Nerdy bling

A few days ago, when I was at Westcourt, I had my USB key hanging around my neck. We were making a joke about the USB being nerdy bling: "yo, check out my 32GB, yo!" (sadly, mine was only 256MB. haha. I'm mildly ashamed. It has served me well over the last 4 years). It reminded me of my actual nerdy bling...

 

My Iron Ring is probably one of the more interesting possession I have. Beyond being a noise maker and something that I play with when I get bored. I was talking to Karen Wong about it. To some, it is just something that came with their degree and lighter wallet. To others, the Ring is a symbol of pride, that they've survived the rigour that is [Waterloo] Engineering. We were instructed to wear the Ring with pride, and most of us do.

 

Of course, the Ring (or the "Calling of the Engineer") itself is similar to the various other ethics/morality pledges and oaths that other professions, in particular the Hippocratic/Nightingale Oath, Lawyer's Oath (and apparently Canadian scientists and MBAs will soon have their own ethics pledges as well). Having read a medical ethics books and lawyer ethics articles, I have some idea of the difficulty of these other profession. In contrast, engineering (although first year Ethics course has done much to scare me) doesn't tend to hold as much of an impact. There probably isn't too much other major engineering ethical concerns. You don't tend to have too much people who can't wait to hand you millions of dollars so you can award a design contract to their company (or any ridiculous TV drama situations). It's usually the little things. In fact, the biggest errors we can make as engineers that can get use sued is probably negligence.

In school, I think one of the biggest danger is to assume that real life is like labs. That life is ideal, or there is a given, correct answer to the problems I face. When I'm still in school, this is called ignorance. In the real world, this is called negligence. Today is the last day of 4B for many of us...but there is still a long ways to go. I think, the process of realizing that there isn't a correct answer to a given answer (rather, only a "best" answer exist) is currently my biggest deterrent at doing better at research and grad school.