• Question: What do you enjoy most/least about engineering?

    Asked by Reah to Ashwanth, Jeni, Mark, Natalie, Stephen on 14 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by 266envf27, Lauren.
    • Photo: Jeni Spragg

      Jeni Spragg answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      Hi Reah 🙂

      I like the variety – sometimes it’s really practical and hands-on, and sometimes it involves sitting down and puzzling out the answer to something, or perhaps creating a design.

      What I don’t like sometimes is occasionallt getting frustrated if you can’t see the solution and it feels like it’s taking forever to find it. But there’s usually a way out at the end, and it’s satisfying when you get there 🙂

    • Photo: Stephen Richardson

      Stephen Richardson answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      I like the variety too and I also like the fact that you can usually see very clearly how your work is having a direct impact on people’s lives – hopefully improving them somehow.
      I think one of the frustrating things is when you work on a project where there are conflicting priorities. By that I mean when one part of the team is trying to do something that goes against what you want to achieve. Usually the conflict is around cost – things have to be done to a budget and so you can’t do everything you’d like to do.

    • Photo: Mark Gowan

      Mark Gowan answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      Reah
      The bits I love most are dealing with concepts and turning them into reality.
      The bits I like the least are when you cannot prove why something works, but it just does, and it takes you ages to find out why it worked and can be really frustrating

    • Photo: Natalie Wride

      Natalie Wride answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      Hi Reah!

      One of the things I enjoy most about Engineering is it’s really practical – I know my research benefits the rail industry and has a practical application. It’ll eventually improve our experiences of rail transport too I hope! When I worked as a Geotechnical Engineer, it’s amazing being able to go out on site and see the projects you’ve designed being built (and be able to say ‘I was involved in designing that!’.

      The thing I enjoy least about Engineering is really difficult, because there honestly isn’t anything I really don’t enjoy! I get really frustrated when my lab tests don’t work but I guess if I had to say anything it would probably be that sometimes, when you work on really big projects, you can spend a really long time on the same work. Some people really like this but for me, sometimes I like a bit of a change – at the moment I’m lucky I’ve got a mix of office and lab work 🙂

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