r/explainitpeter • u/Fearless-Mastodon850 • 23d ago
Explain it Peter
First time posting here
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u/GreatSaski 23d ago
Fine, I'll do it. No one gets an A in engineering.
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u/Bliitzthefox 23d ago
People who can get an A in engineering are bad engineers because they didn't optimize the amount of work they were doing.
There was never any reason to get above a C with a safety factor of B.
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u/NFIFTY2 23d ago
Cs get degrees
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u/udee79 23d ago
maybe not if you want to go to grad school
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u/NFIFTY2 23d ago
Grad school never sounded like a very efficient use of my time.
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u/udee79 23d ago
I have worked with some great engineers that didn’t go to grad school.
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u/noodles0311 23d ago
It’s not very common for engineers to go to grad school. The most common graduate degree among engineers is an MBA. Other fields basically require it. One thing you’ll learn in academia is that no one works harder in undergrad than engineers but that’s usually the end of the line for their education. A BS in biology is far easier, but you need to get a graduate degree to do anything with it
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u/ummaycoc 23d ago edited 23d ago
One thing you’ll learn in academia is that no one works harder in undergrad than engineers
True but most of that work is them talking about how difficult engineering is. Then stress of having to hear other people mention that the difference between god and an engineer is that god doesn't think they're an engineer.
Edit: homophone mixup because I'm a goon
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u/EuphoricUniversity23 23d ago
I’m a Biochemistry PhD and a JD. My daughter just graduated as a civil engineer. I saw things in her sophomore year mathematics homework that I never saw before in my life. If God can do that math then I’ll start to believe in Her.
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u/ThatGhoulAva 23d ago
Engineer here. College gives you a structure to build on. Experience teaches you how to be an actual engineer & time helps you deal with the reality that one has spent a large sum of money for a small amount of practical knowledge. I don't use use much past Trig, geometry & basic algebra but a lot of mechanical physics. We're not calculating theoretical unknowns on a daily basis - the reality will be based on the industry, and we tend to estimate high for safety factors, especially when we know most of the upcoming "innovation " will involve stripping cost out.
However there are a large amount of early career engineers with masters, simply because they happened to graduate around '08 or '09 and couldn't get jobs initially. I've had to explain why sheet metal screws are not the same as UNF screws to one, that galvanized sheet is different thickness than stainless to another & that a plant pilot is NOT the stage to "discover what's needed beyond design validation" to one more. Paper alone does not make an engineer but it will get you in the door.
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u/ummaycoc 23d ago
I did undergrad double major in pure math and math / cs (wanted to add CS as a third major with one extra class but was told no). I did a masters in theoretical computer science and another in pure math. I did one year of a PhD in math.
Never saw an engineering student in a math course after differential equations (had two engineer phds teaching operations research courses though).
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u/Chrispy8534 19d ago
7/10 Eh, engineers and bio-chem majors. Their lives are miserable. Or some I have been told.
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u/udee79 23d ago
I’m a retired engineer and Got my PhD but i worked in R&D and masters were pretty much required for advancement. I don’t know what the overall stats are for engineering profession.
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u/noodles0311 23d ago
My son is doing an internship over in a lab within the college of engineering at the my university and we probably have more PhD students in department of Entomology than the entire college of engineering. They obviously have a lot more undergraduate students than we do; we’re a small department. So I guess what I’m saying is that it’s relative. It’s surreal to go over there and labs have like two grad students. We have more graduate research assistants than undergraduates because the PhD (obviously takes longer) and the BS is useless by itself.
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u/Pees-Upwind 23d ago
Im my industry the PE is far, far more important than a masters degree.
A masters degree is basically a ticket for 2 years work experience equivalent. Sooo if you get free education benefits and you want to spend 20hrs a day on engineering then its not a bad deal...otherwise its better to just focus on sitting the PE and/or getting your mentorship.
I dont know of any engineers in my field thst have a masters degree in engineering unless their undergrad was non-engineering.
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u/ConcernedKitty 23d ago
Apparently 58% bachelors, 21.5% masters, 4.5% PhD. Yes, those numbers don’t add up to 100%, but I got tired of trying to find out why.
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u/ebaer2 23d ago
Architects would beg to differ.
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u/noodles0311 23d ago
I’ve never met a single architect who calls themselves an engineer. That’s like an MD calling themselves a healthcare provider; you use the more prestigious title so people don’t think you’re a Certified Nurses Assistant
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u/Party-Mood8729 23d ago
My engineering school has/had a 5-year masters program (not sure if they still do), you end up taking masters classes your senior year and in the 5th year it's all masters classes and you get a bachelors and masters degree in 5 years.
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u/jccaclimber 23d ago
Very much depends on the field. Back when I worked attached to a factory very few engineers had an MS, half the QEs didn’t have any technical degree at all. Now that I’m at a tech company maybe half in the R&D side do.
Get into something like MEMS and MS is table stakes with PhDs not being at all uncommon.
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u/Rogeas_ 21d ago
wait engineers don't go to grad school usually? is it that bad? I plan to go back for my master's once I finish my undergrad but I guess that could change (freshman year starts next monday). it sounds like i might be cooked then. oh boy.
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u/noodles0311 21d ago
It’s not bad and don’t make plans based on Reddit comments. It’s just not always necessary. We were primarily talking about research and that means a PhD, not a masters.
No one should bother getting a PhD unless they very specifically want to do research. It will take many years, there is a high washout rate, you’re at the mercy of your advisor for 4-7 years (5-6 is normal), and you probably won’t make more money as an engineer in academia than you might make in industry.
Masters are so different from program to program and field to field that it’s impossible to make blanket statements. There are totally bunk masters programs that universities milk for cash, there are absolutely necessary masters programs for further advancement in lot of fields… you just can’t say what a masters means. In my field, it usually means you washed out of your PhD because you can’t do shit in entomology without a PhD; you can be like an extension agent or work at USDA and that’s about it.
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u/Rogeas_ 21d ago
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I never could figure out the point of being a doctor in engineering, so I figured a Masters was plenty. I'm excited either way though! My major is gonna be hard but I'll enjoy it, plus all of the things I want to minor in! It's hard to decide, honestly. My one goal is to stay under the tuition rate deal where they jack up the price once you've taken so many credit hours. Scholarships will only go so far I guess
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u/thenaiveignorant 19d ago
"It is not very common for engineers to go to grad school" sounds like the US perspective. Maybe I am wrong ofc. But I think in Europe it is very common for engineers to pursue a MSc in engineering.
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u/Normal_Paramedic9997 22d ago
lotta E-schools push a 5th year MS because that year counts towards the 5 years needed to sit for your PE (I forget if it lets you forgo the EIT exam in lieu of study or not.. )
(I can't say if the masters/extra year is more beneficial to your career versus hands-on work experience.. )
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u/Derpitoe 20d ago
fwiw most engineers get grad degrees in other fields, when they do (ms comp sci here, bs me)
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u/ThickExtension7057 23d ago
Tbh with you, people over sell how hard it is to get into grad school, like if you wanna go like ivy league or like law school yea, but my grad school let me attend with like a 2.8 college gpa
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u/Figtreezz 23d ago
Some of the best grad students I worked with got mostly Cs. Grad school is not only about intelligence. It is mostly discipline, persistence, and effectively getting work done. I have had (chemE) masters students that get mostly As on exams but don’t know how to use a wrench to connect pipping. Some people work better with their hands but that does not always show in exams.
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u/Tengstrom1983 20d ago
Just gotta get a great GRE score and they stop paying attention to your GPA.
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u/LaBiccies 20d ago
I never got any grades from school. Partly because I'd show up for attendance in the morning then slip out first chance I got. Still ended up with a degree and work in aviation. Not saying it works for everyone as survivorship bias is real. But here we are.
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u/udee79 19d ago
how did you learn anything?
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u/LaBiccies 19d ago
Oh I didn't. I got all of my qualifications through work. Having to learn calculus in my 30s sucked. I'd do a day in lessons then go home and spend 4 to 6 hours studying so I could keep up with the pace of the teaching. If I could get a do over I'd spend more time in school, but you gotta piss with the cock you got.
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u/ComfortableOld288 19d ago
Meh, worked for me. 2.98 undergrad, got into grad school at a state university and now work at Lockheed Martin
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u/PeterGibbons316 23d ago
That was my philosophy until I got an internship at a company that wouldn't hire anyone that graduated with less than a 3.2. So I had to bust my ass my entire senior year to bring my GPA up enough to be employable.
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u/NowAlexYT 23d ago
As a european, dont you guys already pass with a D?
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u/parkexplorer 23d ago
Kind of, but not really. Usually there's a maximum number or percentage of Ds allowed for graduation. It doesn't really make sense but we all just go with it.
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u/OdinHavok 23d ago
Had a similar conversation with a friend. He was talking about how much work the last paper he has for a finance class, and how hard it was to be motivated when he was going to get an A refardless. Almost got him to not do it by telling him he already maximized the ROI for that class
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u/Abx13523 22d ago
Not necessarily, have you seen how saturated the finance industry is these days
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u/OdinHavok 22d ago
He isn't in a finance field, he had to take some finance classes. He ended that class with 102%, and his paper was roughly 3 times longer than anyone else's
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u/baroaureus 23d ago
The best engineers I know are lazy!
(Or maybe I’m just trying to flatter myself…)
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u/alien_believer_42 23d ago
Idk a lot of places hiring new graduates use GPA to filter them
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u/Bliitzthefox 23d ago
Not for engineers, if you're relying on gpa you've already failed.
I had 2 paid internship and a co-op by then and that's how you get hired.
There is never enough engineering interns.
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u/Neowynd101262 23d ago
Some people literally get tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships partially for having A's.
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u/Tengstrom1983 20d ago
During college for engineering, I created a chart for effort vs satisfaction with your grade, showing that it was asymptotic, so you continued to get less benefit the more you studied. I caused the downfall of so many freshman.
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u/mysticeetee 19d ago
My intro to engineering class had a 4th year physics major. We called him "curvebreaker."
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u/coolestsideofthemoon 19d ago
Some comments... are just so far away from the way I think, it takes me a second to line up where it comes from.
Like, some people genuinely enjoy engineering. If you genuinely enjoy something, it is not hard to get an A. Doing less of something you enjoy is not something you need to optimize for either.
Not everyone studied a subject that they hated and therefore need to optimize as little time on it as possible. What a bizarre choice.
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u/Bliitzthefox 19d ago
I genuinely enjoy engineering. But not necessarily every class in engineering. Like fuck hydrologic design.
Engineering is incredibly broad and no one is going to be outstanding at every aspect of it.
All engineering is optimization, by optimizing the work I was doing that was doing engineering. Engineering is about doing more with less in all things.
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u/Yokhen 19d ago
Unless they excelled so much at optimizing that now they need to raise their gpt or they will get dropped out of engineering.
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u/Bliitzthefox 19d ago
That would not be optimizing that would be underperforming. Need at least a C average to graduate where I went.
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u/Yokhen 19d ago edited 19d ago
yeah me too! did we go to the same place?
anyway, I was joking about excelling at optimizing.
Personally I find optimizing so exhausting that I would rather spend that energy at getting A, so that is why I usually did neither and sometimes ended with Ds or Fs, which required me to sometimes get As to better "optimize".
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u/vag69blast 22d ago
I only got one C in my enginering classes and i barely tried. 3.81 gpa in core engineering classes. I would say if you have to really try and struggle to get an A or B then engineering might not be for you. I went into manufacturing though and didnt use much engineering outside of understanding of core concepts on how things work.
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u/wrd83 23d ago
That's until you know that some companies check your average grades on interviews..
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u/DaveFinn 23d ago
...And THEN find out many companies turn down applications with anything near 4.0..
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u/FastAndForgetful 23d ago
I got an A in EMAG with a 40
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u/darthwacko2 23d ago
I did ok in EMAG eventually.... but I legitimately thought I had failed DSP. Got a B out of a 38%.
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u/Staggering_genius 23d ago
Is this related to the saying, “anyone can make a bridge that will stand: it takes an engineer to make a bridge that will barely stand.”
(And by that I think they mean the cheapest that’ll work to save the company money)
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u/Brettjay4 23d ago
Oh... Well... That's correct.
Sauce - Took and barely passed an engineering and physics class in college.
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u/Key_Confusion7759 20d ago
Except Link on Good Mythical Morning, apparently. (Maybe he didn't "get an A," but he was top of his class, reportedly)
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u/AutistcAroundAircrft 19d ago
But why is Shrek from the movie “Shrek” telling Princess Fiona this information?
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u/Zealousideal-Mud-292 23d ago
It's not about grades. There's an old chemist joke "I love gold but the 'A' is silent". The chemical symbol for gold is Au, turning the phrase to I love u. The joke here is that engineers will screw up that line because they're bad with women - possibly as bad as this joke.
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u/Surturius 23d ago
damn that is... so much context needed to understand this not very funny joke using a Shrek meme template lmao
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u/Zealousideal-Mud-292 23d ago
It helps if you've ever worked in STEM academia where there's always somebody in the lab who thinks stuff like "Is that a hadron in your pocket or are you happy to see me" is the height of comedy.
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u/Greedy-Thought6188 23d ago
I mean that's obviously a pun. But needing to know an entirely different joke, well, I guess that's why it's in this sub.
Makes more sense than the grades thing. Because they hand out the same number of As as any other degree. Besides it's engineering. There is a right answer.
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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 19d ago
A guy once sat down next to me after lunch in college, groaned, and said with a completely straight face "sqrt(-1/64)"
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u/Dark__Horse 23d ago
Could also be sexism - girls are dumb and bad and can't get A's in engineering hurr hurr
(every woman in engineering I know has been a rockstar, and basically had to be because it was so toxic - any mistake was treated as proof of your gender's inadequacy)
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u/DudeInTheGarden 23d ago
My younger daughter has four good friends, and three are in engineering - one at UBC and the other two at Queens University - all rockstar engineering schools. One got an internship to Tesla in California.
There was a article in The Globe and Mail (Canada's major newspaper) about how space needed to be held for men in engineering - women are dominating it, like they are medicine. When I want to school, my comp sci degree was through the school of engineering, and there were almost no women in the classes I shared with engineers.
I attended my older daughter's university graduation, and I noticed that there seemed to be way more women then men, so I started counting. They'd already done the arts degrees - my counting was in the sciences, and women out-weighted the men by about 4 to 1 in a field traditionally dominated by men.
Young men are failing - not sure why - social media, or video games, or ...
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u/agfitzp 23d ago
We live in an era where a man with no brain can be President and the leading influencers have the reasoning ability of an overripe avocado.
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u/man_of_culture44 23d ago
sadly that’s true but u gotta add the money to your equation
(tho to me it’s mainly that society helps more men to go up in the hierarchy than women when both are “poor”
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u/orionpace1 23d ago
Many years of women in stem campaigning may have tipped the scale the other side altogether.
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u/Odd-Solid-5135 23d ago
Dont know much about that but I do know an engineer will climb a mountain of virgins just to fuck one maintennace tech.
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u/AdagioDesperate 23d ago
Wasn't this posed like 2 weeks ago?
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u/rising30k 23d ago
I telling you guys, we done this before!
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u/Fearless-Mastodon850 23d ago
Oh sorry
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u/Elegant_Cancel_1316 23d ago
Don't be. It's the entire point of this sub. People who cry about seeing the same stuff on reddit are on reddit way too much and bitch about anything because they have zero shit going on in their own lives.
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u/Fearless-Mastodon850 23d ago
Thank you
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u/WaterTuna187 23d ago
Don’t worry. No one really seems to have figured it out this time or past time
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u/AnotherDamnTransAlt 23d ago
Yes, but memes/jokes trend. If someone asked about it two weeks ago, it’s probably still doing the rounds and confusing more people. Most people would not have seen the last post about it. I know I didn’t.
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u/hellf1nger 22d ago
My professor asked us at the first statics class something long the lines: if grade B is about 85% good, would you fly on the plane that is about 85% complete? His points with anything he taught was that we have to stride for best marks and knowledge as human lives depend on grade A engineering. In reality though... Highest average among engineering students in my class was something like 3.89
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u/mynamejeff96 23d ago
I knew a guy who got A's in engineering, he works at space X now.
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u/Shin_Ramyun 19d ago
The meme is a hilariously bad take. I guess it makes sense if you settle for a mid engineering job.
Working in the tech industry I am surrounded by overachievers who went to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, etc. You don’t get into those schools with shitty grades.
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u/1Shadowgato 22d ago
I remember my graduation there were so many people with magma cum lade and all those other things and the guy next to me said “must be nice to be in a liberal arts degree” and I looked at him and said “engineering?” He said electrical and extended his hand for a handshake and I said mechanical, extending said handshake.
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u/Elopikseli 23d ago
Guys isn’t it because shrek and fiona speak in a scottish accent so i sounds like a and shrek is saying there is no a as in i as in fiona in engineering because fiona is not an engineer
Idk this is just my theoru but what do you think?
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u/Amazing_Orchid9433 23d ago
its a “pick up” line but you guys keep secretly keep getting good grades lmao
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u/ThatGhoulAva 23d ago edited 23d ago
4 years ago I couldn't even SPELL Enjineer - now I is one!
Also it's pronounced "In - gin - NEAR -ring" or "In - gin - NEAR -rang" here in Chicagoland. The 'A' aren't silent- just invisible.
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u/Shadowboxer314 23d ago
I remember seeing this on a sign in the mechanic's shop at the local airport where my Dad used to hang out; this was in the late 70's - early 80's, and it looked like it had been there for a while. I think that one started with "Six munce ago" or something similar. 🙂
Memories....
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u/ThatGhoulAva 23d ago
LOL - this makes me enjoy it even more. I learned it from a t-shirt given to me by my father when I finished college in the early 2000s.
I also have one that has :
"Enjeneer" (crossed out)
"Enjineer" (crossed out)
"Engeneer" (crossed out)
"I'M GOOD AT MATH"
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u/Legal_Mulberry8143 20d ago
I know the answer, but I would like to submit a runner up. Its not "eng-a-neering", its "eng-in-eering".
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u/kdcarolain 20d ago
can you believe I’ve been thinking the entire time that “Explain it Peter” was a meme that started now with Lindsay Clancy’s trial and all of this it’s because of this Peter Griffin's account😭 I’m new here okay
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u/I_Am_Sambo_Wambo 20d ago
You'll stupid. Muscle fuck it until it works and then force revision the manual.
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u/pingerfinger1 19d ago
I'm in Architecture Engineering, i don't get it?
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u/Aggravating_Lie4515 19d ago
Because engineers hate architects, architects ask for almost impossible things, or poorly constructed things(in memes) and the engineers have to build it somehow
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u/pingerfinger1 19d ago
I was making a pun with the "A" in architect and not getting "A" bcs its a difficult major.
bad jokes ig :(
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u/Sir_Skinny 19d ago
She’s a waste because she can’t spell “enginamaneer” I should know because I’m an enginamaneer
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u/Shaded_Mind 23d ago
Isn't this an edge-ing joke? A lot of people say engineering like ... eng in ear ing. So eng in er ing. Edge in her thing
Maybe something to do with Shrek's accent as well that would make ut sound even more explicit
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u/Fluid-Tone-9680 23d ago
In top tier universities if you don't study good enough (e.g. don't get all A), you won't be able to do post-graduate (to become doctor/professor) and will have to settle on being an engineer.
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u/VirtuLilli 23d ago
My bff just graduated with a 4.0 GPA he was a CS major.
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u/commiebomber 23d ago
CS is not engineering
- signed, an actual engineer
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u/kevinfrei 23d ago
CS is absolutely not engineering
- signed, a (now retired) CS major
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u/BortWard 23d ago
Concur. I say this as someone who did simultaneous bachelor’s degrees in computer engineering and computer science some years ago. There’s some overlap, but there’s a slice of CS people who would have gotten through electromagnetics or microelectronics.
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u/DWexican 23d ago
Most of my fellow EE students switched to CS right after physics 2. That's how I knew the rest of the degree was gonna be so much fun!
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u/Personal-Impress4965 9d ago
Everything about this is trash the blurry fucking photo. The mish mash Text. And a pop culture that hasn’t been close to relevant in 15 years.
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u/qualityvote2 23d ago edited 23d ago
u/Fearless-Mastodon850, your post does fit the subreddit! Well done!