I have always wondered about myself, if engineering was the right path for me or would I have been happier and more satisfied being a DU student.
There are several reasons why this question surfaces again and again, and for no good reason rattles me by painting a very different "what-if" kind of picture. One of the first reason is my current job and the people I meet in my company. If there is anything I like about my present organisation is that it is so diverse and full of so many kinds of people, that one ends up getting exposed to new perspectives on a continuous basis. In my student life, my perspectives however rich or 'bright' were more or less similar from what I would get from the very next person on the campus. In my office however, there is such multiplicity of opinion, such range of thought and thought processes, such diversity in analyzing a problem, that one truly ponders as to which side I belong to.
If it is to be believed that all wisdom is nothing but a sum of all of one's prejudices, then allow me to present a few. There are very fundamental differences in how engineers analyse any issue versus the others. Engineers, in my opinion, are in fact trained to have that particular chain of thought. They would try and dissect every possible cause of the issue and analyse them separately, and then try to see how the other factors are affecting each of these causal parameters. They would then assign weightages to each of these factors and come out with in what there opinion seems to be the main crux of the issue at hand.
An accountant, would have a different chain of thought. He would first try and focus on the limits of the issue and where does the issue cease to exist. He would then see that if the issue is still relevant depending on the proximity of this limit and see if there is anything they have missed out on while looking at the issue at hand. They would then not dissect the issue but look at it as a whole and do some analysis as to what is the effect of other extraneous factors on the issue at hand and present their opinion and ways to circumvent it on the basis of all this.
A liberal arts student, would look at the issue very differently and would again not break the issue into factors but try and jump directly onto the factor he thinks is the most important and focus only on that. He would also not focus on analyzing the affect of other factors on this root cause that he has predicted but try to find justifications as to why the root cause is important and in the end convince everyone, successfully in most cases, that the root cause identified is in fact the driving force. He would focus more on the flow of sense and choose words carefully (or for more affluent ones, automatically) which help him put other person's opinion agree with his.
Now in my opinion, all these approaches are fine and there is no right and wrong. Some may be more beneficial in some kind of problems and some others might be needed in some other issue analysis. We as engineers, however, are more arrogant and somewhat stubborn on our approach compared to the other two. We believe (or most that I know of do) that there is a logic behind the approach we follow, and hence that is the correct one. What we fail to realise is that even though there might be apparent logic in our thinking process, one method would not solve every problem in the most efficient way.
I remember I used to play this game of guessing with my friend in school. The point of the game was to correctly guess a four digit number that the other person had thought of, in minimum number of guesses. On every guess, the person knowing the number would tell the guesser, the number of cows, or the digits that matched with the target number but not in the right place, and the number of bulls, or the digits with the position that matched with the target number.
Now my strategy was pretty scientific and straightforward, I would try 4 numbers at a time sequentially and based on the results rule out or identify the target digits and their placements. It was a failsafe, foolproof and the most risk free method to get to the result.
But the game was not about being risk free.
My friend managed to win almost every time we used to play. He also used similar logic that I used to get to the answer, but with one critical difference. Instead of going sequentially, he would look at the room, the wall, or any other random irrelevant thing and write his first guess with some random four digits which seemed to be inspired by whatever he was looking at moments ago. In most cases, he got very close to the answer and in others, it was so way off, that the complimentary set of digits became the obvious choice. Then, he would reach the target number in less than half the number of guesses it took me. Only to show that at some places, you need to weigh the seemingly right approach with the more practical and efficient one.
Coming back to my original question, even though my mind has got limited experience to approaches considered non-engineer like, there are evidences that made me think that DU would have been a good way to go. For example, the only course I scored a 10/10 in college was English Literature. Once asked in an interview, about my favorite course in college, the first course that came to my mind was of economics and psychology, not any chemical engineering course that I was supposed to answer. I have always considered myself as more of a creative person who has a scientific bent of mind. Also, once I got into college, I had tried my hand at everything from tech to dramatics, to dance, to organisational activities, to elections and politics; and what I really enjoyed were all things which normally are not related to engineering. I tried to pursue tech, got some initial success too, but then when failures started showing up, I gave it up completely. Its not that I am not interested in tech, you can leave me in a croma store for hours and i would never get bored, its only that while at college, I found more interesting things to do.
Getting into professional career, it seems not only does being an engineer differentiates your thinking process, but also slows down your career progression. It takes 4 years to become an engineer, and for dimwits like me, one year just to get into a decent college. So a total of 5, versus someone who graduated from an Arts/Commerce/Pure Sciences course in 3 yrs, and went on to do masters or MBA, one has 2 qualifications by the time we end up with one. Also, the study pressures are much lesser in DU compared to engineering. I know the story changes when we compare it with doctors, but lets face it, doctors are a league apart. So if I end up with the numbers, its actually less beneficial for a students of equal caliber to do engineering barring situations where the person is exceptionally bright.
But the story isn't all that bad too.
I think as engineers, we do have a formidable advantage sometimes. While in some situations such as my friend's school game it may prove to be a disadvantageous, those situations are very far and apart in life. For most problems, it is in fact more practical to follow the engineer approach rather than any other.
So the question still remains....but the question of what should one have been versus what one could have been, is very unimportant I think. To be or not to be....that is the question.
There are several reasons why this question surfaces again and again, and for no good reason rattles me by painting a very different "what-if" kind of picture. One of the first reason is my current job and the people I meet in my company. If there is anything I like about my present organisation is that it is so diverse and full of so many kinds of people, that one ends up getting exposed to new perspectives on a continuous basis. In my student life, my perspectives however rich or 'bright' were more or less similar from what I would get from the very next person on the campus. In my office however, there is such multiplicity of opinion, such range of thought and thought processes, such diversity in analyzing a problem, that one truly ponders as to which side I belong to.
If it is to be believed that all wisdom is nothing but a sum of all of one's prejudices, then allow me to present a few. There are very fundamental differences in how engineers analyse any issue versus the others. Engineers, in my opinion, are in fact trained to have that particular chain of thought. They would try and dissect every possible cause of the issue and analyse them separately, and then try to see how the other factors are affecting each of these causal parameters. They would then assign weightages to each of these factors and come out with in what there opinion seems to be the main crux of the issue at hand.
An accountant, would have a different chain of thought. He would first try and focus on the limits of the issue and where does the issue cease to exist. He would then see that if the issue is still relevant depending on the proximity of this limit and see if there is anything they have missed out on while looking at the issue at hand. They would then not dissect the issue but look at it as a whole and do some analysis as to what is the effect of other extraneous factors on the issue at hand and present their opinion and ways to circumvent it on the basis of all this.
A liberal arts student, would look at the issue very differently and would again not break the issue into factors but try and jump directly onto the factor he thinks is the most important and focus only on that. He would also not focus on analyzing the affect of other factors on this root cause that he has predicted but try to find justifications as to why the root cause is important and in the end convince everyone, successfully in most cases, that the root cause identified is in fact the driving force. He would focus more on the flow of sense and choose words carefully (or for more affluent ones, automatically) which help him put other person's opinion agree with his.
Now in my opinion, all these approaches are fine and there is no right and wrong. Some may be more beneficial in some kind of problems and some others might be needed in some other issue analysis. We as engineers, however, are more arrogant and somewhat stubborn on our approach compared to the other two. We believe (or most that I know of do) that there is a logic behind the approach we follow, and hence that is the correct one. What we fail to realise is that even though there might be apparent logic in our thinking process, one method would not solve every problem in the most efficient way.
I remember I used to play this game of guessing with my friend in school. The point of the game was to correctly guess a four digit number that the other person had thought of, in minimum number of guesses. On every guess, the person knowing the number would tell the guesser, the number of cows, or the digits that matched with the target number but not in the right place, and the number of bulls, or the digits with the position that matched with the target number.
Now my strategy was pretty scientific and straightforward, I would try 4 numbers at a time sequentially and based on the results rule out or identify the target digits and their placements. It was a failsafe, foolproof and the most risk free method to get to the result.
But the game was not about being risk free.
My friend managed to win almost every time we used to play. He also used similar logic that I used to get to the answer, but with one critical difference. Instead of going sequentially, he would look at the room, the wall, or any other random irrelevant thing and write his first guess with some random four digits which seemed to be inspired by whatever he was looking at moments ago. In most cases, he got very close to the answer and in others, it was so way off, that the complimentary set of digits became the obvious choice. Then, he would reach the target number in less than half the number of guesses it took me. Only to show that at some places, you need to weigh the seemingly right approach with the more practical and efficient one.
Coming back to my original question, even though my mind has got limited experience to approaches considered non-engineer like, there are evidences that made me think that DU would have been a good way to go. For example, the only course I scored a 10/10 in college was English Literature. Once asked in an interview, about my favorite course in college, the first course that came to my mind was of economics and psychology, not any chemical engineering course that I was supposed to answer. I have always considered myself as more of a creative person who has a scientific bent of mind. Also, once I got into college, I had tried my hand at everything from tech to dramatics, to dance, to organisational activities, to elections and politics; and what I really enjoyed were all things which normally are not related to engineering. I tried to pursue tech, got some initial success too, but then when failures started showing up, I gave it up completely. Its not that I am not interested in tech, you can leave me in a croma store for hours and i would never get bored, its only that while at college, I found more interesting things to do.
Getting into professional career, it seems not only does being an engineer differentiates your thinking process, but also slows down your career progression. It takes 4 years to become an engineer, and for dimwits like me, one year just to get into a decent college. So a total of 5, versus someone who graduated from an Arts/Commerce/Pure Sciences course in 3 yrs, and went on to do masters or MBA, one has 2 qualifications by the time we end up with one. Also, the study pressures are much lesser in DU compared to engineering. I know the story changes when we compare it with doctors, but lets face it, doctors are a league apart. So if I end up with the numbers, its actually less beneficial for a students of equal caliber to do engineering barring situations where the person is exceptionally bright.
But the story isn't all that bad too.
I think as engineers, we do have a formidable advantage sometimes. While in some situations such as my friend's school game it may prove to be a disadvantageous, those situations are very far and apart in life. For most problems, it is in fact more practical to follow the engineer approach rather than any other.
So the question still remains....but the question of what should one have been versus what one could have been, is very unimportant I think. To be or not to be....that is the question.
Comments
1) The quality of people you meet and the exposure you get is altogether different from any other college.
2) Though it takes four years but if you calculate merely two years are working and rest are holidays. Also it gives you ample time to pursue your personal interest which is way better than any other college.