There's this commercial on the radio these days for Vatterott College that goes something like this:

Lady on the phone: Is this Vatterott College of Wichita?
Lady 2: Yes how can I help you?
Lady 1: I just wanted to thank you for your seminar on saving energy and home efficiency, my husband is so excited about it!
Lady 2: Well then he should check into our HVAC curriculum, he can finish a degree in less than a year and make money doing what he loves!
Lady 1: Well we both love it when he makes money!

Wait whaaa? If you're paying for airtime and every second counts, wouldn't it be shorter to make this story about two characters? Why couldn't they have just had the guy calling for himself? Then I never would have noticed anything wrong, it would have seemed perfectly logical. Or even better... they could have had the woman call up and say she was interested in an HVAC program. Is that so crazy? Why did they take extra precious seconds to make it clear that the woman was calling for her husband?

Most days, I go to my fun engineering job thankful that good feminists in the 60s and 70s paved the way for women in technical fields. Then I hear something like this and think the road isn't so much paved as sort of mowed down and marked with a flag every five miles. "Ladies, welcome to the 21st century! You don't have to wait passively while men learn valuable technical skills, you can call the tech school for them to help speed up their enrollment. What more could you possibly want?"

this entry will have the exciting answer to yesterday's trivia question about airplanes flying backwards.

Is it possible for an airplane to fly backwards? By that I mean, let's say you're standing outside your house, look up at the sky, and there's an airplane that looks like it's passing over you tail first.
Yes, quite possible... mostly because the airplane is moving through the air, but you are standing on the ground. But let's continue...

If it's even possible, what does it mean?
It means the plane is going against one hell of a headwind. There's so much drag it's being pushed backwards, but wind over the wings also means you've still got plenty of lift. The magic word here is groundspeed... you have a gage that tells you what your airspeed is, and it's always going to be at least 60 knots or so in a little airplane. Your groundspeed is that, plus whatever the wind is doing. So if the wind is 60 knots against you (negative), you're just going to hover like a helicopter. 70 knots, and you're going backwards... relative to the ground. Relative to the wind you're pushing right through it like always.

What types of airplanes could do this?
In theory, any airplane could do this, but it's more likely in a small plane or glider with a low stall speed (meaning that they're capable of staying up even while flying slower). A little single engine can fly quite nicely at 55 knots or so... and it's not uncommon for winds at altitude to get to that. A Boeing that stalls at twice that speed is probably less likely to find winds fast enough. Winds do get faster at higher altitudes, but that almost cancels out my question because it's tough to notice what things are doing 39,000 feet above your house.

How long could an airplane sustain this configuration?
Cookie goes to metawidget for "4) as long as the wind, their fuel and their patience last". Since there's just as much air going over the wings, the airplane is just as stable as it always is. When you think about it, the plane really has no way of knowing the difference between lift from weather-related wind and lift from "we're moving through the air" wind.

What do you think's going through the pilot's mind?
crisco747 guessed that I was thinking "oh, shit..." but since I'm always thinking that it's not really a fair answer, I'm not giving him a cookie. Instead I'll give it to rynhollis who cheated and ran off experience, but yeah, we basically think it's a cool fun trick. Until we try to get somewhere, that is... then we're thinking, "I wish I had a more powerful airplane."

Technically an airplane can't fly backwards because you can't reverse the direction of the propeller. A propeller, just so you know, is like 2 or more little wings... all airfoils, and when the prop spins air moves across each blade and each blade gets lift, but since they're tilted forward instead of upward like a wing, you're pulled forward. If you could reverse the propeller I think the whole thing would just fall out of the sky because the airplane body just isn't designed to go that way... for one thing, the body itself would be blocking air to the propeller. But I'm open to other interpretations of this.

Anyway to make a short story long (and take up two lj entries) I got to do this the other day practicing slow flight in a 55 knot headwind. The "you can go this many miles on your remaining fuel" display sort of went nuts, because it wasy saying we couldn't go ANYWHERE which was true. Other than that, everything was normal, the plane flew just fine, my mental state wasn't any more heightened than it normally is. My instructor was more excited about it than I was because frankly everything right now is a big deal to me, so he has to be very specific about which things are also cool to non-new pilots.

If I were to give out cookies to everyone who answered some or all my questions correctly just about everyone would get one. There are of course other types of airplanes that are meant to fly backwards, this is just the only experience I've had. So... points.

after my first flying lesson we had nothing but storms for a week and a half, so it wasn't until yesterday that I got to take... my second flying lesson. Yes, I am now a student pilot with 2.7 hours.

I felt much more relaxed this time. Several things helped me. First, it wasn't my first flight.

Second, I had a talk with one of our flight test pilots whose been in some insane situations before. He was telling me about actions in an emergency situation and thinking fast, and I asked him, "Do you have all this stuff planned out?" Like, a pre-checklist in your head? How much am I supposed to plot out? He told me it just sort of all comes together. And then said, "It's like an engineering test, you know, you've taken those. You don't know what they're going to throw at you, could be anything. You just know what resources are in your head, put them together and find an answer." For some reason that really made sense to me. This'll sound crazy, but a sadistic part of me has always loved tests, and engineering tests are among the most noteworthy because they can be absolutely insane. Professors build their entire legend based on what torture they can make students go through on test day. I sort of like it. I'm competitive, and this is my chance to prove what I've got. It's fast and challenging and new. A good test is one that gets my adrenaline going.

So I'm going to think of flying like that... I mean yes the consequences of screwing up are worse than getting a C in a grad-level course, but good motivation doesn't come from fear anyway so what's the safety threat going to do for me? I'm worry about safety and all it does is freak me out. If I remember that I've got bad-ass test taking skills, I might get somewhere. The best pilots are the ones who fly the airplane, in all conditions, with anything terrible going on around them, they can focus and keep a clear head and remember their tasks.

My second flight was still not great. When he said bank 30°, that felt really steep to me and part of me I held back a little. I don't have a good sense at all of how much to adjust the throttle for the different power settings. But I feel like I can capture a heading, fly steadily towards points on the horizon, climb and descend and keep a clear head about it.

I'm mentoring some high school kids in a robotics competition. The point of the competition is to get them excited about engineering, science, technology, that sort of thing, plus they get to work with us and learn about design processes and all that.

Today was the kickoff where all the schools get together and learn what the contest is... it wasn't good. It was at 9 am, so of course I was still feeling hungover. It started with 45 minutes of powerpoint slides about corporate sponsors, with speeches from some area engineers about how important our industries are. Pretty much every speech started with something along the lines of, "My name's ___ and I've worked at ___ since 1982. Engineering is an i n c r e d i b l y exciting career."

There were some important breakout sessions where kids learned about what would be in the robot kits and how to program the stuff, but there was also way too much buildup and stupidity and "everyone applaud for [insert old white guy here] who helped put this all together!". AND THEN, an hour and a half after the event started, they showed us what the contest would be.

but by the end of it all, even I didn't want to be an engineer. AND I AM ONE. I mean, who's idea is it to drain the excitement out of building robots? that in itself is a challenge, I think. maybe next time we can talk about the chemical signature of a van gogh painting, so we kill appreciation for art, too?

At the high school I'm at, two of the mentors are dads with kids in the class, and then there's me... trying not to noticeably roll my eyes too much. I really want to help them understand that engineering is not about sucking the life out of you... but today the other side had way more evidence.

I was giving my diversity presentation to some higher-ups when one of them asked, "What can we do to encourage more of your generation to go into engineering?" I don't think he understood how huge a question that was. I mean, people are doing phd dissertations on that. The number of engineering students in America has plummeted in recent years.

But it got me thinking - maybe there are some obvious reasons why fewer people want to be engineers these days. So with your help I'd like to do a short informal survey, maybe I'll have a more brilliant answer some time. Or maybe this will start some grand lifetime of exploration where I solve the problems of our day. I really want to know your reason for not being an engineer. I'm not going to debate you, I know that other careers are incredibly important, this isn't set up to try to make you an engineer, I'm just curious. So be honest in your reply. And if you can recruit some friends to reply to me, that'd help too. Here's what I'd like to know...

Age:
Gender:
What country you're from:
Are you smart?
Your college major:
If you're going to be an engineer, what got you to join our ranks?
If you chose a science/technology/math field outside from engineering, why didn't you go with engineering?
And finally, the important one... If you avoided science/tech/math/eng altogether, can you say why?

I think mechanical engineers are so mainstream. I don't get it... they're engineers like us, good at math, hard working, it just seems like they should have that triumphant nerd thing going like the rest of us.

I wonder if someone put subliminal messages in, like, Dave Matthews Band, or whatever music they play in Old Navy, telling kids to be mechanical engineers.

ya know what I forgot to write today? it's september 3rd! this means that exactly five years ago today was my first day on the Real Job.

The big thing I clearly remember that day was that I wore heels, and by the end my feet were absolutely positively killing me. I'd called HR, and they told me to dress nicely because I'd get my badge photo taken and all that, so I wore uncomfortable shoes to make the whole outfit work. Big mistake. Yes, there was the three seconds of photo, but the rest of the day I was being led around like a puppy, walking everywhere.

I thought HR was just cruel, not to have told me to wear comfortable shoes. Now I know that HR barely knows what engineering is. Yes, my contact there told me to call her for everything, she arranged my relocation, gave me my interview schedule and told me who to ask for in the engineering building. But she had no freaking clue where or who I'd be after 7:45 on September 3rd. And honestly, people who work in HR do wear cute shoes and "outfits"... because they don't walk through airplane hangars or climb into cockpits.

I also remember being super excited about meeting everybody, because I just thought they were all so wonderful... now I size people up in horribly judgmental ways. Are you an engineer? A pilot? Can you e-mail, or are you going to bug the s out of me by calling all the time? Are you one of those smarmy a-holes who's going to go over my head and ask my boss questions because you don't believe I know what I'm talking about? Do you believe in standards? Are you one of those creepy socially inept engineers? A total idiot? Insane? Lazy? Micromanager? Are you going to blow off my meeting because I'm not important enough, then go behind my back to the people who were in there and reverse our decision? Do you understand schedules? Are you afraid of technology? Do you know what you're doing?

Are you in marketing?

Oh, I love my job. Back then I think I just loved having a job... the rest of the details just scared me. I wasn't sure how to prove myself, or if I was even capable of such a task. I thought being smart and knowing a lot about airplanes were sort of the same thing.

now that I work with new college grads, I'm also pretty sure I annoyed the shit out of my coworkers. they've all got that "world's cutest kitten" thing going on.

sometimes you break them... they get so frustrated they decide engineering isn't for them, or they're just going to be pissed off and work outside the system as much as possible. Try to get the friendly managers to sign their reports, pay for the pricey healthcare plan because there's less paperwork.

They stop calling the help desk about our crappy computers.

I always call help desk. I call them about ridiculous things that I know they'll be clueless on, just to spite them. I love the challenge. I even know the real IT guys at our company now, and they know me because I've done website stuff, and we joke about how things fall apart, and I still love calling help desk. I get better stories... like the day my monitor died and I called them, and said "We plugged the monitor into another computer to see if it was my PC, but the monitor still won't come on." and the guy at the other end said, "Well ma'am, it sounds like the problem might be with the monitor... I'm going to put you on hold for level II just to make sure."

I love the system. Individual people are freaking insane, but the whole system... I'm a diva at it now. I'm good at what I do. People want me on their projects. I'm slowly learning to be diplomatic (I think) but still have my tough edgy image. I have friends at work. I feel like I fit in.

A college kid asked me what it was like to be at five years, did I feel all "old"? Nice question, brat. I told him that I still felt like there was infinity to learn about airplanes, the only big difference is that now I know enough that I can do a lot without managers, so they piss me off... I used to just be so happy to talk to my bosses, happy they were taking an interest in me, now I mostly think they're in my way.

I think the real difference is very, very round. I wanted to be an engineer. I thought that meant learning everything technical. I thought if I had technical knowledge, I'd have everything... people would respect and adore me, I'd get responsibility, I'd be valuable.

Five years taught me that knowledge comes from experience, and experience comes from a lot of things that are very non-technical. The ability to present information, the ability to argue, confidence to jump in there, networking, sucking up, having an image, enthusiasm, earning respect, running a meeting, walking fast, listening, learning, knowing who to learn from... there's not one important thing. there's not one important thing about an airplane. it's all part of something bigger.

The act of making a whole new airplane can, from a business/engineering perspective, be broken into three parts. "Advanced Design" is what we use to refer to the really big fuzzy weird part... you're doing research, coming up with ideas, talking with management and customers a lot and developing concepts. This is fun for a while, but if you're really in advanced design, 90% of your ideas end up in a file cabinet somewhere without being a real airplane. Management gets bored, pulls ideas out, has you work on them, then has you put them back.

Then there's Experimental, which is where I am. Experimental is what happens when upper management takes a file from the Advanced Design world and hands it "over the wall", so to speak, assigns an official program manager, approves a plan to make an airplane, and has an airplane made. It's a big deal to make it to this point. We work "go" programs, which means that unless something goes wrong (a major supplier drops out, the economy tanks) this will definitely be an airplane. We're given hard-set dates... next year you will have a flying airplane. the year after that, you will certify. three months after that you will deliver to the first customer. and we get there.

After the first few customer deliveries, you're officially in Sustaining. Some people love working sustaining. Most of us don't. The phrase "rotting away on sustaining" is common. It's where we start the newbies who don't know what an airplane is. You work little projects here and there, and fix everybody's problems. The due dates are no longer looked at in terms of years, but weeks. You hope you can hand off to somebody else and go work experimental again, where you have more flexibility if something needs changed, there's less repitition, more working with lots of different groups, that sort of thing.

I didn't know about all this in college because I think school is all Experimental. There's definitely no sustaining. Once you turn in a paper, if it's sort of mostly okay, the teacher gives you a passing grade and you never worry about it again. There are no customers bugging you to make it better. You're not releasing patches or revisions. It's just there. so we get out into the real world and nobody knows how to handle sustaining... the act of planning to make something better, even though the exciting turnpoints and due dates are past.

and the worst airplane to work on is the one where they don't really plan for sustaining. they stop paying attention and thinking about strategy after the big dates. they try to avoid responsibility and fail to listen to lessons learned from other sustaining groups. they tell people they can go to another program, then string them along for months or years. they let the same experimental people try to learn how to handle sustaining, without entertaining any new ideas about what needs to be changed or admitting that we're in a different phase. They don't embrace the idea that sustaining is just as important as everything we did before the big exciting milestone dates, they underthink it, they don't look at it as its own science.

and for the record, this is basically what I think went wrong with American Iraq war policy.

I think I might be the only american in each of my classes this semester. I mean I might be wrong, it's not like I've talked with everybody in the class (each one has about 50 students). It's just that they all look to be of asia, east asia, or middle eastern descent and so far every person who's spoken in class speaks with an accent. this includes the professors. there's another caucasian in my morning class but but he sounds eastern european.

also I'm the only one with reddish-brown hair. everyone else's is black. does that makes me the blonde?

I don't mind so much, I've gotten used to being the minority in these classes, and in a way I guess I've always been a minority because I'm female (there are only about 6-10 women in each class). I think the years of being around so many international students and learning from professors who aren't from here has made me pretty good at understanding people with heavy accents. It took me almost a solid month to figure out what a professor from russia was ever talking about, but most of them have been better than that. The indians are beautiful to listen to. There's a guy I study with a lot who's been in classes with me two previous semesters and I think he's from bahrain, which, before I met him, I'd never heard of.

but the big question... what's up with my country? why don't we want to be engineers? what's up with other countries... do they not have engineering schools? it's like america is a gourmet chef who married a big fan of hot pockets and kraft dinner, so the chef has dinner guests all the time and the spouse just shrugs and makes toast.

nothing says the day after thanksgiving like champagne and setting up the christmas tree. in that order.

Mom said I should journal about the lights. She's read my journal long enough that she can pretty much pick out what would make a good entry. I think she should just start her own account. She's a fantastic writer, for one thing. For another thing, and this may shock some of you, I come from a woman who has a lot to say. She values privacy and worries about confidentiality, but I've come to realize that it's an issue with everyone over the age of 22. It was a tough adjustment for me to make, being a livejournaller and graduating from college. In school you can write about everything, and suddenly you get into this job world, where you're in a company that doesn't want everything you know about them shared about the world, and you're with people who aren't much into the internet and think you're a freak if you blog. For a while I just didn't write about anything, entries dropped off. But the older I get the more I realize that there are just a lot of common stories, ideas and situations that are job-applicable, but not job-specific, if that makes sense. You learn how to find things to write about that don't get you in trouble. it's cool.

SO anyway here's the real entry for today: my dad used to always do the christmas tree lights, and I started helping a few years ago, and we've both agreed to a single running philosophy as far as this goes. Two important factors: you must use lights from last year, because if you don't, that's a waste. Second, they must blink. for some reason, blinker bulbs seem to have a shorter life span than other lights, so we use replacements, and sometimes they don't work and you can't really explain why because the voltage levels all match up. I mean, if you put in a two volt bulb and it blinks really brightly once and then dies, then obviously you should try a three volt one, right? If the three volt bulb is dim and doesn't blink at all, then you've reached a scientific impossibility, and you stare at it get another beer and try to explain to mom why THIS WILL WORK.

it's more than science at this point, it's tradition. we don't light the house. it'd probably kill us.

but anyway, it's 2:00, I have the tree all lit and mostly blinking, so it's decoration time. gotta get off the internet.

speaking of work, I did write a really good (IMHO) article on spacefem.com about what engineers do, since I read that most kids don't want to be engineers because they don't know what the hell we are. just food for thought, especially if you want to be an engineer like me.

If you're ever in an engineering department (as I am, 60 hours a week) and need to judge people quickly, I've decided the best way to do so is with the prefix-factor conversion test. You just look up from your desk and say, "Pico... that's ten to the minus ninth, right?"

It seems to me that of all the dumb little things that are on that first test of our freshman year, those prefixes are the most forgotten, which is why this is fun. We manage to remember our resistor color codes. the obvious formulas like P=VI stick in our heads. But not everything can make it past that first weekend of hard drinking, so scientific prefixes are the first to go since they're in the appendix of every single textbook we own anyway.

So here's what engineers say to the question:

"Shit, I have no clue."
Explination of response: None needed.
Personality: This person is not an engineer. This person is an intruder who should be taken down.
Reason for being an engineer: opens door to future in management or marketing.

"Yeah, ten to the minus ninth sounds right."
Explination of response: Engineers love to act like they know what they're doing all the time. They also avoid taking risks at all cost. So since this is the confident, no-risk way out, it's a sadly typical response.
Personality: Either too stupid to know the difference, too chicken to call you out, or too lazy to think about it. Either way, this is not a good engineer.
Reason for being an engineer: the paycheck.

"I can't be sure, but I can tell you it's in my pocket reference, thirty feet away."
Explination of response: There's a lot we need to know in life, so eventually most of us get over the idea of knowing it all and just learn when to look it up.
Personality: Confident, established engineer with nothing to prove or hide.
Reason for being an engineer: Just kept embracing practicality until they fell into it and got it all over them.

"I can't be sure, but I can tell you it's in my pocket reference ON PAGE 8, thirty feet away."
Explination of response: Not only smart, but has a sense of humor and pride in supplying any knowledge, even if it's not exactly what you're looking for.
Personality: Same as above, confident, established engineer with nothing to prove or hide, but the geek factor in this case is about ten times that of the normal, non-numbered answer.
Reason for being an engineer: Born that way.

"It's on Google."
Explination of response; Same as above except younger and cooler.
Personality: Closet computer nerd who shuns old-fashioned book things in favor of much more expensive methods.
Reason for being an engineer: Wants to take over the world.

"No, pico is ten to the minus 12. Nano is ten to the minus 9."
Explination of response: Paid too much attention in school.
Personality: Might come off as an asshole to some, but we fellow engineers know that they're smart as hell and call it like they see it. Go them.
Reason for being an engineer: It's either this or living under a bridge.

----

Alright, so go brush up on your prefixes and look smart :)

Last weekend when I was with my family, I dropped out of conversations on four totally separate occasions when they thought I was still involved. The result was that they'd ask a question or prompt a response and I'd just look up and say, "What? Huh?" and look like a space cadet. One time my sister and I were talking about her last visit to Wichita, and I was eating, and I was totally listening until I focused on some lettuce or something for, oh, thirty seconds, and then came back when I heard her say, "That place was good! Have you been back there since I left?"

oh shit... what place? where am I? what are we talking about?

So my family accused me of losing my mind (they're really nice like that) and I figured they were right until this week, when I started thinking about my environment. I work in this gigantic room, and all the desks are in rows, but there are 4' dividers so you don't have to stare at the guy across from you and tables in between you and the people on either side (the goal, by the way, is to take over both tables with your work to prove superiority). Anyway, the guy to my right talks on the phone all the time, really loudly, and always faces MY DIRECTION when he does it. I've told him it drives me nuts but he forgets. Everyone else is just always talking. At any given moment, my productivity depends on my ability to focus in and tune out at least 15 other conversations going on around me. It's like working in a football stadium. People will stop four feet from my desk and scream at one another and I just deal. Then I go to the test lab and work right next to where they're building an airplane, which is loud (you can't quietly drive rivets).

So basically I've lost my ability to have a focused conversation with an adult who is not talking about airplanes. And people wonder why engineers seem a little off? It's not us! I was totally normal before this job! We are victims.

I've been watching the appendices of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. I'd have to say that if I'd watched this during college or whatever, a lot of this "making of" stuff would have seemed distant, but now I relate to it all to well. I mean, when they talked about making the movie, they talked about deadlines, project management, group leads, team leads, teleconferences, years out of everyone's lives, overtime... the same stuff we do to make an airplane. They make it all sound so exciting though :) I saw the similarities too when I watched the commentary on Monsters, Inc.; I remember them talking about how they had a "fur group" in charge of animating fur, just like we have a hydraulics group, a pressurization group, an avionics group (the avionics group is the best, of course).

Before I had a livejournal (egads, how was that?) I had an internship at a company that made powerplants. It was miserable. I hated my life. They had over-hired interns so there wasn't much work for me to do. I felt like a tiny, meaningless cog. A powerplant takes 9-15 years to create and I sort of barely saw three months of it, which I spent looking at drawings and entering the parts called out in excel spreadsheets.

So I decided that the villian here was the timespan. Powerplants were too huge. I needed to go into consumer electronics - a world where an idea goes to production in six months, where there's always something new to keep my attention. I got a job... it wasn't exactly consumer electronics, but it was close. I made sure of that and would have really fought accepting it if it hadn't been. We did aircraft systems integration and there were always new things to integrate because customers ordered anything and everything that the general aviation industry could crank out. I had a deadline every three days. It was great! But looking back, after a year and a half, I'd really done that to satisfaction. It could have gotten cyclical.

I moved to this new position almost exactly one year ago. Yeah, I let myself go to a Big Project, where the deadline wasn't every week, it was huge, and we were chipping away at a glacier to try to make an airplane. I wasn't in a cute little group of five people, I was on a PROJECT with hundreds, and more were being added all the time. I had more managers watching me and I've worked more hours and the scary part is where nowhere near the end; the part where we actually have a flying airplane.

And even the end will drag out... just like you see all these parts of a movie but suddenly someone realizes they should watch the whole thing together, some random person will ask, "Has anyone sat in the back of an airplane? Reading a newspaper, so they make sure the sun stays at the same place on the paper and doesn't oscillate back and forth while the autopilot tries to stay level? With a wine goblet on a table?" All the little things.

So it's scary as hell and it's just where I said I didn't want to be, but there's a big difference, and a reason why I love where I'm at and the people who worked on Lord of the Rings said they'd do it all over again if they had the chance, even knowing about all the pain and long hours: when you have an opportunity to dedicate years of your life to something you love, it really is an experience worth everything. Passion is what makes it. The people I work with love airplanes just as much as the people on this DVD love the special effects of a fantasy film, and there's this special bond and you know The Project will take you over, but it'll all be worth it.

It's not how big the project is. It never was. It's how much you've got to put into it. Oh sure, someone will come here with a "Don't love your job, it will never love you back" but I'll have to beg to differ... the right job gives a lot. The right job is worth it.

I stopped in at Spangles after work for dinner before class. Spangles is this fast food joint that was just in Wichita until very recently when they opened a restaurant in topeka, which was very big news. Anyway you can get super-good milkshakes, they have the best french fries and gyros and cheap burgers. Creepy commercials though. But that's not what I was posting on.

I was eating my gyro and french fries (which are perfectly crispy on the outside) when a young man and woman come in, order, and sit at a table in my section. They were sharing a milkshake and having hamburgers and fries, and smiling at one another in that terribly cute young couple sort of way, speaking in sign language. They'd look at one another, eat, put food down every once in a while to say something with their hands. I couldn't stop looking at them. They were so happy looking, and the way their hands moved was just beautiful. It reminded me how badly I want to learn sign language. or any language.

maybe I was thinking so hard on it because I just enrolled in my engineering course for next semester, and it's just... more electrical engineering. I love learning this stuff, it positively absorbs me, but I've been thinking lately about how much I haven't taken. I had a very technical, practical education in college. I quizzed out of history and transferred some spanish credits from high school so I didn't have to take those in college. I also never had sociology, art history, music appreciation, women's studies, literature, chemistry, or biology (I did take "life science"). I put off classes like speech and psychology for as long as possible which was stupid, because I learned a ton in those classes. When I think of the most important things I took, my engineering courses never come to mind first. technical writing ranks higher than just about anything.

I'd like to learn sign language. I'd like to learn latin. I could try to get good at reading and pick these things up on my own, but I have trouble with that. I taught myself to knit and program in HTML but other subjects, where you don't produce something, you just "think", are really hard to learn by yourself, with no teacher, no study group, no forced timeline. There aren't enough hours in the day to soak it all in on my own.