Matt likes to make fun of engineers a lot. He thinks all they do is plug numbers into equations. He considers them "less than" scientists. I like to defend engineers because I spent two and a half years in an engineering program before dropping out. In addition, both of us have graduate degrees from a college of engineering (although our program is no longer in that college).
Many of my jobs have bordered on engineering, and my first job out of grad school was even classified as Environmental Engineer. I have developed models, reviewed savings calculations from energy efficiency measures, and tried to understand various technologies as I help develop federal energy efficiency standards.
I am spending three days in a class about pumping systems, which will culminate in a test to become a qualified pump systems specialist, or some such designation. This test is really all about plugging numbers into equations, and in particular a tool that does all the calculations for you. This is definitely the part of engineering that Matt likes to make fun of, and it is certainly boring me to no end. I am glad I get to spend most of my days thinking about bigger picture issues like how to regulate pumps and other equipment instead of using these equations over and over again. (And I realize regulations probably sounds amazingly boring to a lot of other people! And it certainly can be.) One of the girls in my class (two others finally showed up) has her own company that does things such as performing audits to improve energy efficiency, and she noted that she likes being able to see a result at the end of every day. I may not see a result for three years, if ever. So I guess there are trade offs to everything!
1 comment:
Can you imagine if they hired scientists to, say, design a bridge, though? Years later, they would produce a report about some esoteric topic only peripherally related to the original project, and call it a day.
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