Office life Memes

The eternal engineering perception gap. Friends picture us managing explosive refineries, mothers fantasize we're Iron Man, society imagines we're building railroads like it's 1890, and the government suspects we're designing weapons. Meanwhile, we think we're Scotty from Star Trek solving impossible problems with technobabble. The reality? Just drowning in paperwork and documentation that nobody will ever read. Engineering degree: $80,000. The look on people's faces when you tell them you mostly fill out Excel spreadsheets: priceless.

The crushing reality of aerospace engineering! That moment when you're designing a rocket but can't remember if the sparknotes for military standard 1250 said to use titanium or aluminum alloy. Your $2 billion project hangs in the balance while you frantically google technical specs that should probably be committed to memory by now. The massive hunched posture is just what happens after calculating thrust-to-weight ratios for 72 consecutive hours. Brain too full of differential equations to remember basic materials science? Welcome to the glamorous world of making things that go whoosh!