Are Engineers Really That Smart?
Thursday, April 20, 2017I once had a friend introduce me as “the smartest man she knows.” I was embarrassed – did she really know how many times I had to take Calculus? But then I thought about what we consider to be smart…
I enjoy baseball and football and basketball and hockey and golf and tennis… but I could never answer the simplest trivia question about any sport. I know some people that could retell the play by play of any sporting event from the last 50 years. Does that make them “smarter” than me?
I like just about everybody, and I can remember trivial details about a person’s life decades after I last saw him/her. But I NEVER remember a name, and I can forget my own children’s names at times (just ask them). How “dumb” is that?
I taught high school Sunday school for 15 years. For 1/3 of that time I was blessed to have a special needs student that could flawlessly recite hours of lines from cartoons and movies, but could seldom participate in group discussions on most topics, and would sit by himself and feverishly scribble on a sheet of paper. Few people would call him “smart” but he can do things most people cannot.
So, to be smart you need to be able to do what most people can, and a few things they can’t – and that’s just about all of us. My job designing complicated processes make me practiced at thinking about physics and chemistry and biology and mathematics and psychology and sociology applications all of the time, but it’s not smart, it’s practiced – because I’m a practicing engineer… Everyone is “smart”, but not all in the same way.
Have a beautiful day!
Howard
