So I seemed to have been nominated for an award of recognition of sorts.  I am not really sure if I won or not or what it means, but regardless my picture is in a magazine, and that always seems to do wonders for a man’s ego.  Here I am hanging out with Marie, Craig, Laura, and Kawika…  ‘New Faces of Engineering’.  Little secret, I am really not an engineer.  I just happen to think like one about half of the time.  But I am really not an engineer.  I have a degree in engineering, but I am really not an engineer.  I may work with engineers on engineering projects, but I’m really not an engineer.  Or am I?

At the end of high school, I was pretty decent in math and science and engineering seemed like a reputable thing to go for… and it sounded like fun.  Engineers get to make robots and airplanes and paintball guns, right?  Well they do, but I don’t.  I remember the moment that it all broke for me.  I was a good three years into my mechanical engineering degree at Cedarville College (now university).  I had spent the last semester beating my head in anguish while taking the dreaded class, strengths of materials.  Dewy (Dewhurst) was my prof, great guy… probably my favorite professor ever.  But it didn’t matter, I don’t think anything could have saved me from the realization I had in this class, it was bound to happen, sooner or later.  This class seemed to culminate much of my formal mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, and critical thinking analysis skills gleaned from the last few years of college.  And it all boiled down to this…

Make metal break the least amount of times for the least amount of money…

I couldn’t handle it.  I broke.  I just sat in class and stared straight ahead.  Dewhurst got pretty worried about me when he noticed that I was not taking a single note while the rest of the class feverishly scribbled diagrams of stress circles.  He tried one time to put the pencil in my hand and get it moving again, but it was a no go.  I had decided, I was not going to be an engineer… not if this is what it meant.  Everyone told me it would be different, its mostly managing people and stuff.  Like that would be any better; just what I wanted to be when I grow up, Bill Lumbergh.

So I stuck it out for a year and graduated.  I didn’t want to do anything but make cool stuff in 3d.  This is what I did instead of studying engineering, and it became all the easier once I had reconciled myself to a non engineering future.  But with all of my formal engineering training what was I to do?  I tried to smash them together, I would work along side engineers, but I would do 3d.  After all, this is what I had been doing at college for the past 4 years, I was pretty used to it.

6 years later… I am still doing exactly that.  And after working along side engineers on engineering projects for 6 years I have now been formally recognized as one of them.  This has become my profession, so far.  It has afforded me to learn everything that I didn’t know to go after when I got out of high school, not to mention a reasonable living.  I should learn to be more gracious, especially when people are trying to give me awards.

Fine, I accept your nomination, but I am still not taking the PE exam.

ACEC Award Nomination Page
 

Categories: Compliments