Sunday, November 27, 2016

Interview with a Mechanical Engineer

by: Noemi Melo
Prompt Post #3

The professional that I interviewed was Kyle Foster, a mechanical engineer who now teaches engineering courses like the one I am taking this semester which is EGR.

            Mr. Foster explained that the misconceptions of engineering is male domination. He explained that the reason why there is such a great issue with this is because so many women leave their jobs due to various reasons. Either they cannot balance their professional and personal lives. Another misconception is about mechanical engineers like himself. People think that all they do is simply design cars. This only applies to a handful of mechanical engineers but engineers like himself have worked with oil/gas companies other than design cars or build them. Other important misconceptions that he mentioned was that many people believe that engineers sit all day on a computer, that they lack communication skills, and that they love mathematics and sciences. He mentioned that these misconceptions are not true because engineers don’t spend their days in a desk because they must be building things or design projects or whatever it is that engineers do. Himself like many other engineers have good communication skills because they have to work as teams to accomplish a project. Engineers do not work by themselves because they need the opinion of others.

            Since engineers work in teams they usually communicate verbally. Other ways that they communicate in are through emails or phone calls. These are the primary ways in which they communicate.

            One of the things that I learned and did not know was that engineers must work in teams. I have read and heard from millions of people that engineers don’t have good communication skills but indeed they do. They mostly communicate through email and in person. I had no idea that they had to work in teams to either design projects or design but they do because they can’t do everything by themselves and they need the help of other fellow engineers.

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