraduate education. It seems pretty clear to me that studying engineering ruins your undergraduate experience by making it miserably hard while depriving you of the critical thinking and writing provided by the humanities and social sciences.

I'm writing this as a senior who is three weeks from graduating from Yale; I think its a fair time to reflect on the nature of the engineering study. I would be truly depressed and completely (rather than partially) destroyed by regret had I not decided to do the less intensive engineering track and major in something else as well.
So you're not even in the ABET accredited program? What a waste of time. No wonder you're bitter
Doing the ABET accredited program exacerbates the damage engineering does to an undergraduate education because it completely removes the possibility of receiving real exposure to the humanities and social sciences. I was fortunately wise enough as a freshman to recognize that Yale's ABET program negated the point of attending Yale, and consequently targeted the less intensive track while pursuing a double major in another discipline.

Perhaps majoring in engineering when you attend a less prestigious school is a prudent move where economic surety after graduation warrants sacrificing your experience and intellectual development. It's certainly not the case at Yale.
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
i think almost everyone here is unfortunate enough to regard "economic surety" above the whimsical idea of 'intellectual nourishment'. that's the prevailing attitude from several years of posting, when the only people left still on this forum - let alone still left in this 'discussion' - are the obstinate, dyed-in-the-wool types who are hardly going to let their technicist weltanschauung be altered by someone's reasoning or information.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-26 19:06:54)

13urnzz
Banned
+5,830|6467

i'm fine with where i'm at, it took me a lifetime to get here.

you would be a fine example of of wit, knowledge, and a first world person if you weren't a cunt and nikulturny . . .
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England

nukchebi0 wrote:

Jay wrote:

nukchebi0 wrote:

I'm mechanical engineering. Your response proved my point - the core classes of an engineering degree have little value other than teaching you how to approach a problem. That's useful in a job environment, I suppose, or at home when you have a broken gutter, but its not the point of your undergraduate education. It seems pretty clear to me that studying engineering ruins your undergraduate experience by making it miserably hard while depriving you of the critical thinking and writing provided by the humanities and social sciences.

I'm writing this as a senior who is three weeks from graduating from Yale; I think its a fair time to reflect on the nature of the engineering study. I would be truly depressed and completely (rather than partially) destroyed by regret had I not decided to do the less intensive engineering track and major in something else as well.
So you're not even in the ABET accredited program? What a waste of time. No wonder you're bitter
Doing the ABET accredited program exacerbates the damage engineering does to an undergraduate education because it completely removes the possibility of receiving real exposure to the humanities and social sciences. I was fortunately wise enough as a freshman to recognize that Yale's ABET program negated the point of attending Yale, and consequently targeted the less intensive track while pursuing a double major in another discipline.

Perhaps majoring in engineering when you attend a less prestigious school is a prudent move where economic surety after graduation warrants sacrificing your experience and intellectual development. It's certainly not the case at Yale.
Ok, so you didn't enjoy engineering, so why did you stick with it? And who is preventing you from getting a masters in something you really do enjoy?

Why you would half-ass an engineering degree with a non-ABET version is beyond me. It's not about money, it's about being able to get your damn license. It's about being able to sign your own drawings and not being stuck as an operating or low level design engineer the rest of your life. No one in this industry gives a flying fuck about your tie pin either. That shit only awes morons with humanities degrees from state schools.

Here's the big newsflash for you though: learning doesn't stop when you leave the classroom. There's nothing preventing you from taking an interest in philosophy or literature or whatever else you take a liking to. It becomes infinitely easier to pursue those interests when you're making a paycheck larger than that of a barrista, so I guess you're fucked. $160k down the drain. Too bad.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+794|6654|United States of America

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

i think almost everyone here is unfortunate enough to regard "economic surety" above the whimsical idea of 'intellectual nourishment'. that's the prevailing attitude from several years of posting, when the only people left still on this forum - let alone still left in this 'discussion' - are the obstinate, dyed-in-the-wool types who are hardly going to let their technicist weltanschauung be altered by someone's reasoning or information.
Maybe it's due to the fact that your postsecondary education doesn't require you to spend decades paying it off that you're more free to satiate your intellectual cravings. Doing a degree here requires you to invest a lot more so you'd better find yourself in something that will work to pay it back (granted, that is a gross oversimplification since I know people in a variety of fields from professional flight technology to interior design). I believe you said it before that it's likely more a hedging of ones bets than a rejection of mental pursuits.
nukchebi0
Пушкин, наше всё
+387|6293|New Haven, CT

Jay wrote:

nukchebi0 wrote:

Jay wrote:


So you're not even in the ABET accredited program? What a waste of time. No wonder you're bitter
Doing the ABET accredited program exacerbates the damage engineering does to an undergraduate education because it completely removes the possibility of receiving real exposure to the humanities and social sciences. I was fortunately wise enough as a freshman to recognize that Yale's ABET program negated the point of attending Yale, and consequently targeted the less intensive track while pursuing a double major in another discipline.

Perhaps majoring in engineering when you attend a less prestigious school is a prudent move where economic surety after graduation warrants sacrificing your experience and intellectual development. It's certainly not the case at Yale.
Ok, so you didn't enjoy engineering, so why did you stick with it? And who is preventing you from getting a masters in something you really do enjoy?

Why you would half-ass an engineering degree with a non-ABET version is beyond me. It's not about money, it's about being able to get your damn license. It's about being able to sign your own drawings and not being stuck as an operating or low level design engineer the rest of your life. No one in this industry gives a flying fuck about your tie pin either. That shit only awes morons with humanities degrees from state schools.

Here's the big newsflash for you though: learning doesn't stop when you leave the classroom. There's nothing preventing you from taking an interest in philosophy or literature or whatever else you take a liking to. It becomes infinitely easier to pursue those interests when you're making a paycheck larger than that of a barrista, so I guess you're fucked. $160k down the drain. Too bad.
I stuck with it because I didn't realize my true distaste for it until my senior year, at which point I had so much committed that the cost of continuing and finishing the degree was lower than the benefit derived from attaining it (i.e. the increased respect from employers, and satisfaction at having completed the degree). When I went into Yale, I thought I would enjoy it and thought that the benefits of "learning to think like an engineer" would be worth it. I never planned to become a professional engineer; I simply thought it would be a worthwhile academic endeavor. In retrospect, though, it is clearly lacking compared to humanities and social sciences.

I am aware that learning doesn't end when you leave the classroom, but your undergraduate education is a unique and formative four years where you have easy access to the best academics in their respective fields. Reading a philosopher is one thing, but having an expert/other bright students to discuss and argue with greatly enhances the knowledge you gain. Sacrificing the opportunity of an undergraduate liberal arts education for what is a highly glorified form of vocational training is a painful pill to swallow; that is why engineering culture has developed to glorify itself and denigrate "lesser" courses of study. It's simply a coping mechanism for the sad truth that they wasted four years of their life being miserable. I am not immune from this; I openly look down on humanities majors, even while I'm secretly jealous that they took better classes. Like I said, had I not also majored in something else, I would be completely consumed with regret.

In the end, though, I didn't entirely waste four years and 160K (my family spent less than 35K on my education). I took enough humanities/social science classes to ensure I have reasoning and writing skills, and I'll still have a Yale degree - I am not facing the specter of minimum wage employment. Maybe I'm simply lucky that I got to attend a prestigious university and had the choice to major in something else without destroying my economic future. That doesn't change the reality of an engineering education, or the means by which engineers suppress it.
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5327|London, England

nukchebi0 wrote:

Jay wrote:

nukchebi0 wrote:


Doing the ABET accredited program exacerbates the damage engineering does to an undergraduate education because it completely removes the possibility of receiving real exposure to the humanities and social sciences. I was fortunately wise enough as a freshman to recognize that Yale's ABET program negated the point of attending Yale, and consequently targeted the less intensive track while pursuing a double major in another discipline.

Perhaps majoring in engineering when you attend a less prestigious school is a prudent move where economic surety after graduation warrants sacrificing your experience and intellectual development. It's certainly not the case at Yale.
Ok, so you didn't enjoy engineering, so why did you stick with it? And who is preventing you from getting a masters in something you really do enjoy?

Why you would half-ass an engineering degree with a non-ABET version is beyond me. It's not about money, it's about being able to get your damn license. It's about being able to sign your own drawings and not being stuck as an operating or low level design engineer the rest of your life. No one in this industry gives a flying fuck about your tie pin either. That shit only awes morons with humanities degrees from state schools.

Here's the big newsflash for you though: learning doesn't stop when you leave the classroom. There's nothing preventing you from taking an interest in philosophy or literature or whatever else you take a liking to. It becomes infinitely easier to pursue those interests when you're making a paycheck larger than that of a barrista, so I guess you're fucked. $160k down the drain. Too bad.
I stuck with it because I didn't realize my true distaste for it until my senior year, at which point I had so much committed that the cost of continuing and finishing the degree was lower than the benefit derived from attaining it (i.e. the increased respect from employers, and satisfaction at having completed the degree). When I went into Yale, I thought I would enjoy it and thought that the benefits of "learning to think like an engineer" would be worth it. I never planned to become a professional engineer; I simply thought it would be a worthwhile academic endeavor. In retrospect, though, it is clearly lacking compared to humanities and social sciences.

I am aware that learning doesn't end when you leave the classroom, but your undergraduate education is a unique and formative four years where you have easy access to the best academics in their respective fields. Reading a philosopher is one thing, but having an expert/other bright students to discuss and argue with greatly enhances the knowledge you gain. Sacrificing the opportunity of an undergraduate liberal arts education for what is a highly glorified form of vocational training is a painful pill to swallow; that is why engineering culture has developed to glorify itself and denigrate "lesser" courses of study. It's simply a coping mechanism for the sad truth that they wasted four years of their life being miserable. I am not immune from this; I openly look down on humanities majors, even while I'm secretly jealous that they took better classes. Like I said, had I not also majored in something else, I would be completely consumed with regret.

In the end, though, I didn't entirely waste four years and 160K (my family spent less than 35K on my education). I took enough humanities/social science classes to ensure I have reasoning and writing skills, and I'll still have a Yale degree - I am not facing the specter of minimum wage employment. Maybe I'm simply lucky that I got to attend a prestigious university and had the choice to major in something else without destroying my economic future. That doesn't change the reality of an engineering education, or the means by which engineers suppress it.
As I've said before, engineering isn't for everyone. Personally, I had a lot of fun as an undergrad in my engineering program. Sure, the classes were a lot of work, but I made a lot of friends in school and I felt like I learned a lot of interesting things. I don't know many people who make it to senior year in engineering school still thinking it's about the paycheck, those people get weeded out after freshman and sophomore year by the sheer difficulty of the material they are presented with. The people who remain want to create things, tangible things, that will hopefully stand long after they are gone from this earth.

What I do for work isn't always the most exciting, and some days it's downright tedious, but I get immense satisfaction when a project is completed and I can walk down the street saying 'I helped build that'. There will only be a handful of people in the world that will know that I contributed to it, but it's my own small piece of immortality. That high really can't be topped by anything. Being in combat had it's own form of high built purely off of fear and adrenaline, but seeing your creative efforts go into building something permanent is pure pride; creative pride rather than destructive. It makes everything all worthwhile.

If you never had any intention of becoming a PE then you did indeed waste your time, because you will never understand that feeling. I could've saved you four years by telling you that if your goal was to think like an engineer, think analytically and seek efficiency in everything. That's it. The big secret.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
the thing that is always kind of silly is that engineers have to construct this notion that what they are doing, because it requires a specific skillset or method of thought, is the most 'difficult'. it's like a dogmatism unto itself. engineers abhor the idea that anyone else may be doing something as difficult, demanding, or complex... but just in another field. especially the idea of another field or area of human endeavor that requires a completely alien skillset. they abhor that. masters of creation, and all that. there's only one god in this church. they think that because the engineering profession is 'valued' in the (predominantly american) labour market - engineers moan a lot in the UK, for instance - that their role is therefore more intrinsically 'worthy', or translates into some sort of intellectual analogy. of course it doesn't.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-27 05:51:39)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6075|eXtreme to the maX
We've done this before haven't we?

Its partly about difficulty, and partly about responsibility and consequences.

Its much harder doing something where you can be proven wrong than in a subject where its all opinion isn't it?

Its much harder dealing with the vagaries of the physical world, than words on a page which can be rubbed out and rearranged if things don't work out eh?

Did anyone's life ever depend on you getting your sentence structure right? Has anyone ever taken multi-million pound decisions based on the quality of your prose? If you make a slip with your punctuation is it likely you'll be hauled before a court and potentially imprisoned?

You're a trivial dilettante wasting your life on nothing in a backwater no-one is interested in, at the same time ridiculing those who do take decisions and bear the responsibility out in the real world.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!

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