What Drove You Towards a Career in Engineering?

I'm going to answer the question "What drew you to a career in engineering?"

Simple answer: "Born Engineer".  I'll illustrate with two stories my mother told me, since I was too young to remember either one myself.

1.  When I was around 3 or 4, my parents took me to the University of California Berkeley Botanical Gardens.  They expected me to enjoy the beautiful trees and flowers and chirping birds.  Nope.  Instead I discovered the irrigation system, and ran around figuring out where all the pipes went.  Great practice for dealing with multi-layer PC boards

2.  Around the same age, my mother put me in a nursery school for a while.  I had always lived in a mostly-student neighborhood near campus with no other children except my older sister.  Mother was (correctly) concerned that I wasn't developing social skills and hoped that nursery school would teach me to play with other children.  Well, that didn't work.  I found the school's collection of jigsaw puzzles and proceeded to assemble them one after another.  The other children might fiddle with a puzzle, but quickly got bored and went outside to race around and butt their heads together.  The teachers were amazed at how long I would concentrate on a puzzle, and were more amazed that I would put the puzzle away when I had finished it.  Non-social introversion plus ability to concentrate are great for a future with computers.

My parents are both humanities types: Art History and English Lit.  The engineering gene came from my grandfather, whom I never knew.  He was a chief engineer on oil ships, back in the day when at sea you were on your own and the chief engineer had to be able to fix anything or the ship would be stranded.

I'm going to answer the question "What drew you to a career in engineering?"

Simple answer: "Born Engineer".  I'll illustrate with two stories my mother told me, since I was too young to remember either one myself.

1.  When I was around 3 or 4, my parents took me to the University of California Berkeley Botanical Gardens.  They expected me to enjoy the beautiful trees and flowers and chirping birds.  Nope.  Instead I discovered the irrigation system, and ran around figuring out where all the pipes went.  Great practice for dealing with multi-layer PC boards

2.  Around the same age, my mother put me in a nursery school for a while.  I had always lived in a mostly-student neighborhood near campus with no other children except my older sister.  Mother was (correctly) concerned that I wasn't developing social skills and hoped that nursery school would teach me to play with other children.  Well, that didn't work.  I found the school's collection of jigsaw puzzles and proceeded to assemble them one after another.  The other children might fiddle with a puzzle, but quickly got bored and went outside to race around and butt their heads together.  The teachers were amazed at how long I would concentrate on a puzzle, and were more amazed that I would put the puzzle away when I had finished it.  Non-social introversion plus ability to concentrate are great for a future with computers.

My parents are both humanities types: Art History and English Lit.  The engineering gene came from my grandfather, whom I never knew.  He was a chief engineer on oil ships, back in the day when at sea you were on your own and the chief engineer had to be able to fix anything or the ship would be stranded.