On May 19, 2014, Phillippe Rival gave a Tedx talk at Imperial College about the “art of
being an engineer” (2014), which was then posted on Youtube. At that point in time, Rival was a
third-year engineering student, and his talk centered around the human side of what it is like to
be an engineering student, and then an engineer (2014). Rival argues that engineers are more
than only their engineering work; they are not societal outcasts, but a fundamental part of society
(2014). While I agree that it is important for engineers to integrate into society and not only
work and sleep, I think that Rival misses an important point, that some people don’t want to be a
part of the rest of the world, they just want to work sleep and have their own life.
Rival talk focuses on society’s view of engineers and largely neglects the engineers view
of society. Only briefly does he mention that he was seen as an outsider by other engineering
students because he participated in non-engineering activities (2014). I Think that the other side
of the story should have gotten more time in his presentation. I agree with Rival when he says
that “we need to stop thinking about all these silos” (2014, 7:18), however Rival neglects to
spend enough time acknowledging that engineers contribute to building these silos and need to
be the first ones to start deconstructing them. In my month of study so far at UBC-O, I have met
engineering students from all walks of life, but almost all of them are still in Rival’s engineering
bubble. I know that I also fit very well into Rival’s general description of an engineering
student. I do very little other than schoolwork, and my one or two sporting activities. In my
case, however, that is intentional. I have very little time to myself outside of my schoolwork,
and I feel that if I try to do too much my mental, and perhaps even my physical health would
suffer. Even if I wanted to break out of my bubble of engineering, I simply do not have the time.
At the end of his talk, Rival bring up a point about the education of engineers and how, at
the time he made his speech, it was changing to focus less on getting perfect scores on exams
and becoming more about how to communicate ideas (2014). I completely agree that this is
necessary, however I also think that the lack of time that engineering students have outside of
school is an important issue to address. There is a popular saying that “Time is money”, and if
we take this at face value, engineering students have precious little money, which makes it very
difficult to do anything other than get through your schooling until you have more money, and
therefore more time.
I agree with almost everything that Rival goes over in his speech, however I think that,
because of the length of the speech, many important pieces of the puzzle that he is trying to show
us are missing. His talk should not be taken as the be all and end all of why engineers need to
become more integrated into the rest of society, but it should be used as a jumping off point for
further research into why engineers are often seen as social outcasts, and how to get engineers
out of this harmful stereotype, which is often propagated by themselves.
Reference:
Tedxtalks. (2014, May 19). TedxImperialCollege – Phillippe Rival – Engineers beyond
engineering --The art of being an engineer [Video]. Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOIJGGgaSIY