Purdue engineering majors recently wrote a journal article about common myths about engineering students. The authors identified 7 myths they have heard about themselves, as engineering majors and broke them down as to why they are inaccurate.
- The first, is that engineering students all love math and science. This is not true because a lot of future engineers just like the idea of hands-on applications that have a set outcome.
- Engineers sit at a computer all day. This is extremely false, because most of the work engineers do is in the field, working hands-on with team members on real physical projects.
- Engineers aren't very creative. If this were true, it would make everything much more difficult because engineers have to come up with different solutions to problems in the field. Often, it is an engineers job to create a completely new way of doing something, and to recreate the process for better efficiency.
- Engineers don't have good communication skills. This was a focus of one of the lectures we had for our EGR100 class this semester. Professor Morgan spent 2 weeks explaining the importance of communication in our field because a lot of what engineers do is done in teams, so you have to be able to communicate with your team members.
- Engineers only work on significant projects. This isn't completely accurate because there are instances where engineers are checking up on codes and making sure everything is done correctly, which is a significant job, but what is insignificant?
- Engineers don't have fun or diverse interests. In my opinion, there are so many different branches within the field and they all vary by a lot. Everyone has different interests with different ideas of fun.
- Women aren't engineers. This isn't very hard to disprove, since the field is actually almost evenly gendered now and 3 of the 4 engineers that run this blog are women.
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