You’re Actually Pretty Smart, You Know
There’s this funny line of commentary among engineering students that you may have heard circulating around North Campus. It goes a little something like: “If you ever want to feel stupid, just take any engineering class!”, which is then followed by polite laughter and 7 seconds of deep reflective silence, only to be broken by a question asking how many homework drops a course allows.
You see, this line of commentary is absolutely hilarious until you’re the one in said engineering class, wondering what score you need to get on the final exam in order to pass the class.
Within every single one of my engineering classes, I’ve always had a moment (whether fleeting or persistent) in which I genuinely questioned whether I was “smart” enough or capable enough to finish the course. In my head, there were only so many days of staring-at-my-homework-unsure-of-where-to-even-start I could have before I would need to consider the thought that “maybe this course isn’t for me.” So yeah. I can agree that, if you ever want to feel stupid, just sit in on any engineering lecture. It’ll certainly do the trick!
But let me turn the tables on you for a second and consider a different perspective.
I propose that, if you ever need proof that you are actually smart enough, let it simply be the fact that you’re sitting in that lecture and making an attempt to understand the material.
In the past, I have been guilty of viewing the word “smart” as an objective and one-dimensional term. I thought that to be smart was to understand everything and flawlessly apply your understanding to any and every scenario. If I couldn’t do this, then I wasn’t “smart” enough in the subject. But I’ve come to learn that this is an absolutely detrimental way to think about yourself and the work you are doing.
Engineering is not meant to be easy. At its very core, it involves a way of thinking so different, so abstract and creative, from what you’ve done in the past. As a result, it comes with an immense learning curve. You have to be able to come up with algorithms and solutions general enough to apply to hundreds of situations but unique enough to consider even the most specific of scenarios. You need to be able to problem solve both on a macro and micro scale while also adjusting your approach accordingly as you make progress on your task. And arguably the most important aspect of engineering is that you need to do all of this under a human-centered lens, being sure to take into account efficiency, efficacy, and utilization. You need to be able to do all of this within the language of unfamiliar symbols and syntax, and complicated mathematics and systems analysis.
To even attempt to do all of this sounds pretty impressive to me, wouldn’t you say?
Even if you’re sitting in lecture, completely lost on the material, your attempt to approach it in such a complex and abstract way exercises a “muscle” in your brain that, although can be frustratingly weak in the beginning, has so much untapped potential. That “pain before gain”, that attempt to learn and grow from your red-marked homework and below-class-average exam score, is what I would describe as being “smart”. The work you are doing is not easy, and failing to immediately understand it does not make you “stupid”. Your attempt to understand it makes you smart.
So yes. Engineering has this sweet quality to it that tends to make you feel incapable or unintelligent enough to carry on. But instead of feeling defeated by its complexity and unfamiliarity, use it to acknowledge that even the most bare-bones understanding of it is an accomplishment in itself. Even a little bit of progress is still impressive progress, and it’s evidence enough that you are, in fact, smart enough to continue on.