Friday, August 21, 2020
Why did the engineer cross the road
Why did the engineer cross the road While you guys anxiously await admissions decisions, I have one piece of advice: smile :) I wrote this entry a few weeks ago, but wanted to save it for finals week / early action decisions pandemonium as reminder not to take life too seriously. As a senior, Iâve been on the prowl for post-graduation opportunities. This means talking to the career office, going to info sessions, and wading through the internetâs many offerings of chemical engineering industry opportunities. Recently, I came upon this one for a junior polymer engineer at a hydrocarbon recovery plant. Can I just point out that a sense of humor is âessentialâ for this career? A posting for another opportunity said, âTechnical applicants must be able to demonstrate proficiency in at least one programming language. Sense of humor requiredâ¦Seriously.â All of a sudden, Iâm starting to see that humor is valued as much as other typical applicant qualities, which leaves me wondering how in the world it makes such a difference. I talked to a couple of the Gordon Engineering Leadership (GEL) staff about this, and they said some interesting things in defense of humor. GEL program Co-Director, MIT alum, and course VI professor Joel Schindall reflected, âLeaders who can joke around or take a joke when appropriate are certainly easier to work with.â He described the marketing manager, Gary, of the first company he worked for, as someone who frequently joked around with the engineers. â[The engineers] liked it, and when Gary had technical questions from a customer, they would always find time to get him an answer even if they were busy with something else. In addition, Gary would always treat them to coffee when they met at the coffee machine. Coffee was only a quarter in those days, and Gary would say âwhere else can you buy peoples cooperation for only a quarter?ââ Schindall recalled. GEL Executive Director Leo McGonagle said he feels âvery strongly that a good sense of humor is important.â And itâs not just engineering that can benefit: âI would often also emphasize this with my ROTC students as well (the military is a deadly serious profession, but a good sense of humor is still important).â A healthy sense of humor, he added, âhelps keep us humble and not take ourselves too seriously, or to feel too self-important. It also shows that, while work is important, were human, and we need to be able to have fun and enjoy what were doingâ"when thatâs appropriate.â In my experience, humor has single-handedly gotten me through the past three-and-a-half years of drinking from the MIT firehose. During my UROP last year, my supervisor and I were looking for ways to suspend some silicon slides in a round-bottom flask. If we just let them sink to the bottom of our reaction solution, essentially only one side would be exposed to the solution, so our product yield was half of its potential. It seemed like we tried everything to get the reaction to happen on both sides of the slides: We tied them to the top of the flask, we used an Eppendorf tube as a flotation device, we tried to use wire to hold it in place. Each time I came into lab, my supervisor and I joked that it was time for âarts and crafts.â With each disappointment, we would start thinking farther and farther outside of the box for the next idea. Laughing made it much more relaxed and interesting for me. Trust me, when youâre drilling miniature holes into a plastic tube and using it for something completely separate from its intended use, it becomes more of a competition (âThat idea was crazy! How can we top that?â) than a chore. I particularly enjoyed a past lecture when a professor used this image to describe how things in engineering are never as simple as they seem: This is apparently the logo for an indie rock band in England. Oh, if only it was this easy to fly. Ill admit, I googled get cape wear cap fly to find this image. At MIT, you can either be defeated by a challenge, or laugh it off with your friends as you work into the early morning. Letâs be honest, when you get an email, as I recently did, for a certain class that begins with, âObviously, the homework set is way much more complicated than expectedâ and ends, âAnd again, no stress. Youâll be fine,â youâre going to need a good sense of humor to push through the upcoming challenge. And maybe a large coffee.
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