"Richard Smith" wrote in message ...

"Yale" / Segway lead...
The one about engineers "kissing a lot of frogs to find a
prince". Exactly! Yes, that's the reality of a scientist too!
You have to be able to think and process things that way, to be a
human having an effective channel of perception into the Natural
World.
I almost envy people living in what they think is a determinate world.

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I have a BS in Chemistry so I understand how a scientist must think and
operate. It's a very hands-on discipline that applies to almost any industry
and we received a broader training than I've seen in other types of engineer
and scientist, such as Materials Science (the properties of steel) and two
years of Physics.

The profs told us a BS degree doesn't prepares us to do useful work
immediately, only to understand the explanations wherever we go. Advanced
degrees were essential, they said self-servingly. (Mitre was like that too.)
I was chosen for summer research grants and did learn more about real life
applications, and what it's like to hole up in the lab all night and not see
other humans for weeks at a time. I was disturbingly comfortable with that.

At graduation time I still needed 4 more credits in any subject and, being
somewhat burned out by then, signed up for 6 credit, certain-to-pass summer
theatre as a carpenter, and was packed in with as many touchy and demanding
humans as I could stand for 12-16 hours a day, good training I suppose. I
was dancing on stage when Armstrong landed on the moon.

When I graduated the grad school draft deferment had ended, taking with it
my Chemistry career, but the Army was glad to find someone they could train
to maintain complex electronics along the lines of your Colossus machine.
The few who survived that school all had technical degrees. The integrated
circuit was enabling electronics' Great Leap Forward and I got in it at the
start.