MAKING A CHOICE

About to make a choice among the branches of engineering, the prospective student, unless he have a decided preference to start with, finds himself confronted with many difficulties. Engineering is engineering, whether it be mining or electrical or civil or mechanical, and this fact alone is not without its confusions. Yet if the young man decides for a mining career, say, the choice may take him, after graduating, off to South Africa, whereas if his choice lay in the electrical field he may never get any farther from home than the nearest electrical manufacturing plant in his town or state and remain there for the duration of his life. This making of a choice is a momentous thing in a prospective engineer’s life. It should be approached with all caution, and with due regard for the nature of the life he would lead after graduating from school. If he have a penchant for outdoor life, then the choice, in a way, is easy. He should select mining or civil engineering as his particular vocation. If he be of those who prefer to remain more or less indoors in the practice of his profession, mechanical or electrical engineering should be his choice.

These are the major advantages or disadvantages, depending upon the point of view. The minor ones are not so easily stated. Speaking always for the young man without a decided preference, it is the writer’s opinion that the prospective student should analyze his particular feelings in the matter and decide accordingly. Large projects may interest him more than smaller ones. In this regard, he will find greater satisfaction in following the profession dealing with large projects, which is, of course, the civil engineering profession although mining, too, has its large ventures, which, however, do not “break” as frequently as they do in civil engineering. On the other hand, the young man may find himself attracted to the development of small propositions, such as adding-machines and typewriters and sewing-machines, and the like. Finding himself attracted to these no less important phases of engineering than the development of mines or the opening up of new country, the young man can, of course, make no better choice than to enter the mechanical or the electrical field.

It all depends upon the point of view. Nor is there any hard-and-fast rule tying a man down to a single branch once he finds that he does not like it, or finds that he likes one of the other branches better, after he has given his chosen branch a trial in the years immediately following graduation. Not a few mining graduates drift over into straight civil work after leaving school, and, likewise, not a few in the electrical branches find themselves in time pursuing mechanical work. Fate here, as in the matter of specialization, works her hand. A prominent publisher of technical magazines in New York took the degree of Arts in Cornell in his younger days; and more writers of fiction than you can shake a stick at once labored over civil-engineering plans as their chosen career. Herbert Hoover is a mining man who best revealed his capabilities in the field of traffic management if the work which he supervised in Belgium may be so termed. Certainly it had to do with getting materials from where they were plentiful to where they were scarce, which is roughly the work of the traffic manager.

And so it goes. The young man in this particular must decide for himself. Actually, there is more of mystery and fascination in the electrical field than in any of the other three branches, and to prospective students this may be not without its especial appeal. To others, the work of mining may possess its strong attraction, since this work takes its followers into strange places and among strange people frequently, where oftentimes the mining engineer must live cheek by elbow with the roughest of adventurers. To yet a third group, civil engineering, with its work of blazing new trails through an unknown country, and wild outdoor existence through forests and over mountains and across valleys may have its strong attraction. While to a fourth group of prospective students the quiet career, as represented in that of mechanical engineering, always a more or less thoughtful, studious life, may hold out its inviting side. The mechanical engineer, like the electrical engineer, is a man who generally commutes, a man who comes and goes daily between office and home, doing his work at regular hours within the four walls of his office a quiet, professional man. Such a life would appeal to the man of family rather more strongly than either of the outdoor professional branches. Yet the prospective student must make his own choice.

To the young man who has no particular preference, and who would put it up to the writer as to just which branch to follow the young man more or less in need the writer unhesitatingly would advise mechanical engineering. It is the one branch offering the largest and quickest returns, and as a branch it fairly dominates all the other branches, for the reason that whereas the mechanical engineer can get along without the mining engineer or the civil engineer or the electrical engineer, neither the mining engineer nor the civil engineer nor the electrical engineer can always do without the services of the mechanical engineer. No other branch so overlaps the other branches as does mechanical engineering. The work of the mechanical engineer is seen in almost every piece of construction reared by the civil man, just as it is seen in every bit of construction work of the mining and the electrical engineers. At first glance this may not appear to be true, but a close analysis of different jobs will bring out the truth of this statement.

Thus mechanical engineering offers largest and quickest returns. It does this for another reason. Because of this very overlapping upon the other three branches, for every position open in the electrical field, or the mining or the civil field, there are a dozen vacancies in the mechanical field. It cannot but be otherwise. Not one of the other branches but what has need at times for as I have stated a mechanical engineer. The casings and base-plates and supports of motors, for instance, while the motor itself its windings and the like is the work of the electrical engineer, are due to the designing genius of some mechanical man. Likewise, in the mining field, where shaking screens, to name only one of the many mechanical units necessary in mining operations, are an essential factor units operated with pulleys and belts and cams and levers all the province of the mechanical engineer the mechanical man finds his uses. So in civil work, especially in dam construction where gates are necessary; and in chemical engineering to drop into a minor branch where tanks and vats and ovens and stirring paddles and the like are used. No matter in which branch a man may go, always he will find evidence of the presence some time of the mechanical engineer. The mechanical engineer dominates all the other branches, as has been said before. He is given second place in the order of the branches merely because the civil engineer happened to be the first and oldest kind of engineer to be given recognition as a profession. This man made himself a professional man, just as did the early practitioners of medicine concocters of herbs in the beginning.

The proper selection will depend upon the young man’s predilections and tastes. If he selects wisely, following out his predilections and tastes with a degree of accuracy, he cannot go wrong. He cannot go far wrong even if he doesn’t follow out his hunches, for the reason that he can always swing over into any one of the other branches whenever he sees fit to do so. The thing is done every day, and will continue to be done throughout all time. Merely, it would be well for the young man, of course, to select in the beginning that branch which most appeals to him, and to stick to it like glue. Success is certain to be his. For in no other walk of life are the rewards so sure and so ample and so immediately responsive as in the engineering professions. These like the matter of his selection from among the four major branches are solely a matter up to the individual.