Do you have an engineer in the family?
July 17, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Is it safe to marry an engineer? asks Bioephemera in a post today.
Well…….I didn’t. My husband Jim is a cultural historian at a Jesuit university in New York City; he is completing a project on the longshoremen who worked on the piers of the New York/New Jersey waterfront—on the Irish waterfront. I never got too far with math myself but several relatives (including my mother’s father) were or are engineers (electrical, civil, mechanical, material sciences)—-I guess you could say, they have the knack.
For me, it’s safe to say that (in the words of Professor Henry Petroski), “To engineer is human” and very much so.
Fascinating! My husband’s job title is engineer, but autism seems to run in the family on my side, not his.
Both my dad and his father were engineers. My dad is the exact opposite of your “typical engineer,” though, which probably explained why he was always miserable. Dad has Grandpa’s math skills, but is an artist and musician with wonderful verbal and social skills.
My family doesn’t fit the mold, nor does Ben’s natural family. But I do know of an engineer, whose four brothers each have one grandchild with a diagnosis of autism. Weird.
Hmm… my dad’s a chemist and my grandfather (same side) is a PhD nuclear physicist. I don’t know if that counts or not.
No, I don’t, but I do have an uncle who’s a psychiatrist. (He’s mentioned in the foreword of Three Faces of Eve, as an assistant to the author)
I did attend an engineering school (Ga. Tech) but was not graduated.
My family were respectable folks whose fortunes were pretty much wiped out by the War, and like their neighbors, spent most of the twentieth century clawing their way back up into the middle class.
Have I mentioned how much I hate Yankees?
How their harsh Midwestern and Massachusetts accents are like corkscrews being twisted into my ears?
How their assumptions about family and social relations are totally wrong?
I do have a non-speaking autie in the family, a niece who actually is an ADHD person, but nobody with an actual engineering degree. The person I refer to as my ex-brother does some computer programming as part of his job, I believe, but I prefer not to think about hi
I just read the ABFH’s “Welcome to Italy” post. I now apologize to and DamnedYankees I may have offended with my previous comment here.
It does still annoy my ears to hear y’all talk, and I suspect that lots of y’all are not Scots-Irish.
Umm, that’s “any” DamnedYankees.
P.s. In case anyone is too dense to notice, the previous coupla comments come from my Scots-Irish, or White Trash,or oenotropic side, not my autistic side.
Hic.
My father was a lawyer. I also have an uncle who was an architect. Other than that, virtually all my male forbears were engineers, along with most of my cousins and their spouses. Of course I am also an engineer. Some other cousins and in-laws are computer people or translators.
My wife’s side seem to be mostly scientists or computer people.
Both my and my wife’s relatives are also genetically predisposed to being musicians and skilful prose writers. Drug use and depression also figures largely, possibly brought on by clear thinking in concert with having to live in the ridiculous muddle that calls itself the human race.
P Buddery
My father, who probably has Aspergers, has had several jobs, the longest running of which was as a prison guard, though he preferred to work the night shift so that he didn’t have to deal with people.
I, who am also Aspie, tend to get along with older engineer types. But in all instances where they have kids, none of them are autistic.
Hmmm, interesting to perseverate on…er, um, I mean consider.
My husband is a (former) engineer and has some difficulties with piking up on social cues. He can recall the most incredible numerical minutae and do complex math in his head but cannot tell when he’s pissed me off! LOL
I have a couple of uncles on my mom’s side who were, literally, rocket scientists with NASA and a sisiter who is a computer and finance whiz. I just have trouble staying focused on one thing for a while.
oops! mean “picking” not “piking”…hope that wasn’t some obscuer offensive term to anyone! :-p
Not at all!—I should also note that, on one side of my family, my relatives are all in the computer/technology fields, in various capacities. On the other hand, this blogwriting business does seem to bring out the techie side in me.
My child’s paternal grandfather is a rocket scientist; it’s also been his one and only job. Nearly everyone, on both sides has advanced degrees in mostly all scientific fields. Several many relatives are very well-known in their fields and beyond. Learning disabilities also run in my family and some of the most sucessful (mega-$$$ and career-wise) have been those with the more pronounced learning disabilties. Also, the sciency-relatives go back for several generations on both sides, including a brilliant inventor in Russia who left that country due to not being able to hold patents during the rule of the Czar (whom he knew) and a female MD eye surgeon who operated on a certain famous king back in the late 1800s. There are lots of interesting relatives and lots of interesting tales, however, the most fascinating aspect (I think) is that neither of the families, overall, have ever had much closeness amongst themselves as nearly everyone marched to their own drummer and no one’s beat every quite matched anyone else’s.
In response to anon_please; I don’t blame you for being anonymous. You have more famous ancestors than I do.
I did not state above that I appear to be an aspy. I should have, but as usual got carried away the pleasures of typing.
Another site I saw mentioned a strong link between high achievement and learning disabilities. I know of a metallurgist of original cast of mind who is similarly afflicted. The fact that he is a world expert in his particular field appears to be inevitable, given the workings of his mind.
I joke that as psychologists cover the earth to greater and greater depths, all of us will be discovered to be suffering from a plethora of mental conditions. The joke continues that, after all other things have been quantified, qualified, and milked for all possible PHD potential, the last human mental aberration left will be keyboard players.
I can laugh – I am a guitarist.
P B
That is so guitarded. Guitars are so “normal” and common!
Woodwind guys are the coolest and weirdest. Everybody suspects us of being toe-tapping Senators, too!
I have an engineering degree, but never got to use it. Why? Well, if you are noticeably autistic, you will likely never make it through the interview process. And if you are not fortunate enough to be born into a family business, you probably won’t be able to break into engineering either. And forget about joining the military. They won’t take someone with autism. There are no engineers in my family that I know of. I don’t think you can be an engineer if you have more than a few autistic traits. I would gladly pass my autism on to someone else to deal with. Believe me, it’s not a gift.
By the way, I am a self-taught keyboard player, composing pieces but never publishing anything. I wound up doing work I could have done with just high school education.
Lucky breaks seem to count for a lot.
See J.E. Robison’s lucky breaks, mostly due to his brother being associated with the litcrit Eastern Arty Establishment.
Miss Baggs still sometimes struggles to get necessities, not having been noticiced by the fashionable people.
Robison lives in Massachusetts, and claims to keep a pistol. If he does, it is only by permission of the Police. He is not being a free man, there, I think.