Question
What are some memorable experiences/personal transformations people have had in mechanical engineering workshops?
Answer
I'll answer my own question here. My experiences building stuff with my own hands (outside of routine home repairs, Ikea-level assembly etc.) are the following:
One broader weird effect is that it somehow makes you rise above politics. As a crude over-simplification, the left is about being anti-tech/pro-nature and the right is about the opposite orientation.
The first time you build something with your own hands, you realize that the technology/nature distinction is basically completely meaningless. Herbert Simon noted that the "artificial" and the "natural" are only superficially meaningful categories. The artificial is as much a part of the natural as things like trees and rocks.
For this reason, I think a lot of engineers are fundamentally unable to participate in a lot of political discourses because they cannot undo the sense of connection with physical reality and get back to the alienation that I sense a lot of liberal arts types, who have never built something with their hands, experience.
Software engineers/computer scientists, I find, are in a curious halfway twilight zone. Building software is a process that is neither purely physical nor purely mental. They seem capable of swinging either way. Some think like engineers, others think like art history majors.
I suppose I am perpetuating one false dichotomy (STEM v. liberal arts) while trying to bust another (artificial/natural). Oh well.
- A fairly complex model glider in airplane
- Three semesters of shop class as a mechanical engineering undergrad (one working with hand tools on wood, sand molding and sheet metal processes), one learning the basics of machine tools, and one project-style class where we built a full complex assembly from scratch in teams
- A design project in junior year where we had to come up with a solution to a design challenge and fabricate it
One broader weird effect is that it somehow makes you rise above politics. As a crude over-simplification, the left is about being anti-tech/pro-nature and the right is about the opposite orientation.
The first time you build something with your own hands, you realize that the technology/nature distinction is basically completely meaningless. Herbert Simon noted that the "artificial" and the "natural" are only superficially meaningful categories. The artificial is as much a part of the natural as things like trees and rocks.
For this reason, I think a lot of engineers are fundamentally unable to participate in a lot of political discourses because they cannot undo the sense of connection with physical reality and get back to the alienation that I sense a lot of liberal arts types, who have never built something with their hands, experience.
Software engineers/computer scientists, I find, are in a curious halfway twilight zone. Building software is a process that is neither purely physical nor purely mental. They seem capable of swinging either way. Some think like engineers, others think like art history majors.
I suppose I am perpetuating one false dichotomy (STEM v. liberal arts) while trying to bust another (artificial/natural). Oh well.