Gears of the engineer

A few of us got talking about how engineers think differently than non-engineers. I've never really understood that. I figure that all the other engineers out there are getting the same type of education that I am. A bunch of calculus. Some circuits. Block diagram reduction. Some imaginary values. Throw in a few microvoltage IC boards and megavoltage motors. In terms of design, we're pretty much left to our own devices. So it doesn't really feel that much different than high school, where it's just massive amounts of knowledge jamming, and figure-out-your-own-application type situations.

Apparently, I'm so submerged in the Waterloo culture that I assume everyone in the outside world is like this. After all, I fit in rather well when I was in Western. I didn't really stand out when I was in Calgary. So when I generate my random analogies (latest: a dime of focus...quite a bit of focus, I'd say) and goes off on my tangents like I always do (woot. non-linear thinking. haha), or pull knowledge that I thought was common (WHAT?! You don't know Euler's formula?!), it always suprises me when it's not easily understood.

I also got to rant a bit about communication. One of the most annoying thing about being Communications back in my 2B was the fact that I had to go make announcements. Planning NSR was okay, the speech was hard. A few days ago, CCF had a QA session, where I had make a few comments. I think, as poor as my stage articulation skills are, it's alot better then what it was before. When I shared this with a second year who told me that she really doesn't like public speaking, she was surprised. After all, I had, earlier that week, answered a handful of questions over a microphone in front of about 60 people. Hmm. So I did.

I guess, what I'm trying to say is...we often speak of growth. People who are focused on physical growth. People who focuses on mental growth. Spiritual growth. Sometimes you don't know that you're growing. Sometimes the situations are too mundane, or the battles are too insane. Sometimes, all you're focused on is to hit the next checkpoint. I was told that, since we're poor assessors of ourselves, we should look to the people around us to tell us how much we're growing. That, even if we can't tell ourselves, we would know when we're not growing at all. That's pretty much when complacency sets in and we all get gg'ed.

Hmm. Perhaps this molding process is too slow. But I suppose one shouldn't ever rush an Artist at work, however tempting.

Haha. I still don't quite get it. What exactly is it that we engineers think about that is different than everyone else?