Why do you want to be an engineer?

The second set of engineering 098 projects have begun. For this project, I decided to go with my intended major: electrical engineering. I want to decide if this is what I want to do for “the next 40 years” as my one professor put it.

Professor Best walked into the lab on Wednesday and addressed his new students. “Why do you want to be an engineer?” It’s a question some of us freshman ask ourselves everyday.

“I like math and physics.” Andrew replied.

“Why not become a mathematician, or a physicist then?” Professor Best questioned. “You! Why do you want to be an engineer?”

“I don’t know.” Another student said.

“A very good answer,” Professor Best noted as he wrote these ideas on the chalkboard. “You,” he pointed right at me. “Why do you want be an engineer?”

“I want to make stuff.” I answered.

“Great!” He said as he wrote it on the board, noting that he especially enjoyed the word “stuff.”

He continued to question the class for the next 15 minutes or so. Answers ranged from improving products to saving the environment. We went on to discus that engineering is more of a thought process. Engineers think a certain way.

He told us about a few stories from some books he read. You’ll have to forgive me, as I forget the details of the stories. But the one that stuck with me (sort of) was the Nobel committee knocking on an engineers door. They asked the man how his product worked. He replied that he had no idea. They asked him then how did he build it. He said that he made it work.

That’s exactly it. Engineers make things work. They don’t necessarily understand why they work, but they can make things work nonetheless. Professor Best described it as this: Engineers make something unsatisfactory satisfactory.

How does one accomplish this?

Professor Best used an analogy of wanting to cross a river to get to a pub to watch a game.

Some of the answers included swimming, building a bridge, finding a bridge upstream, jumping the river, flying over the river,  using a boat, and damning the river. No answer was out of the question.

Professor Best then had us consider what makes an answer the best.

“Simplicity,” a girl in the back of the room offered.

“The fastest way,” the student to the right of me answered.

Both I and another student shouted out an answer at the same time. I said “whichever is cheapest.” He suggested “the safest way.” A few students laughed at irony of how our replies often conflict in the real world.

The truth is all of these things have to be taken in to account in engineering: ethics, politics, feasibility, safety, economics, and ease of use to just name a few. The best answer is whichever answer makes the unsatisfactory situation satisfactory.

This lead us to the whole premiss of our project. “You are to figure out a way to measure the amount of moisture in soil. There are many ways to do this, but I urge you to try to come up with your own process. There is one rule to this, and that rule is not to just take a solution from an upperclassmen or look it up on the internet.”

Looking it up would destroy the whole concept of the project. It’s not about coming up with a final result; it’s about understanding the process. Sometimes it’s not about the destination, but the journey to get there.