Science, Engineering, & Growing Up
Skookumchick said, in one of her posts, maybe half a year ago, that not too many people identify themselves as both a scientist and an engineer. So which one am I?
Way back in grade school, I was part of a student club called Future Problem Solvers. Each semester, we would read up on a some major global problem– like "Water" or "Energy" or "Environment". At the end of the semester, there was a structured problem-solving exercise around that topic. The whole thing was actually a contest to see who could come up with the most creative and workable solutions to these topics. The packet we wrote up was sent off to the state capital somewhere, where the volunteer coaches would grade it and determine who got to go to the State competition– and if you did well there, the Nationals. Think of it as varsity sports for nerds. I thought that whole thing was pretty fun.
Later on in grade school and in high school, I signed up for various summer programs for kids interested in science. Sometimes I picked very abstract and theoretical-sounding topics (like "Genetics", which in my mind didn’t seem to have many practical engineering applications at all, though it could explain your hair or eye color) and sometimes I picked the topics that sounded very applied (like "Chemistry in the Environment"). Then, in high school, I read "Brief History of Time" and set off to learn physics, become a theoretical cosmologist and explain the origins of the universe. What I definitely was not was an engineer– because being an engineer meant being good at egg-drop contests and paper-airplane flying races. I had direct evidence of not being any good at that.
Well, that plan to become a cosmologist didn’t pan out. It turns out that it takes something like 7 years of study before you have even the remotest idea of what cosmology is about, not to mention the mathematical tools for doing it. Along the way, a number of practical factors intervened– like that fact that the summer research internships I could find were in experimentally-intensive, applied fields that needed undergrads to measure data and plot graphs. Theoretical cosmologists had no need for undergraduate labor. Then there was the fact that most of the pure science grad students I knew where finishing their PhD’s and heading off to work for McKinsey, or on Wall Street. Why should I get my PhD to go to McKinsey?
So, I never did study theoretical particle physics. I found another field in the physical sciences, fairly interdisciplinary, relatively applied, something in between science and engineering. And I really like it. Yesterday I wrote a cover letter for my first job application of the season, and found myself writing very passionately about working at the intersection of science and technology, and how that was exactly where I wanted to be.
All of which makes me reconsider, this many years later, whether I am a scientist or engineer. Remember, I had always thought of an "engineer" as someone who fixes his own car, won his high school egg-drop contest, builds robots in his spare time, and loves to perform tedious adjustments of process parameters, perhaps in a paint-manufacturing line. I am not that kind of person. A scientist, on the other hand, sits around and solves equations, does simulations on the computer, runs his experiments, chats with colleagues while drawing on the blackboard and waving his hands in the air, and remains blissfully detached from worldy concerns like "business" and "money." That, I could handle.
Of course, as with any stereotype, the stereotype is not the whole story. I am both a scientist and an engineer, albeit of the "academic" variety. I want to study science that has a chance of solving big problems — like Water, Energy, Environment, or the other topics I used to read about in 4th grade. And this is very hard. Because the thing about breakthrough science is that is often unexpected– it’s hard to figure out what the next big scientific advance will be, let alone whether it will pay off in terms of real applications. And even harder to figure out how those applications will end up impacting the world. If I want to be sure of making an impact, I should get closer to the application and be more of an "engineer". But if I want to find something fundamentally different from what’s been done before, I need to keep thinking like a "scientist."
Do you know much about the tedium of paint-manufacturing? I need to learn all about that for some cutting edge science my boss wants me to figure out…
The project is almost as fascinating as watching the stuff dry.
Comment by Lab Lemming — November 18, 2006 @ 11:32 pm
Nope! All I know is that the intricacies of paint-drying are sometimes known as “polymer science.”
Comment by drshellie — November 19, 2006 @ 2:21 am
Consider yours a privileged position at the boundaries of science and technology: that you have the chance to ponder and probe whether your true calling is science or engineering (or a certain mixture of both).
As a mathematician deeply immersed in a world of sometimes breathtakingly beautiful ideas and structures which are not necessarily useful, I sometimes wonder what
impact would I have had on the outside world, had I wandered in a different direction: say, that of engineering (or your kind of world). But that seems too far-away a world for me to have the courage to plunge in it in any depth now.
My guess is that if you had opted for the winding path of cosmology, in 7 years you’d have been very distant from the possibility of being this certain as to where you really belong (that is, of course, if you cared to ask the question then, and if in response to that you didn’t equate finding success with having found your true calling, as one is quite prone to do).
Comment by PLK — November 20, 2006 @ 4:13 am
Engineering has always had exactly that aura in my mind, also. There’s a fantastic column in American Scientist about engineering. But in day-to-day life, it’s very satisfying to be able to let yourself have flights of (scientific) fancy as well as work on the problem of implementing how to address those hypotheses. I think many of us have both elements in us - including many self-labeled ‘engineers’.
Comment by Alethea — November 21, 2006 @ 5:13 pm
Thanks for this post, Dr. Shellie. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, and I’m working on my own “how did I get to be an engineer” post too. So where did we get this idea that engineers apply science? Because I know plenty of people who call themselves engineers who are MILES away from “applying” science on the way they’re really “doing” science. So maybe identity is all that is really important, identifying with one group or another, maybe that demonstrates some kind of philosophical commitment rather than any “real” intellectual difference. That might explain why people keep using these terms that don’t really fit for what we do. Because, after all, scientists *do* have to worry about business and money - just in the context of their grants, rather than in selling their work to some industry rep.
So, is it important to you to be considered both a scientist and an engineer, rather than a hybrid or something in between the two? or neither, but instead some new kind of investigator?
Comment by skookumchick — November 29, 2006 @ 4:22 pm
I am not too particular about being called a scientist vs. being called an engineer. I suppose I’d still say “I’m a scientist,” since “I’m an engineer” sounds like I should either build bridges or design circuits.
Comment by drshellie — November 30, 2006 @ 1:47 am
These comments have been invaluable to me as is this whole site. I thank you for your comment.
Comment by Rosie — April 28, 2007 @ 6:41 pm