Page:Engineering as a vocation (IA cu31924004245605).pdf/47

 the same in all branches and for every specialty in each branch. For the average graduate several years must elapse before a permanent line of work is entered upon. Frequently this is not along the line of the specialty selected while at school. It is an axiom with experienced engineers that the specialty selects the man by a process of chance, rather than the man the specialty.

Knowing this it seems the height of absurdity for schools, as many do, to require a student upon the completion of his freshman year to make a selection for the following three years' work from a bewildering list of specialties, when he has not really made up his mind as to why he chose the hard engineering course instead of the easy courses in which memory, rather than reasoning ability, enables one to secure high marks and make the honorary fraternities.

The writer does not decry any desire on the part of ambitious young men to pursue some special subject after adequate preparation, provided this is done in the same way that a man collects stamps, becomes a high-grade amateur photographer, or pursues any other hobby. A specialty, after adequate preparation, selected in such manner is a splendid thing and if the student finally makes it pay well he is to be congratulated. A specialty selected after a supposedly due consideration of the question, "Which specialty do you think pays best?" is frequently, in fact,