For Those Who Hate Engineering :P

Hate engineering? Think again. Here's a different take on India's most common profession that elaborates on all of life's lessons and skills that engineers knowingly (or unknowingly) learn during their 4 years of 'struggle'!

For those of you who are apprehensive, who think this is going to be an other article that rubbishes our profession, and talks of how useless the subjects we study are, can allay your fears. This article does exactly the opposite - how great engineers are groomed in an engineering college. No, really! Now please understand, when I say 'Engineer', I don't allude to someone who knows a hundred equations by rote, a thousand circuit diagrams inside-out, or a zillion experimental theories like the proverbial back of his hand. For that is not what makes an engineer.

Being an engineer is not about knowing the derivation of the Darcy-Weischbach relation, the corollaries of all of Kirchoff's laws, or the reaction conditions of the Perry-Wilkinson synthesis. However, in our stormy lives as students, we learn a lot of other skills. Subliminally, these skills are imbibed into most of us. Here are a few.

1. Planning and deadline-meeting: If we really want India to develop, we should get rid of all politicians, kill all bureaucrats, and put engineers in their place. Tell them to get things done in two months or they will face demotion. In the first month nothing will happen. Next two weeks, there will be some minor activity among the junior members. In the succeeding two weeks, though,... there will be frenetic activity to meet the deadline. Sounds familiar, all this? Rewind to what happens a month before the University exams. Engineers are like the best bikes: We can go from 0 to 60 in almost no time!

2. Diplomatic Skills: Many a time, business deals and bilateral talks fail because of the inefficiency of managers and diplomats. Engineers make excellent diplomats. Need proof? Watch what happens in any class in which an internal exam is declared upon the poor souls. Hectic lobbying and discussions with the concerned teacher ensue to get the exam postponed! Kashmir would have been solved in two weeks!

3. Endurance: Engineers have an infinite supply of patience. This skill arises from the practice of four years, pretending to nod your head in lectures.

4. Strategists: Engineering students are among the best planners that I have ever seen. This is not because we study graphics . For example, there are a few people who utilize a system I like to call the Cut-O-Meter, wherein he/she tabulates how many hours he has cut, and how many more he can afford to do so without compromising the 75% barrier. Such planning would do the Harappan Municipal Corporation proud.

5. Copying during exams: The moralists among you would be taken aback. How on Mother Earth can copying be deemed a virtue?! But the fact of the matter is, it's the way to survive! Microsoft made billions copying the Mac OS. Apple admitted that the ubiquitous iPod is not their own idea.... Eddie van Halen became one of the greatest guitarists though his techniques are borrowed from others, notably Jimmy Page's tapping.

Copying in exams is just that - a way to survive in a rat race where only the streetsmart get through. But there is another angle to this - a willingness to help others, even while risking their own marks! In an industry, will any professional take a decision without consulting others? Of course not!
So what is wrong in a student confirming whether his answer to question 3(a) is correct? Furthermore, to avoid the prying eye of the invigilator, the copier has to master many a skill; acting, sign language, reading miniature and customised knowledge banks (read, photocopies) the epitome of space efficiency, surely while mentally calculating how much more he needs to score before he can ensure the safety of not having to buy another exam form. Add these to the aforementioned list of qualities of friendship, judicious risk-taking, survival, how can copying be looked upon as anything other than noble?

6. Tackling Failure: They say that the stepping stone to success is failure. In that case, the engineering student is quite simply among the cream of successful people! He is the quintessential manifestation of someone who has looked failure in the eye. And the 'success'? Well, the very fact that he manages to pass out of college (erm, most of them, anyway!) is itself a great success!

7. Adjustments: Ah. Now this is a part of college life that... none can avoid. The lab is, quite simply, one place where honesty does not pay. Adjustment (or 'standardization of values', as I prefer to call it) is an age-old tactic. And before you yell at me saying this is going too far, take a minute off and think what the higher echelons of the faculty do to our internal marks before publishing them. Isn't 'normalization' a type of adjustment too, so that everyone is happy? I've been to companies and I know that 'adjustments' are a very common tactic. It's essential to survive in the industry. I'm not talking billions being sifted away from the rightful owners a la Satyam. But our brand of adjustments ensure that everyone is happy, and has less work to do.

Minor example: Software training: "Mark course complete". Need I say more? Sometimes I think they make us do the experiments just to get acquainted with the fine art of adjustments. There you go Engineers: Now don't you feel much prouder of being who you are? Non-Engineers: You poor guys have no idea what you're missing! ;)