Bonding Through Mutual Confusion

This flowchart is what happens when career counselors have a mental breakdown. Engineering? Only if you're "good with things." Chemistry? Congratulations on your future as a "fussy pedant." And let's not forget Computer Science, perfect for those who prefer "slow, indirect evil" over the more efficient varieties. The beautiful part is how it nails the existential crisis of every STEM student. "Why do you want to major in a STEM field?" Options include "curiosity" (adorable), "to save the planet" (delusional), or my personal favorite, the dawning realization that STEM was supposed to involve actual plants for Biology majors. After 30 years of teaching, I can confirm this is approximately 87% accurate. The missing 13% is the path where you choose your major based on which department has the least uncomfortable chairs in the lecture hall.

The engineering hierarchy in its natural habitat. Mechanical and aerospace engineers pretending civil engineers don't exist, while simultaneously terrorizing them with Newton's Second Law. F=ma≠0 is apparently the engineering equivalent of showing a horror movie to a toddler. Meanwhile, civil engineers are just trying to build bridges without getting bullied about their fear of moving objects. Classic STEM food chain dynamics.

The eternal physics vs. engineering divide in one image. Physicists get all worked up about conventional current (positive to negative) versus electron flow (negative to positive), while electrical engineers just shrug and keep building circuits that work regardless. It's like debating which direction water flows while someone's busy building a functioning dam. Engineers don't have time for theoretical correctness—they're too busy making things that don't explode.

The meme juxtaposes the innocent, beautiful Studio Ghibli film "The Wind Rises" with the sardonic title "How To Justify Aiding Warcrimes As An Engineer The Movie." What looks like a romantic animated film about creativity is actually Miyazaki's complex exploration of Jiro Horikoshi, who designed Japanese fighter planes used in WWII. The film grapples with the ethical dilemma of creating beautiful machines that ultimately become instruments of death. It's the engineering equivalent of the physics community's Manhattan Project morning-after hangover, but with more watercolor sunsets and fewer mushroom clouds.

The scientist's dream has come true - Washington DC has been converted to alternating current! That waveform showing the DC skyline as an AC signal is peak electrical engineering humor. Instead of Direct Current (DC), the capital is now oscillating between positive and negative potentials like a properly functioning democracy should. Tesla would be so proud, while Edison would be absolutely fuming in his grave. Electrical engineers everywhere are quietly snickering at this perfect fusion of electrical principles and architectural silhouettes.

Sitting through thermodynamics lectures twice a week, nodding and smiling while the professor spouts equations about entropy, enthalpy, and Gibbs free energy. The cartoon character's "I like your funny words, magic man" perfectly captures that moment when you've completely lost track of why PV=nRT matters or why we're calculating the work done by an expanding gas for the fifth time this week. The first and second laws might as well be incantations from a spellbook. Heat flows, energy transforms, and somehow we're supposed to understand why a perpetual motion machine can't exist. Sure, professor. Whatever you say.