Since the first week of college, most of my friends at UD have been engineering majors. As someone who has immersed herself in the social sciences, engineering can be a quite a shock to the system. My engineering friends and I differ in so many ways: from the way we think, to the classes we take, to the way we understand the world. The differences are plenty, but I am forever grateful for the things they have brought to my life: curiosity, craziness, insight. Here are nine thing that I have learned from being friends with engineers.
1. They make your brain hurt.
Think you know physics? Guess what. There are like ten different kinds of physics. And it's all the same except it's also all different. When they talk about their classes, it's like they're speaking another language. No matter how intelligent you are, if you haven't taken their classes, you can't understand anything they're talking about.
2. It's fascinating.
As much as it may seem meticulous and boring from the outside, engineering can really be quite fascinating. If you dare to ask an engineer to explain what they're learning about, it's pretty amazing. The world works in crazy ways, folks.
3. You come to hate the things they hate.
Their stress and fury towards the insanely complicated programs they have to use overflows and expands onto you. I have never used MatLAB, SolidWorks or Multisim, but let me tell you what, I hate them.
4. All their classes sound the same.
Kinetics, Fluid mechanics, Mechanics: Dynamics, Thermodynamics, Mechanics: Strength of Materials, Materials, Transport, Circuits, Hydraulics...like literally WHAT.
5. There's engineering paper everywhere.
On their desk, in the trash, on the kitchen table, on the floor...it follows you; it's inescapable.
6. They notice inconsistencies.
Every try watching an action movie with engineers? I'll save you the trouble: something is wrong. The explosion isn't right, you actually can't fly that high in the air, that force should have acted in the other direction...it's endless.
7. Their mind works differently than yours.
After spending hours upon hours looking at graph paper, crunching numbers, visualizing diagrams and daydreaming about structural integrity, their mind gets in the habit of thinking logically, directly, sequentially and numerically. If you try to throw in some creative and abstract theory with no warning it does. not. compute.
8. Sometimes, they need some comforting.
It's not difficult for them to get lost in a world of equations, and when this happens, they may need something to pull them back into sanity. A good laugh, permission to relax and a reminder that not everything needs to be calculated is sometimes the best support you can give to your engineering pals.
9. You learn and grow from each other.
Take two people have different intellectual passions, have different strengths, see the world through very difference lenses, but respect and care deeply for one another. What do you have? Amazing conversation, deeper understanding, and lot of learning. It's brilliant.
