Deconstructed
Every job has its own variety of stress, and when I feel overwhelmed with the responsibility of being somebody's doctor, I often wonder what life would have been like had I stayed in engineering. I graduated college with a degree in bioengineering, a fascinating field if there ever was one. I've always targeted medicine as a career goal, so I never pursued the field of engineering after college. But that won't stop me from daydreaming about what I gave up for that MD degree: 9 to 5 workdays, weekends off, not being on call, and not having to worry about malpractice insurance.
Regardless, I still consider myself a geeky engineer type, and spend countless amounts of my free time tearing apart electronics and fabricating various gadgets, drawing up blueprints for various pieces of furniture, and rebuilding, redesigning, and fixing whatever is broken in my 80 year old house.
I received the following in my email the other day:
An engineer dies and reports to the pearly gates. St. Peter checks his dossier and says, "Ah, you're an engineer -- you're in the wrong place."
So, the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in. Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After awhile, they've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and the engineer is a pretty popular guy.
One day, God calls Satan up on the telephone and says with a sneer, "So, how's it going down there in hell?"
Satan replies, "Hey, things are going great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next."
God replies, "What??? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake -- he should never have gotten down there; send him up here."
Satan says, "No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him."
God says, "Send him back up here or I'll sue."
Satan laughs uproariously and answers, "Yeah, right. And just where are YOU going to get a lawyer?"
Regardless, I still consider myself a geeky engineer type, and spend countless amounts of my free time tearing apart electronics and fabricating various gadgets, drawing up blueprints for various pieces of furniture, and rebuilding, redesigning, and fixing whatever is broken in my 80 year old house.
I received the following in my email the other day:
An engineer dies and reports to the pearly gates. St. Peter checks his dossier and says, "Ah, you're an engineer -- you're in the wrong place."
So, the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in. Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After awhile, they've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and the engineer is a pretty popular guy.
One day, God calls Satan up on the telephone and says with a sneer, "So, how's it going down there in hell?"
Satan replies, "Hey, things are going great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next."
God replies, "What??? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake -- he should never have gotten down there; send him up here."
Satan says, "No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him."
God says, "Send him back up here or I'll sue."
Satan laughs uproariously and answers, "Yeah, right. And just where are YOU going to get a lawyer?"
posted by THW at 9:58 PM
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