Engineers

By Willie Costa

For some of us, it begins early on in life. We see a plane flying overhead with the grace and elegance of a bird, or maybe we go to an air show and hear the roar of the engines as jet fighters wheel and race overhead. Perhaps we see them in museums, calm and quiet and hinting at the glorious history that has come before us. Maybe we just see them on TV and become fascinated by what they can do. Maybe we take the stick in our hands and see for ourselves what it’s like to float 10,000 feet in the air with nothing between ourselves and the ground but our jeans and the thin plastic sheet of the cockpit. We all have different reasons, but the thing that unites us is simple:

We love things that fly.

I fell into engineering almost accidentally. As a pilot, I know firsthand how planes fly – and, more importantly, how they are supposed to fly. As someone who is never satisfied with the way things are, it was only natural that I be attracted to ways in which I could make things be the way I thought they should be. Engineering is what allows me to realize my dreams in physical form. But to actually be able to do what you want as a job – to get paid to do what you would gladly be doing anyway? Very little in the world can compare to that.

The road is long, the requirements hard, the demands extreme. But the payoff makes the struggle worthwhile. When you enter a design paper that does better than anyone thought it should, or when something you created takes off for the first time and flies exactly the way YOU said it would, the effort is worthwhile. The satisfaction you feel is immeasurable. Everything you touch seems lighter. Every sound becomes a song. Horns play in your shoes.

And you know that, come tomorrow, you get to do it all over again.
Engineering is unique in that everything we do, step by step, is in hard substance. The results of our efforts are put on display each and every day for all the world to see. We are not lawyers, architects, or doctors – we cannot argue away our mistakes, or cover them behind vines and shrubbery, or disavow that one of our mistakes ruined someone’s life. We simply cannot deny our responsibility. We cannot deny that we did it. Engineers are the ones who shape the world. We create what has never been, and make it work no matter what it takes and no matter the objections. We are fearless in the face of impossible odds. Others may make more money, but that is their consolation prize for being unable to do what we do. And one day, when we are gone and long since forgotten, the efforts of our lives will remain, quietly attesting to the skill with which we performed our craft. Our work makes us immortal.