Fake It Till You Make It: Engineering Edition

Engineering students everywhere just felt a disturbance in the Force! First panel: "Ooh, statics! Forces, equilibrium, Newton's laws—bring it on!" Second panel: *Imperial units have entered the chat* "WAIT NO—how many pounds in a slug again?? And why is acceleration in feet per second squared?!" The true horror isn't monsters under the bed—it's having to convert between mass and weight using a unit literally named after a slimy garden creature. Newton is rolling in his grave!

When boredom reaches critical mass, even cats start differentiating polynomials! Five days into quarantine and engineering students have successfully converted their pets into calculus enthusiasts. The cat's expression clearly says, "I have no idea what a derivative is, but I'm pretty sure my human has lost their mind." Next week: teaching quantum mechanics to goldfish because why not? The pandemic really proved that if you stare at equations long enough, everything starts looking like a potential study buddy.

The painful metamorphosis of an engineer into a project manager is captured perfectly here! What starts as a hopeful engineer wanting to do actual technical work gradually transforms into the full clown regalia of management responsibilities. The progression from "maybe if I appease management" to "yeah I'll make sure their deliverables are in on time" illustrates the classic Peter Principle in action—where technical wizards get promoted until they're just scheduling meetings and updating spreadsheets instead of solving real problems. Every engineer's worst nightmare is becoming the very bureaucracy they once complained about. The rainbow wig is the final boss of career development!

Engineering in a nutshell: expectations vs. reality. On the left, a perfect pink lollipop representing the idealized design. On the right, a grinding bit that vaguely resembles a lollipop—what you actually end up with after budget cuts, material constraints, and that one manager who says "close enough." The gap between theoretical models and fabricated reality is where engineers live their entire careers. Just another day of turning candy dreams into functional nightmares.

The scientific hierarchy captured in its natural habitat! Mathematicians create beautiful abstract systems, physicists drop to their knees in worship of these mathematical tools that let them model reality, and engineers? They're just out here building bridges and iPhones while everyone else is having their theoretical love affair. The circle of academic life - mathematicians create it, physicists explain it, engineers actually make something useful from it. And somehow the mathematicians still act superior despite never having built anything you can drop on your foot.

Engineers see a problem and immediately apply a practical solution. Fire? Extinguish it. Mathematicians, however, identify the theoretical solution but never actually implement it. "This fire extinguisher is the solution" followed by "Now back to my email!" while the office continues to burn. Pure mathematics in a nutshell—elegant theories with zero concern for real-world application. The gap between theoretical brilliance and practical implementation has claimed many offices... and research grants.