"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...
Regarding engineering, this is also the reason I got out of it. There
are few college programs that are narrower or that have less allowance
for electives in fields other than engineering itself and the
peripheral prerequisites and so on. Although the result is a very high
level of vocational training, the education of an engineer depends
mostly on how successful he is at learning things outside of his
college program.

Some do, some don't. The ones who don't tend to see everything through
that filter, and to be very defensive about it.
Ed Huntress

I have to agree with you here. I took theater classes (conveniently next
door to the Chem building) to satisfy the humanities requirements and
quickly saw that I could learn about small-unit management by running the
set building crew and watching the directors convince tired actors give
their best efforts over and over.

In chemistry, management amounted to giving the researcher a goal and
checking in two weeks later, almost like an artists' colony. The contrast
between chemists' and actors' interests, world views, motivations and work
habits could hardly have been greater.
[Can't find relevant Sir Francis Bacon quote]

Once on a business trip to Detroit we went to supper with the auto engineers
and their wives. One of the wives commented on how unlike her stereotype of
a narrowly focused electrical engineer I was. I'm usually a listener who
doesn't lead people outside their comfort zones and hadn't really noticed.

jsw