Column: ASUSU View; Engineers are easy to spot on campus, ASUSU senator gears up for upcoming Engineering Week
When I was 9, a friend of mine told me their dad was an engineer. I thought to myself, “That’s too bad. That must be boring driving a train all day.” As I’ve grown up, I’ve come to realize that engineering has nothing to do with driving trains, but sadly, many people have little understanding of who engineers are or what they do.
Some even believe that studying electrical engineering means you want to become an electrician or that studying mechanical engineering means you want to be a mechanic. Not so. Hopefully, I will be able to clear up some of these misconceptions.
You can generally identify an engineer by the age of 10. They’re the kid that takes everything apart to see what’s going on inside. When I was little, I took apart a typewriter and our family phone. I was fascinated at how it all worked and wanted to see what made it go.
After taking the objects apart, I realized it was hopeless and so I pounded on them with a hammer to see how they would break. Then I threw them away. Most engineers can relate to taking things apart as a child and always wondering what’s going on inside the box.
When we get to school, we become the students that you only see in a) the ENGR building or b) the library. You will rarely see us anywhere else including the TSC, basketball games or social functions. Why? We are always doing homework. Not that we want to be studying.
We’d much rather be socializing at a basketball game than surrounded by stressed out stinky engineers solving Fourier Transforms and fourth-order differential equations, but the truth is, the potential dates we’re missing at the basketball game can’t help us pass our classes and sometimes the stinkiest engineers are the smartest (no shower time equates to more homework time).
If we want to pass our classes, we can expect to be on campus 50-70 hours a week in classes, working on homework or in labs. It is grueling.
If you have ever seen us outside of a) or b) you can identify us because we look a little overworked and underfed. During a semester, we can expect to lose anywhere between five and 15 pounds without doing any exercise. It’s the engineering diet, and it works great! Honestly, there just isn’t time to eat.
Now, you may be asking yourselves, “Why would anyone do that?” The truth is: we love to learn, we love a challenge and we want to understand how things work. Of course, the starting salary of $50,000-$60,000 isn’t too bad either.
When I tell people I’m an electrical engineer, some ask me if I can build computers. One aspect of electrical engineering is studying how computers work. While we may not have “num-chuck” skills most engineers have “computer-hacking skills.” As an engineer, however, I would ask myself these questions: What can I do to make the computer run faster? More efficiently? Or make it cheaper?
Similarly, mechanical engineers could look at an engine and ask themselves what changes could be made to make it run more efficiently, cleaner or quieter. A civil engineer could ask the question: How big of a building could be built on the Quad and what kinds of materials would be needed to ensure the building wouldn’t collapse if there was an earthquake?
Biological engineers could investigate which parts of DNA cause certain defects and then would study ways to correct the problem.
These are all just simple examples of the different things engineers do. The reality is that the options are limitless within each engineering discipline.
Next week we are celebrating Engineering Week. I invite all of you to come and see how we have put into practice some of things we have learned in school. If you like, you can even participate. There is a mobile robots competition, a magnetic cannon competition, bridge building and even a pinewood derby race – all part of Engineering Week. Hopefully you’ll see that though we’re engineers, we’re still people too. And if it makes you feel better, I promise we’ll hide our pocket protectors.
Lincoln Essig is the ASUSU Engineering Senator. Comments can be sent to lincolnessig@cc.usu.edu.