While I am a student at “A Fine University,” I find myself a member of a very different and elite part of the A.F.U. population. I’m an engineer. Today, I seek to explain to you what this distinction means.
Now, I can’t rightly clump all these students into one group. That’s too broad a category and would be stereotyping these students. No, there’s much more than one type of engineer.
There’s two:
Type 1: These are the folk who thought they should be engineers because it seemed the next logical step after doing well in high school geometry and precalculus. Now, after a few semesters in their respective engineering school, they feel like they’ve just been told a hilarious joke. In Russian. And hearing the joke cost them one hundred thousand dollars. In general, they find their rear ends hurt a great deal after taking tests.
Type 2: These guys get the aforementioned joke (which actually was in binary), and they haven’t missed a day of class yet (except for that one time when they felt like being naughty). Their roommates swear they’ve met them once, but don’t remember what they look like. They also complain a great deal about how much work they have to do.
Now, the question is, are you yourself an engineer? If so, how can you categorize yourself? It’s easy. Answer this question: did you quickly dismiss yourself as possibly being a type 2? If the answer’s yes, then sorry, but you’re wrong. Why? Because all type 1 engineers wish they were a 2, because it’s not very fun applying for a job when your class rank is 201/223. Or so I hear.
Unfortunately, these two groups cannot communicate. Several 2’s have tried writing programs to translate, and many 1’s have raised their voices thinking volume and large hand motions were the answer. Nope. I sought my own remedy: to create the Rosetta Stone of engineering, if you will. So I stole me a number 2. His name was ‘Helen’ as best I could translate. I tried everything possible to communicate with him. I spoke, wrote, and used hand signals. Nothing worked. Then he took out a sheet of graph paper and tried a vector analysis of his feelings, so I smacked him across the head and said “No!” I then tried taping out letters on his palm in a Morse code sort of fashion, but it began to rain. As we ran inside, it happened. He yelled something to the effect of “Oxygen Dihydride!!” I turned to him and replied, “Wa-wa?” He nodded pointing at the sky and the water that was now drenching us. I repeated, “Wa-wa,” and he tried the same.
Well, the rest is history. We wrote and filmed our autobiography, “The Elephant Man,” made lots of money and never spoke to each other again. Except every few weeks he calls me up and tells me a joke. In Russian.
Wa-wa.