I disagree, it was worse than that. Many of the foreign students were there for the prestige. We had a number of knuckle busters in College. Had a helluva blast too. One of the most famous sayings was, "and how do you propose to build that?" or gee can you get a wrench in there. In a structures class we had folks who had no clue what the "grain" was in timber. Your right in many instances. The other things is that engineers need to get some political backbone.

in grad school, the professor asked what reliability was required for a manned flight

many answered "around 95%"

you don't want any of them designing missiles
the starting answer is at leat 6 9's

When I started out in Engineering, I was a Field Engineer. We made things work out of the stuff sent to the field.

I had 2 trainees:

#1: Crazy kid - This kid told me stories of making "monster bikes" as a kid, by taking the wheel of a BMX bike and putting it on a 10 speed

#2: Well groomed kid - This guy came to me and said he had a flat tire and needed to get it fixed. I thought he should take it to K-Mart, etc. Then I remembered he had a rental car. I told him to take it back to the rental car company.

THEN he tells me it's on his bicycle. I should have run him off the site! I cannot believe someone can have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and have never changed a bicycle tire.

Someone once showed me a piece of MDF and said 'look how close the grain is, what kind of wood is this?'.

Engineered wood.

I work on construction projects, so four out of five people are engineers. Engineers are interesting, I nearly became one. My favorite engineering joke:

An optimist says the glass is half full. A pessimist says it is half empty. What does an engineer say?


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The glass is too big.

(I think this joke is hilarious. Engineers don't get it.)

Just throw it AWAY! Then buy a new one! Lather/Rinse/Repeat...

What's worse is I have a shop full of machinists & maybe one is mechanically inclinded! How does that happen?:rolleyes:

Not good.

At our school all engineering students (Civil, Mechanical and Electrical) took surveying, machine shop and circuits/power lab for their required summer session. That tended to weed out the dandies.

The chemical engineering students had a grueling summer session, mostly spent at the pilot plant, but they toughed it out so that they could get careers with Aurthur Anderson... Maybe 10% actually got ChemE jobs.

Metallurgical Engineers -- we got to learn blacksmithing. Everyone got their hands dirty...

But seriously,

What they don't teach engineers is the ability/willingness to actually do work. I don't know how many new hires have told me "I didn't go to school for 4 years to do that <insert nontechnical/dirty/unpleasant> job".

Ugh.

Seven years of schooling hammered into me that if something has to be done to allow the real workers to work, you have to do it. Mop the floor -- count widgets in boxes for 6 hours if there was a screwup -- whatever -- YOU DO IT. Get it done so the real, value added, work can start. Of course you can grouse about it afterwards, and you should make sure you don't have to do it again because it isn't your job, but if it needed to be done it had to be done.

I, postgraduate degreed engineer, have spent 6 hours picking through garbage for a lost item so that everyone could go home that day (I'm kind of in charge of deciding what can be released). It sucked. I got procedures implemented to avoid such an awkward situation ever again, but I'm OK with having done that. Some of my peers would find it beneath them.

I guess that from time to time, nothing is beneath me.

Thank goodness I put half my beer in a redundant glass.



Things they don't learn in school:

- Most of your duties will be categorized under "Other duties as assigned"
- The customer may not always be right but the customer pays the bills. Make the customer happy.
- There may not always be enough time to do a job "right" but there is always enough time to do it twice if it was done wrong the first time.
- You will eventually specialize in an area where you had no advanced classes.
- Ruggedized computers are not.
- Never underestimate the power of tie wraps, duct tape, and fishing line in a field test.
- Dig, dig, dig. If you do not know the answer then quit talking and find it through whatever method is required.
- Sometimes you actually need a Volkswagen or even a Yugo and not a Cadillac.
- Design and build for maintainability and reusability. After all when it breaks you will have to fix it.


- I still have to use complex math. Although I was hoping it was just a phase....haha

Man, I'm such a geek.

Im an engineer, 28 years in the field...I do suspension bridges and race cars

One thing they should teach us is to sometimes not think like an engineer. Saying you think outside the box is a nice catchphrase.

It's not too big; it just has an ample SF designed into it. :p

I hope you are saying that with pride, not shame.

Absolutely spoken with pride.

Seeing the desk jockies getting their hands dirty doing some of the crap stuff builds solidarity with the folks actually doing the work, as long as it's done quietly without any grandstanding.

Pride and justly so that is the essence of what engineers should be doing. First of all why should all the guys doing the work, the fun stuff get all the fun. And I am not kidding, that desk stuff sucks.

Perhaps that is something else they don't teach you? Enjoy your work and take pride in it.

I don't think that is the issue. The political realities of doing the right thing and the politically expedient thing oft times do not go hand in hand.

There are lots to be proud of.

One of the first things we ask in an engineer's interview is, "do you work on your car?"

If they don't, they're usually crossed off immediately.