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Comment from Mark S.
October 28, 2006

This comment was sent in response to my first blog post, "The engineering filter."

It is amusing that I ran into this piece on the mind of engineers and artists. I've been an engineer 30 years and your description of your table conversations reminded me of my own at home with my daughter. In her junior high years and high school years she was very technically oriented, but in the biological sciences. Some time late in her high school years she discovered creative writing and decided to major in that. It was a pretty radical change in direction that happened over about a 2 year time.

I tried to encourage her to do what she wanted to do, but as an engineer, and focused on practical, hard skills that could be applied after graduation from university, I was a little concerned. I'm convinced that her mother's artistic genes kicked in late in high school. I realized that she had a strong desire to be creative in an artistic way, but she also had this very practical, analytical approach to solving daily problems. So unable to keep my mouth shut for any length of time, I used to ask her exactly what kind of a career she was looking forward to with a degree in creative writing. I did not really try to push her in any particular direction, but some time during her junior year, I guess my questions finally got through, but I, for one, had no idea what she would do.

Well to make a long story shorter, she finally changed her major to interior design. Where, as she said, she could express her creative self, but employ her practical project management skills to manage all of the aspects of getting a job completed on time. I thought it was a pretty good compromise between practicality and creativity. She makes a very good living now.

I'm not trying to take credit for what she did, but if I didn't "think" like an engineer it might have turned out a little differently.

Posted by Naomi Eigner Price on October 28, 2006 | Comments (0)