I tell them it's Mechanical Engineering.
And, almost 100% of the time, they say something like "BT does Mechanical Engineering?" or "How are you fitting that in with what BT does?"
Well, the truth is, no, BT doesn't do a lot of MechE, and no, the courses I've taken in my major are not immediately relevant to my work this summer. I'm doing User Interface (UI) design, which is unlike anything I've ever done before. The fact that people's first reaction is confusion when I tell them this concerns me, not just from a personal annoyance perspective, but from an industrial perspective. We are well past the days of Engineers sitting in cubicles at the same company their whole lives, working on their own individual projects for 8 hours a day until retirement. People obviously value outside opinions and advice (consulting industry, anyone?), and yet the gut reaction I still encounter when I explain that I'm a mechanical engineering major who does cognitive science research and is spending the summer doing UI design is "why?"
I would like to think I bring a lot to the table by doing something I've never done before. There's some thrill in diving headlong into a whole new area you know nothing about. It's that thrill that makes me creative and productive, and it's what you often don't see in "turn-the-crank" engineers who have been working the same "stable" job for 20-30 years. I would like to think I'm the kind of person who can learn quickly, and who can learn to do almost anything. I think industry should move past putting people in boxes based on their major or theoretical area of expertise and start throwing them into situations and areas they've never seen and saying "go."
The reaction I want when I tell people that I'm not just sitting around doing mechanical engineering this summer is "awesome!" Because that's exactly what it is.
I'd think that the comments you get stem more from the fact that the British (and for that matter, European) university education system is so much more focused. Like, if you're a mechanical engineer, then that's what you do. Why would a mechanical engineer do UI design if he trained as a mechanical engineer in university? Likewise, why would a MechE student do UI design?
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying people don't have diversity in their jobs or activities on the old continent, just that studies are *much* more focused there than they are in our world of double-majors and pre-meds who major in things that are not "Medicine."
And of course, if you don't want to take my word for it, ask around people who've done both (Andrew, CME kids, etc.)