• Question: what would you be doing if you were not an engineer?

    Asked by kayleighstyles to Alex, Chris, Harriet, Jed, Ken on 12 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by harrietcampbell123.
    • Photo: Ken Gibbs

      Ken Gibbs answered on 9 Mar 2012:

      Mmmm ! There are two other things I’d like to have been able to do, but life is too short. . . . . .The first is that I wish I could have studied sociology to understand what makes communities and individuals behave the way they do. Engineering has taught me that you must understand how people behave if you wish to provide what they want and need. The second line of study would have been in public health. My profile shows that I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene simply because most of what I did as an engineer was aimed to make for better health for young children – so I would have liked to know much more about public health. So much to do, and so little time in which to do it ! Oh, I’d probably want to try out flying a micro-light aircraft; sailing clockwise around the coast of Britain; and walking the coastal path around Devon and Cornwall before my knees wear out – all of this in my spare time, you understand ?

    • Photo: Harriet Fletcher

      Harriet Fletcher answered on 9 Mar 2012:

      What a good question. I like to make my own wine and cook lots of different things so perhaps I would set up a little business selling homemade goodies. Some kind of animal conservation work would also be really fun but I fear that I might accidentally cuddle a tiger cub and that probably wouldn’t end well. Oh and there’s always queen of the world ;-).

    • Photo: Alexander Zacheshigriva

      Alexander Zacheshigriva answered on 10 Mar 2012:

      Uh, difficult question. Depends how I look at it. If I didn’t study engineering at university I would study maths… My dream job, I would like to be a writer and write books, I love reading books and wish I could write them too, but sadly don’t think I have it in me…. If I didn’t go to uni I would become a carpenter.

    • Photo: Jed Ramsay

      Jed Ramsay answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      Well when I left university I started working for a holiday company in their marketing department – that job gave me my first grey hair at the age of 23 so I quit that one!

      I think aside from fantasy jobs like playing football for Barcelona… realistically I’d probably be a motorcycle courier. I did it for a while when I was younger and would be happy doing it again – if I could avoid being knocked off the bike by taxis and so on!

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