Pursuing Art vs. Engineering Paths?
My education has been in engineering. I have degrees in Electrical Engineering and Engineering. All of my degrees are from Purdue. A pretty good school for engineering.
So what?
I chose engineering mostly because I love math and to me engineering was applied math used to solve real world problems. In reality engineering is more theoretical than applied. The applied portion mostly occurs when working for an employer.
I worked very hard for the first 5 years in a steel mill to become more practical and less theoretical. This is funny since I kept going to school to get more advanced degrees. What changed for me was that for each course I always looked for an opportunity to apply the concepts in the plant.
A quick story…
One day my boss was standing outside of his office with an article in his hand. He told me, “This article is interesting. You should be glad that you studied engineering instead of art.” I scratched my head and just smiled.
I started thinking back to my last semester as an undergraduate. I had some extra time and decided to sign up for an art class. The class met once a week and we simply came to class and after a short pep talk from the professor we started to draw.
Hands down this was the most relaxing and fun class I took during my undergraduate. It was full of girls, unlike my engineering classes, and it was fun to draw. I never knew that I could draw until that class. The time flew and I would say that I was mostly in the state of flow during the whole time in class.
I kept thinking to myself that if I knew that I could draw my freshmen year and how fun art would be, maybe I would have studied art instead. It definitely would have been a tough choice.
Back to my boss’ point. I enjoyed working in industry but his claim was that engineering was a better way to make a living.
Maybe that is true but it is also very limited thinking. Happiness is something that we label our satisfaction with our current state. Financially being able to make ends meet is important but only a piece of that happiness puzzle.
We all have values and aspects of our lives that are important to us. Family, work, friends, hobbies, etc. Financial stability provides smoothness to all areas of our lives BUT if we only judge our lives by it we will miss the joy of living completely.
What if I had chosen art as a career?
Most likely financially it would have been less rewarding initially. However, if you are great at anything the money will come along eventually. It always does.
The two areas pursue their work differently. Engineering tends to follow patterns and previous examples of what was done and needs to be done. There is very little creativity as we normally define creativity.
Art is more free. Outside of commissions where there are constraints given to you an artist is free to be as creative as they can be. However, they have to be cognizant that there ultimately a customer that need to purchase their product. Otherwise there is no money coming in.
In my career I have tried to sneak in art in my engineering work. Sometimes it is adding a figure that I sketched as a part of a paper to management.
As Apple has wisely taught us the magic occurs when the areas of art and science intersect. It requires BOTH to successfully create revolutionary ideas and products. Only one and your products are good but not great.
My three cents….(this is what I earned from Medium.com for Feb. 2021)
I got to go…my future self alarm went off
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