What follows is a story I have told only to a few of my closest friends (and probably not in its entirety), because of its complexity, personal nature, and my own confusion. It’s taken me a long time to formulate this into a coherent message to share. I think it is worth reading for anyone who is considering a career in (or at least an academic foray into) the field of Engineering.  I apologize in advance for the length, as this may read more like a journal than an essay. I hope, though, that you will appreciate the sentiment behind the words.

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High School Blues

It was the final year of high school. Some say it’s the best year of their life – not yet an adult, but old enough to do all the cool things you never could when you were ‘just a kid’.  I, however, spent most of this year in confusion and stress. Up to this point, I had been fairly academically accomplished. I’d been regularly getting those revered 90’s in all of my classes. I’d written all the toughest math contests and placed well. I’d just placed in the top 60 in the Canadian Computing Competition. Actually, I was really bored by school. It provided no challenge, and it gave me no direction.

I was stressed because I needed to make a choice that I had been avoiding for years. What is it that I want to do? I sought advice from friends, teachers, family, and anyone else who would listen. None of it helped, and all of it was contradictory. My mom wanted me to do Biology; my dad was indifferent; my friends thought I made a great programmer; other friends thought I should take a stab at business; my teachers suggested Engineering.

The last of those seemed intriguing. Engineering? What on Earth was Engineering? It intrigued me because it seemed so foreign. What do Engineers do? Why should I have anything to do with them?

Engineering, according to my high school teachers, was the place where the smartest people gathered. All the students who had the best math grades and the best science grades and some desire to get a real job went into Engineering. This is, of course, a terribly short-sighted view of the diverse profession.

I had no particular desire to save the world, or to invent the wheel. I just took the suggestion because it seemed like a good fit. Math grades? Check. Science grades? Check. And then I was off. But like all things I do, I didn’t start with the easiest of paths. I chose the most difficult. I entered the vaunted Engineering Science program at the University of Toronto, upon the suggestion of my Calculus teacher.

Engineering Science – A Proving Ground

The Engineering Science program is no cakewalk. When you hear the oft-repeated ‘horror’ story of a professor telling you to look to your classmates to your left and right, and saying that only one of you will make it through four years in the program, there is no doubt in my mind that such a story could only be true here. It is an unadvertised fact that first year Engineering (and especially Engineering Science) at the University of Toronto is tougher than all other Canadian undergraduate programs, bar none. There is nowhere else where the material will be as challenging, the courses more packed, and the workload more demanding, than here. It’s even been said that first year of EngSci, as it is known here, is more challenging than its counterpart at the more famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I took on this challenge with glee. I had never failed to meet a challenge.

So it was with this intention of ‘proving myself’ that I entered into the toughest period of my academic career. My previous math and science training had paid off. I had no problems transitioning into university-level courses, and met the challenge with gusto. I was able to do most of this without much thought, without much hard work. I wasn’t used to doing hard work. I had gone through all of primary, middle, and secondary school without doing any hard work. At the end of the first term, I was ranked 18th in a class of over 300. In a class that started with 334 students and would eventually dwindle to just over 170, I considered that one of the greatest accomplishments of my academic life.

A Slippery Slope

It all went downhill from there. It turned out I was just ahead of my time, and it would all catch up to me.

You see, I had always been told that at some point in my life, I would actually have to work hard for results. I’d been told that natural intelligence would only get me so far. Being the arrogant kid that I was when I first heard this in elementary school, I ignored the advice. After all, it had gotten me results in the past, and it had worked until even the first year of university. I never believed otherwise.

Then second year came, and where everyone else had by now fully adjusted to the work, I had just begun to reach the limits of what my so-called intelligence could handle. I could no longer spend just an hour or two reviewing for an exam the night before and expect to get my 90’s. Nor could I afford to skip doing homework and expect to remember anything of value.

It was during this turbulent second year that I encountered numerous personal troubles as well, further eating into my academic life. I entered a funk, and into a greatly reflective mood.

I decided that I hated math and everything associated with it. It was so dry, and tedious, and mechanical, that I could find no joy in doing this for a living. I was greatly depressed by this because the one thing that everyone had told me I was really good at – math – turned out to be something that I hated. I never realized this before, because I never really had to work at it. This is incredibly selfish, I realize too, but alas, I cannot be everything to everyone.

Second, I was not enjoying my time at school by focusing only on academics. In my entire first year, I lived inside this protective shell, meeting only a few new people whom I kept touch with regularly. I had joined little to no extracurriculars, despite my extensive involvement in various activities throughout high school, and most of all, I felt I was wasting my time with university. I asked myself, what does going to university contribute to my life? Why go through all this trouble?

A Search for Passion

It was at this point that I reached out to some friends in various places, began talking to lots of upper years, and some grizzly old professors. What was generally acknowledged was that school is sometimes a necessary evil on the way to a career – but it doesn’t necessarily have to be evil. Having never thought of school as much of a chore, I had never really thought much about this problem.

I began to get out of the academic shell, and look for other things to do. This, in itself, was not a solution to the academic problem I was having, of course – you may even think it would exacerbate the problem. However, my goal at this stage was not to be ‘the #1 student’ – marks were now a secondary concern, and my main purpose was to meet as many people as I could.

The result was a newfound perspective of my situation. While I had always lived in the upper echelons of academia, I had been completely ignorant of, well, everyone else. I had set such high standards for myself that I had been unable to see where I really was.

At some point, everyone gets lost. We get lost in the midst of our midterms, or in times of personal crises. What sets you apart from everyone else is how you choose to play the cards in your hand. Sure, I could complain about life, or get all depressed about everything – but these choices are mine to make, and I could now see how I could turn things around.

Having met so many people, I found that I was not unique. Engineering is tough. But everyone here has a reason to go through the trouble.  What sets Engineering apart from almost any other profession, is that while most people claim to be doing the world a service, only Engineers can really say this with any conviction. If Engineers don’t go through the trouble, who will?

Engineers are immensely practical – we can see through lies, and we know what we want. Underlying the philosophy of Engineering is that we can not only learn about nature’s forces, but also that we can use it to our advantage to improve humanity. Thus, engineers can invent awesome machines, design more efficient systems, and construct civilizations. I had come one step closer to figuring out why I was in engineering.

A Choice and a Path

One more decision had to be made. After 2 years of Engineering Science, we were expected to choose an Option (or a Major, so to speak). Of these, I had identified Computer Engineering and Infrastructure Engineering as my frontrunners, but for extremely contrasting reasons.

I was interested in Computer Engineering because my entire life, I had been fascinated with computers. They are so essential to our daily lives now I can hardly imagine anything without them. I had learned most of my knowledge through computers, and spent a great deal of time with them. I was good at all things computing, and this should have been an easy choice. I could probably excel in Computer Engineering without much trouble – it would probably even solve my academic issues.

But then there was Infrastructure Engineering. Nothing in my first two years of university had stoked my passion as much as this field of Civil Engineering – of bridges and buildings. In my reflection, I had found that I had the most fun in my Civil Engineering design projects – those involving bridge designs and such. I had spent countless hours with these projects, and it felt like no time at all. It was one of the few things I enjoyed in my coursework.

So here we were, at another crossroads. Should I choose what I was ‘good at’, or should I choose what I can be passionate about?

There were many factors to consider, of course, like coursework, class sizes, difficulty, career prospects, and such – but for me, there was one last motivating factor. What impact do I want to have with my education?

This made my solution clear. I could learn computer engineering anywhere. In fact, I was well on my way through my adolescence in learning all this, without the help of school anyway. But if I really wanted to do something useful with university, and to not make the same mistake I had made two years earlier in high school, this was it. This is how I decided to be an Infrastructure Engineer.

In retrospect, I probably should have chosen the more direct path through Civil Engineering to begin with, rather than go through the charade of Engineering Science – but naturally, I hadn’t gone through this whole thought process in high school. I had no such guidance, and no such experience. Part of the reason I was so enthused by Alex’s idea of the RHHSAA was that I probably could have benefited from something like this in my own days as a student. Alas, we had to start somewhere, and now was as good as any.

Having said that, it’s not as if my studies are going perfectly as planned. There are still courses I don’t enjoy, and subjects I cannot comprehend, but at least I know why I want to do it. And that is the biggest lesson of all – I found a good reason for making a choice, and having such a reason, I can deal with the hardships that might come of it. Motivation is thus created by the mind.

Yesterday, amidst a rather empty convocation hall, I attended the Engineering Science overture lecture for the 2007 Winter Term, themed "Systems and States". Giving the lecture was one Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon. The director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, and an MIT graduate, Mr. Homer-Dixon's lecture for the day had a sobering message. By all scientific accounts, modern human civilization is heading towards collapse in many different directions. The time to act against it is now. Yes, climate change is occurring. Yes, population growth is at an unprecedented high. Yes, energy production is slowing down. There are numerous factual evidences that support these phenomena. It's happening. Now.

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Not too long ago, I was contemplating what I would do after high school. For me, there was almost no doubt I was going to be doing something science-related. Being practical, I chose to study engineering rather than purely theoretical science. I wanted to do something with knowledge. Learning is exhilerating, but alone, it serves no greater purpose.

Something else had always been troubling me for a while. Why aren't the smartest people in the world making the decisions about the world?

Our world, for the large part, is run by the great democratic political machines of industrialized western nations. Yet this same political machine regularly fails at recognizing what I feel are the most important issues of today - the human impact to environment.

Now, I've never called myself a tree-hugger, or anything of the sort. I don't have that sense of activism. But, I do maintain that many governments of today seem only to be concerned, with great hubris, about their own infinite 'economic' growth.

I am fascinated by politics. I read the newspaper regularly, just to catch up on the latest political scoop. I am fascinated, by the way politicians continue to sidestep real and important issues, with great deftness of words. Politics, to me, is nothing more than a play on words with some basic economic management.

So I figured long ago, that democracy is broken. Sure, if you ask me now, I'll tell you that I'll go out to vote, but for me, the impact of government is too slow, and too little. There are things going wrong with the world today, and political manuevering is not the way to solve it.

I was shocked, one day, about a year ago, to learn that there were still a great many important international figures who contest the notion of global warming, or even climate change. (Here's a list of some: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_sceptics) It shouldn't take so much work to convince the public. And it sure as hell shouldn't be so hard to realize how it's bad for the Earth.

With my faith in politics and the media shaken, I resorted to the conclusion that the only way to get things done is to do things yourself. Of course, it's a long road, and it's hard to see where to begin on something so monumental.

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Professor Homer-Dixon listed the problems, and offered a great many solutions. He articulated what I had been thinking, unconsciously and in abstract. But now I see it more clearly.

As an engineer, in the 21st century, these problems will be up to us to solve. So we can avoid a catastrophe in the future (near or far). Will we be able to engineer ourselves out of this problem? Well, we can only try and see now.