Engineer* at the circus more common than you’d think
I thought I was a contender for the ‘change of career’ prize at a self-development workshop a little while back (did I just admit I went to a self-development workshop?!). It seemed everyone in the session had been through a few jobs in their 30 or so years, but most had moved from, say, civil engineering to mechanical engineering or technical writing to creative writing. At my turn I proudly announced, ‘I studied engineering** but I’m about to take off to the circus’. I got applause.
Turns out there are quite a few engineers in the circus, so I’m not actually that special; though to date I’ve mostly found them absorbed in juggling, which lends itself to mathematical thinking with its rhythms and counts and general leaning towards obsession.
My lack of special-ness was reiterated in a Playtime blog post, where Briony, chief finder of fun in the Funfed, has identified Engineer as one of the categories of players (there are also musicians, storytellers and several others). Turns out this Engineer type is particularly prone to running away to the circus, particularly if you are also a kinaesthete (love being in your body) and a performer (quite like to be in front of an audience).
* If you’re so inclined as to want to read pages and pages about how engineers think, you may wish to peruse How Engineers think about the World on said subject. It’s written by an engineer.
** I did study engineering and probably have a load of the characteristics in afore-mentioned document but I actually was only a real engineer for a few years. Just thought I’d clear that up in case of issues relating to falsifying identity. Not that I’m at all worried about getting information exactly right and correct and clear, even if it means writing longwinded extraneous paragraphs and technical jargon. And I’m not at all excited at the use of footnotes.
