Engineer Life

My dad was an engineer and he liked to say that being an engineer is about doing for a nickel what any fool can do for a dollar. I guess only an engineer would think that is a great sales pitch for being an engineer. But I think it is true. Being an engineer is not just about solving a problem. It is about finding the best, most elegantly simple solution.

Engineering, in general, means taking an idea and making it a reality. Any fool can come up with an idea, (especially bad ones), but not every fool can make it reality. The more thoughtful and imaginative the idea, the more exciting tackling the reality will be.

For me, being an engineer fits my personality. I like understanding how things work, why they work the way they do, and I like figuring out how they might work better. EE fits well in that it offers broad access to lots of different engineering problems, including how to make things operate with as little energy waste as possible. Plus there’s all the fame and fortune…

I went to a tiny rural-area school with no career planning.  I never heard of engineering in high school, but I took what came naturally to me my freshman year in college: calculus, physics, chemistry.  There I learned about engineering and that jobs are in high demand and the pay is great.  This is still very much the case and it always will be.  As a junior, I learned that the thermo-fluid sciences were all about output over input, which is, efficiency.  I’m also an efficiency nut in that I cannot look at a process or function without imagining how…

To me engineering simply means identifying a problem and finding a solution, i.e. problem-solving! This can be through designing or building something or through tweaking the way something already works. I don’t think someone becomes an engineer just through formal education. It’s the way someone thinks, either with a math and science oriented brain or through deconstructing and rebuilding just to see if they can fix a problem or understand the inner-workings. There are a lot more engineers in this world than the ones with the degrees, some of the best engineers don’t have the formal education. National Engineers Week…

I like to solve complex problems. I enjoy figuring out how things work and how to get from where I am to the end result. Engineering gives me the opportunity to do this every day. We take big problems and break them down into smaller ones on our way to big solutions. If you enjoy critical thinking, puzzles, math, and understanding what makes things tick, engineering is for you. What some engineers do with designing bridges, new gadgets, cars, tractors, airplanes, industrial processes, electronics, software, and satellites, we at Michaels do with energy use in buildings.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be an engineer. Well, that’s not quite accurate. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved solving problems and creating solutions. Word puzzles, math exercises… you name it, I love to dig in. Luckily I found out early on that there’s a whole field dedicated to solving hard problems: engineering. As I got older, I also became engaged in the ever-looming issues of energy efficiency and conservation. Imagine my delight when I found a company built on the intersection of these two passions! Michaels Energy is devoted to solving…