Yes, yes. We know how prestigious, society satisfying and ‘in your face’ moment it will be when you become an engineer. Not so much for yourself as much for your parents. It’s a proud moment, for them. For you, it will be another moment filled with apprehension. (trust us!)
Engineering is a calling. Really. When you decide to become an engineer, you have practically decided to sacrifice your life to the Engineering gods. You just don’t know it yet. Engineering is a self-imposed life sentence towards hard work, no time for self and unlimited stress for the next 4 years. And that’s not just it. You WILL lose like a million hours of sleep, have at least 30 assignments to submit every week, and obviously have an astronomical tea/ coffee bill at the local chai wallah because of this and WILL pretty much be clueless till you wear that black hat on graduation day. But if you can brave all of the above without looking back ever, you’re cut out to be an Engineer for sure. And a pretty good one at that!
Professionally, as an engineer, you will be required to be at the forefront of your company’s development and decision making process and you will be one of those who can actually make a difference to society. You will appear to have no life, but in reality, you will somehow ‘engineer’ time for yourself, pursue your hobbies and do crazy stuff (because you’re an engineer!)
So, JEE’s aside, what does it take to become an Engineer?
How do you know that you are one of them, besides your parents nagging you with the idea 24X7? If you genetically have these traits & attributes in you, you are well on the road to becoming a successful Engineer!
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Nerd: May sound derogatory at first, but your life should be characterised with nerd behaviour at all times! You should be inquisitive, trying to build things, understand the mechanics of things and ask questions. A whole lot. Other than that, it’s kind of dishy to be a nerd!
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Curiosity: How does something work? What if I replace this with that? These questions should be second to your skin. You should not believe everything at face value. Ask, ask and ask further. If you ever got into trouble as a kid tearing the radio apart or opening the vacuum cleaner to see how it works, you are right on track! If you see a tamper-proof screw as a challenge instead of a warning, that's a good sign.
- Creative passion: Very important. Between coding and finding solutions, if you unwind playing that guitar or painting, or writing, or heck, even solving Sudoku, you are good. This is very important to come up with new approaches to problems.
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Humour: Don’t exactly know how this works, but have observed that Monty Python and puns tickle the funny bones of engineers. You will be under so much stress most of the times, having a good laugh and taking it easy at every situation is the key for a successful engineering career.
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Procrastination: A typical personality trait in an engineer is putting off everything till the last minute, especially in their personal lives. Engineers are lazy. Period. But the attitude is inversed when it comes time to get the project done: in a crisis situation, most engineers buckle down and churn out a good project.
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Love for Math & Science: One unifying quality of all engineers is their love for Physics and Maths. That is probably one anthem that all of them swear by. It’s like a community thing… You are just as likely to meet a "refined" hipster type engineer in your college as you would a fratboy bro who secretly studied really hard.
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Approach: ‘Hit me, head on’. This seems to be the general mantra for the inclined. If you compare the approach a scientist takes when confronted with a problem, the attitude suggests everything. A scientist will probably say, “Hmm, that’s weird. I want to understand why that happens.” An engineer, on the other hand will probably say, “Hmm, that’s a problem. I bet I can make this better.” Explains everything, doesn’t it?
- Communication: Pretty direct in conversation. That’s your style. You don’t beat around the bush, because you believe in data and facts and reaching a conclusion. Having said that, I should also add that skills can be learned, in a structured or logical manner and stereotyping engineers as inarticulate will be wrong.
Needless to say, intellect, a thorough knowledge of the fundamentals and flying colours in your Board exams + JEE and other engineering entrance alike is the ONLY way to get into a good engineering college. But hey, these attributes will just give you direction (or retrospection) if you are the engineering material or not! Believe it, if you will, but if you don’t (because you engineers believe in facts), don’t say that we didn’t say so!