You Know You’re an Engineer When….

3 min read

Engineers are methodical and logical beings with the intelligence to back up their reasoning. They are influential in the greatest of innovations and are pushing the boundaries for new technologies today. In this post, we realize that engineers are a big part of the MISUMI office and perhaps your office/plant/building or whichever location you are in. Sometimes they will have those revelatory moments when they’ve taken their engineering a bit too far but in a humorous, charming way. We’ve gathered those moments in this post with the many completions of this statement.

You Know You’re an Engineer When….

  • You reverse engineer…EVERYTHING. If you can’t determine how something is manufactured or want to take a deep dive into the design, you flip it and reserve it. Let’s take it apart. What part? ALL. OF. IT.

  • You have the most advanced calculator in the office. TI-83 or TI-89 Scientific Graphing Calculator or a Casio FX-115 is used for the most complicated of calculations.
  • You have a spreadsheet for everything. A spreadsheet for data trends, grocery lists, and your top 10 Marvel movies.

  • You try to guess how the inside of a machine works and what components are in it. You find yourself trying to figure out how the luggage conveyor works at the airport. You bet there’s a few gears, rollers, timing pulleys and shafts in there. It’s like x-ray vision!

  • Everyone sees this…

The Golden Gate Bridge

You see this…

Stresses and Strains on the Golden Gate Bridge

  • You compare your current project to your Thermodynamics course from college or whatever your most challenging engineering course was. Perhaps you find yourself thinking that you’d rather retake that again.

  • You believe the technology from science fiction movies will happen…Nano bites, teleportation, space travel, lightsabers etc.…someday.

  • You get excited when that the one phone app you thought of already exists but upset that you didn’t get the chance to develop it yourself.

  • You love honey, not for the sweet taste but of its high viscosity.

  • You defrost meat for dinner and create a heat transfer problem.

  • You know the difference between cement and concrete.

  • You love math but not adding, subtracting, and long division math. You love algebra, calculus, and differential equations math.

  • Your solution to everything is more duct tape.

  • You can’t write on paper unless its graph paper with a drafting pencil that has 0.5mm lead.

  • Your idea of fun for a Friday night is staying in and building IKEA furniture…WITHOUT the instructions.

  • You use CAD for everything, kid’s wooden car project or a Rube Goldberg Machine.

  • You name your pet after your favorite scientist. Tesla, Bernoulli, Fourier, Laplace, Newton, Einstein, Hawking, Curie, it’s a very long list.

  • You assemble an item and toss the instructions. They’re just recommendations anyway…

A few of the many revelations that engineers everywhere can relate to. At MISUMI, we’ve definitely experienced #4 with the amazing designs our customers create with the power of MISUMI’s configurable components and there’s always the great project comparison to a most difficult engineering course.  MISUMI’s engineers are all here for you with any questions or concerns you may have.  Be sure to reach out to them with any questions via chat on our website or email at engineering@misumiusa.com

Let us know when you have moments such as these or what revelations you have as an engineer daily! Comment below!

About the Author

Carlicia Layosa

Carlicia is the Marketing Automation Manager at MISUMI. She holds a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and a master's degree in Energy Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a Certified SOLIDWORKS Associate, Marketo Certified Expert, and is passionate about education and training.

4 thoughts on “You Know You’re an Engineer When….

  1. You know you’re an engineer when you lose the screws that hold the circuit breaker cover in place over 220 VAC, 240A (53kW) and run off to Home Depot to buy “replacement circuit breaker cover screws” only to find *to your chagrin* that they are only available *free* with the purchase of a circuit breaker box for some eighty dollars–which of course you don’t need…and you don’t know the screw *pitch* because you lost ’em, so you look at TapCon, but you don’t need 100 hardened screws with hex heads, and you keep lookin’…and you find coarse thread drywall screws, with finishing washers, for five bucks, so you try that, and not only do they fit, they look great and you sell them to your friends, and the Inspector says Nice Panel.

    You know you’re an engineer when your landlord say just wire the disposal direct but you know in 2 years you won’t be able to buy a disposal without a plug on it so you insist on a permit and put a board in and nail a box in and wire the dangling disposal wire into the box with a grounded plug on it and test it with your test plug and it lights up the right way…but you forget about it, and you get an email from the County saying your permit is expiring so you schedule a last minute inspection and start to fret, but the Inspector shows up in a 2 minute visit, a total non-event, but you aren’t sure, so you ask “Was this done rightly”, and the Inspector says “Perfect,” and you tell the landlord and she say “I guess it was worth it!”

    You know you’re an engineer when you set the SSID on your WiFi to match the SSID on your Drone so you can hack the Drone but it doesn’t work, so you flip it, and get the Drone to log in to your PC and run netmap on the Drone to see what TCP and UDP ports it has open, then leave the SSID on your WiFi set that way because it’s easier and you can just switch back and forth now that you know what ports to talk to, and learn a lot in the process, and then write your senator to contribute to his UAV Test Site with some other research you did on the way.

    You know you’re an engineer when you use an adjustable “Crescent” wrench the right way, with the adjustable jaw trailing the twist, because the leverage on that jaw is favorable that way, tightening or loosening.

  2. Actually, I think most of us engineers think the “solution to everything” is more KAPTON tape. Duct tape leaves gooey residue, is too thick, permeable, dies up/falls off, etc.

  3. Most of those are spot on! The Duct Tape and IKEA examples are not. I never use Duct Tape unless in an emergency and IKEA stuff is garbage.

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