i should have been an engineer

Gracious!

Not that I'm getting worried or anything, but as I embark on this "what am I going to do once I graduate?" quest and start looking into jobs and fellowships and all that jazz, I am discovering that engineering seems like a very lovely place to be. I pulled up a listing of jobs openings being advertised through the University's career services website, and no less than HALF of the jobs were for engineers! And they weren't in boring things like "do research for the rest of your life" or "let's run the same computer simulation every day Monday through Friday for 80 years" or any other rat-race things that seem unappealing to me. They were in practical application settings (like...manage water treatment) and useful, cutting-edge disciplines (like...the U.S. patent office).

I'm sure these jobs aren't nearly as splendiferous as I envision them to be, but the fact remains that a) any one of these jobs would NOT require a PhD and b) any one of these jobs would pay at least twice as much as any job I'll be getting in the next five years even WITH my PhD in biomedical science (unless I go into biotech or pharmaceuticals, which I don't want to do). I think people assume that because a person has lots of letters after his or her name, that person must be earning a whole lot of money. That is not true.

Not that money is everything. But still - I sometimes regret that I did not really comprehend what engineering was until about 3/4 of the way through my last year of undergrad. ...Actually, I didn't really get it until about 6 months ago. I believe I would have really enjoyed engineering, at least certain types of it. Now I feel like it's too late to learn it and/or too expensive to go back to school to study it.

Pity, too, because although there's that geeky, nerdy image always given to engineers, my experience has been that there are actually two categories of engineers. One is that classic kind: Dilbert-esque, with horn-rimmed glasses taped together with white tape, always way more organized than ever necessary, in their own world using language nobody but engineers understand, and entirely socially inept. The other is a completely different breed: they are hot (as in good-looking), fit, suave, charismatic, and could be Abercrombie & Fitch models. I kid you not. I have known many such people! Combine that all with the extraordinary intelligence and drive one must have to be an engineer, and you have pretty much the perfect individual. ...And to think I could have gone into engineering and met a perfect man while sitting in thermodynamics class and fallen in love (since the male:female ratio in engineering is such that any woman has a pretty good chance of finding an available man) and lived happily ever after with lots of money... Sigh. What was I thinking??! But I suppose I would have been just as likely to have gotten stuck with Dilbert.

Anyways, that's not a good reason to embark on any particular career. Beyond the excitement, money and amazing-men draws of engineering, we get back to the whole microbial fuel cell thing. My heart is not set on these or any other sorts of biofuel technologies, but every so often I wish that I held the knowledge that would enable me to hop right into that field instead of needing to work with all my might to open the door to get myself in. It's useful. It's interesting. And it's something I just wish I could understand more. But I don't recall how to do calculus and I can't keep electrochemistry terms straight and I never totally understood quantum mechanics (I know - it was just me who didn't get that concept, right?). It feels like when I look at the fuel cell world...it's in this glass building that I can peer into, but which I need a special key to gain access, and I don't HAVE that special key, so I can never get in. I can't get to that thing that go grabs at my heart, that sparks such an interest in me. ...Probably the fact that I "can't" have it is part of what makes me want it so much...

But what am I talking about? I don't want to have a career in biofuel cell research and development! I want to teach! What am I fretting about?

...But it would be cool if I could teach engineering...

:-)