• Question: What do you find hardest about engineering?

    Asked by Isla to Shruti, Mark, Faranak, Douglas, Charlene, Alistair on 4 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by 487mgrq27.
    • Photo: Shruti Turner

      Shruti Turner answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I find the most difficult part of what I do creating the solutions to the challenges and problems I’m designing for. The point of a PhD is to do something that no one else has done before, something unique. Sometimes that’s creating something brand new and others it’s using existing things in a totally new way. Working with prosthetic limbs is on the edge of medicine and engineering, so something that might be a great engineering solution, might be a terrible medical solution or the other way around. Balancing the two areas can be very difficult sometimes.

    • Photo: Faranak Bahrami

      Faranak Bahrami answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      I think the hardest thing in engineering is knowing when to stop! With many jobs, you have clear criteria regarding what you need to do and how to do it. With engineering, you can keep researching, finding new ways of doing something, then you want to make that solution perfect, but then how do you define perfect? Sometimes I feel like I can spend many more hours on a job and make it even better, but deciding when to say ok now is enough, I think is very hard in engineering, at least for me.

    • Photo: Charlene Chung

      Charlene Chung answered on 11 Mar 2019:

      The hardest thing about engineering is also the best thing about engineering; solving problems and creating solutions that change the world 🙂

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