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ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION
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him the coveted degree may be good, but he was further informed that if he put in one year of residence work he could obtain it. It is plain to anyone that the man who is now sporting the degree of "Civil Engineer" is really a Master of Science and such should have been the degree given to him. If he did not feel the incongruity of the matter the second young man, the real engineer, would not feel so bitterly over it. He does not object in the least to the school placing a high value on the professional degree, but he feels queer when he meets "Kitty" and knows that the school calls him an engineer while practical men under whom he tried to work call him things not so complimentary.

The graduate of a technical school should be able to think and reason mathematically. He should not think in mathematics, which is something different; the man who does the latter being better fitted to become a physicist, or a teacher of mathematics. No student should become absorbed in the tools, for, if he does, he will forget their proper use. Too many graduates come out with very vague ideas of their life work and this is due to the fact that even the best school cannot make an engineer of the unfit. It is a reminder of the old proverb about the silk purse and the sow's ear.

Many practical men, unaware of the difficulties under which a teacher must labor, condemn wholesale the American schools and praise the schools of Europe, especially of Germany. No one doubts the