Recommended listening: Lux Aeterna. In September 2010, sex columnist and gay-activist Dan Savage started the wildly successful “it gets better campaign,” providing even more support and hope for youth everywhere than his campaign to redefine the word “santorum” (just google it, it is a reference to goofball and homophobic politician Rick Santorum). And it’s true, for LGBTQIA youth struggling with bigots in their backwater, bible-thumping high schools, it does get better. However, the same cannot be said for you engineering majors. This week we’re going to play the ghost of Christmas future. Of course not literally though; we’re only dead on the inside. But trust, it does get worse! And keep reading, because we’re going to tell you why. Or don’t, you’re screwed either way.
High School Teacher
Remember that amazing high school teacher who was themselves an engineering graduate? That man or woman who was so down to earth, really knew their stuff, and of course sported a fetching iron ring? Remember how they inspired you to the Calling of the Iron Ring (and by extension, Jesus Christ)? Has it ever occurred to you that that person was an abject failure in life? After five years of Waterloo how do you think it must feel to spend weeks trying to explain that f(x) does not mean f multiplied by x. All those PDEs, fluid dynamic problems, quantum photonics … totally useless. Get ready to dedicate your life to the quadratic equation. Then, after a long year of pounding these basic principles into the pot-addled minds of people who act like their attendance is a favour, get ready to do the exact same thing next year!
Full-time employment
You might be thinking “I can avoid the snot-nosed punks, the wasted undergrad knowledge, and the monotony of teaching by taking my skills to industry!” Well you can avoid the dopey teenagers in high school, but working with their parents isn’t much better. Yes, as anyone who has had a co-op (i.e. non-nanos) should realize by now, in industry you still aren’t applying 95 percent of the material that made your undergraduate career so difficult, and jobs are so repetitive and dull that people resort to petty water-cooler gossip and internal politics (so those of you heavily involved in EngSoc might actually find this to be a smooth transition). But hey, you get a slice of cake at retirement parties!
Graduate School
You might be thinking, “hey guys, I can totally use my degree to its fullest by enrolling in graduate school!” And you will! In academia you will be applying all your favourite theories working 80-hour weeks at what amounts to less than minimum wage! Then, after wasting 2-6 more years on another degree or two, you can proceed to waste multiple degrees at a job for which you will in all likelihood be totally overqualified for! Of course you could go hardcore into academia by becoming a professor, where you will have the opportunity to flex your mental muscles with a job that is literally begging for money (aka grants). #professororhobo?
Forge a New Path
Some people find their passion for another field while studying engineering and decide to finish it due to the sunk-cost fallacy. These people may pursue music, culinary arts, and/or drug abuse. Yes, you can find your true passion at the low, low cost of about $50 000 (or over $100 k if international), your physical peak spent indoors studying, your mental peak spent wasted on a topic you’ll never apply, and brain cells so fried that they’re no fucking use to anyone (they’re no fucking use at all).
Social Life
Of course, your career isn’t everything, you also have social life you can look forward to being awful. University has been a great place to meet people. Just think about how many new people you met in the last year, and in the year before that, and in the year before that. If you have another year before that, you really should be working on your 4YDP right now. Now ask yourself, how many friends have your parents made in the last year? In the last five years? Yes, never again will you be able to meet so many interesting, young, and attractive people. If, like Spenser Good, you have squandered this opportunity, well your right-hand doesn’t get much colder. Actually it does, when you die. Your parents are going to die.
To Hell With Topz (With a Z)
Feeling sad? That’s why it gets worse: because you’re an impressionable idiot. If you have a passion for teaching, then teaching is a rewarding pathway that allows you to inspire dozens of engineers and benefit society much more than you would have alone. Edward Blake was inspired to go into engineering by a great ringed high school teacher. Wade Wilson was not, he hated his teachers, in particular Ms. Manny … that bitch. Of course take that with a grain of salt, as Wade Wilson is an idiot. Full-time employment offers new challenges not seen in a classroom, and the point of a university education is that you don’t feel like you’re applying formulae and mathematical proofs because you have internalized an intuition for the fundamental principles of your field. You don’t realize how much you know, until you hear Will.i.am or Steve Jobs talk about technology. And you won’t get bogged down in repetition because in engineering there are plenty of opportunities to jump around projects and even companies. Graduate school is for people who want to go to graduate school because they love what they’re researching … or because they did an undergrad in nanotechnology engineering for whom it actually does get worse. As for those who forge a new path, maybe engineering was what it took for you to discover your passion, and the analytical skills learned in engineering are really applicable anywhere. And finally, it’s true that you’ll probably make fewer friends while drunk at Chainsaw with whom you’ll reiterate the same four jokes every time you pass them in the hallway. But maybe it’s better to have partners and friends with whom you’ve been growing together for decades. But you will die. There’s no getting out of that one.
We feel like we’ve said all we have to say about why life gets worse, so we’ll send you off with some wisdom from a friend. “Some people die at 25, and get buried at 70” – some girl on Tinder who turned down Ammar (who is not affiliated with Topz (With a Z)).
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