Are engineers more imaginative?

I’m almost halfway into my 3rd year….on my way to becoming an Electronics and Telecommunications Engineer. Supposedly the clever guys end up doing engineering and the cleverest do medicine . They say this concept is a thing of the past. Parents don’t really pressure their kids to become engineers and doctors anymore….or do they?????

I would say things are such that even today most kids who get admissions into engineering due to the marks they score in their 12th Std. boards (and lately the entrance tests) have only a vague idea of what skills they are required to use during engineering. I remember my first day in college when our Engineering Graphics Sir(thats one monster of a subject with loads of imaginary stuff) asked us why we had chosen E n TC..and none of us had a really convincing answer other than maybe that we scored best in the entrance tests and those who score best usually choose EnTC !!!! My how dumb we felt at the time!!!

When you finally think the ratta- days are over, you find yourself with physics and chemistry in the first year, with hardly any problems and loads of theory…and you go “what the…..!!!” And when the time comes in 2nd year for the real applicative subjects, you start wishing you had chemistry all over again instead of this! Because at least ratta makes sure you can get some marks. Only an engineer knows the importance of 40 marks.

It is by third year that your brain starts adjusting to the ways of an engineering life. And then you start surprising yourself with your own imaginative skills. My professor has to just mention some wild concept and my imagination kicks into overdrive, on autopilot. We are all used to it by now. Most of the things in engineering are so very conceptual that unless you visualise it in your mind’s eye there is no way you are going to understand. And then comes the hurdle of putting what you are thinking of into words. You know what you have understood, but you cannot tell how it works.

And the symptoms show up all the time. A friend of mine can go on rattling about a some imaginary device till you tell him to stop. Another friend of mine thinks it is essential to have a wild imagination if you want to code or write programs. She says you are lost unless you have a 3-D image of the object revolving in your mind All in all, I’m starting to get a feeling that maybe engineers are more imaginative than any arts student. Electronics students have to keep imagining circuits and electrons and energy. If the very “flow” of current is imaginary (electrons don’t actually travel all the length from your switch to your fan when you switch it on…do they??) you can imagine how “electronics” will be I.T and computer sciences have to imagine cycles and cycles of things that happen in microseconds, control that doesn’t really exist, technology that takes decisions but cannot really “think” I’m sure they must be wondering sometimes if they are dealing with reality or fiction. Mechanical engineers, i think need the most powerful imaginations. They have to imagine how things move, how load is distributed, how energy and force are translated. But at least they deal with physical things that can be touched and seen

Well it is definitely a roller coaster ride. So maybe the wild imagination is just our way of escaping the relatively mundane things that we learn about. After all, engineers are the ones who convert dreams into reality. We are the ones who convert fiction into fact. And you know what..sometimes I’m really proud of that.