Page:Engineering as a vocation (IA cu31924004245605).pdf/91

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ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION
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and was a hair splitter of the most exasperating kind. He was also greatly given to argument and had a poor sense of proportion, as applied to comparisons of school-bred and practically trained men. As an instance of how abjectly he failed to satisfy his employers he worked in five offices in a period of seven months in a busy year when men were in demand. He got a job finally as timekeeper on a construction job and held it one week after making a number of mistakes and showing plainly that he did not fit in with the rough work. The rush and hurry bothered him also, for he was, by nature and cultivation, made for the schoolroom and the library. In fact, he should really have studied for the ministry. He was a good-looking chap and had a kind heart, so that the men imposed on him with hard-luck stories everywhere he worked. Finally he landed a job as a tracer and general helper in a railway office, which job he held until the following fall, when he went back to school to take advanced work and obtain the degree of C.E. His experience of fifteen months in "practical" work enabled him to get a billet as instructor upon graduation. His short experience proved that he had not the makings of an engineer in him, or perhaps that what he might have had originally had been educated out of him. Although his college dubbed him "Civil Engineer" and the diploma hanging in his bedroom attests the fact, he is not one and never will be one in the sense that an