Questions from brittdreams.
There’s a meme going around of giving questions to folks to answer. These are the ones brittdreams sent me. If you want me to give you questions, let me know.
Questions:
1) What advice would you give to someone interested in engineering but not sure if they should pursue it?
2) How do you balance your hobbies (swords!), work, and a marriage?
3) If you weren't an engineer, what would you want to do for work?
4) What do you plan to do once you retire?
5) If you could go anywhere on vacation, where would you go and why?
Answers:
1. I know a lot of folks who started off in engineering and then moved to other things. So, this is a very valid question. I’d say that you need to be sure that it is really what you want to do. It can be a good job, but it is a lot of work, folks are usually unhappy with what you’re doing and critical of all you create. But, you get to think up things for a living and that’s pretty cool. But, unless you’re willing to have everyone think they could do it better and offer you suggestions on all the stuff you worked so hard to create, consider something else.
2. Part of my nature is I’ve got to be working on multiple things at once. I just don’t seem to be able to do just one thing for any length of time. Sure, for a short bit, but not more than half an hour or so before my mind starts to spin other things around. So, that sort of balance is just something I’ve always had to do to get anything done. At my current job things are very chaotic, always changing and everything is an emergency. My boss keeps worrying it will overwhelm me and I’ll quit. I try and explain that I’ve now found a job that matches the inside of my mind, so it’s OK, but he doesn’t understand. There is a priority system. My wife outranks my job which outranks the sword troupe, which outranks other hobbies. But, the system is always in flux.
3. I like to create things. The what doesn’t matter as much as that it is creating things. I’d love to make movies, write stories or something like that. But, as long as it is creating something, I’d like it.
4. I don’t want to. I understand I will probably have to at some point. But, I like creating things and want to keep doing it. As an engineer I get to create things and have a company pay to build the things I think up in my mind. And, test them, use them and make other things with them. I really don’t want to give that up. Maybe a job where I could do that from home or something similar might be nice as I get older. But, I’m still more than a decade younger than my father was when he retired, and he started consulting once he retired. He only stopped when he had a stroke and couldn’t do it any more. That’s more or less my plan too.
5. There are still a few places on my bucket list, but we’ve spent the last decade or so crossing things off. So, there are fewer places that there used to be. Of course the places I’d really like to go aren’t available to me. When I was a kid it was thought there would be moon shuttles and such by now. That’s really what I’d like to do on vacation.