Things Engineers Like: Not Finishing

Throughout grade school and college, many of us have had the pleasure of accomplishing assignments and once you completed them, you were completely done with them. You would have hopefully learned to use the skills and concepts from the assigned work in other applications. But that seems to be only found in the academic world where you can work on something, finish, and never have to worry about it again.

But outside of the academic setting, it's rare to find something where you can just finish it and never have to deal with it ever again. Take for example, projects/research at work, they continue for years and years (depending on money, of course) and never seems to be fully complete. There isn't a specific criteria to get a high grade since you're striving to be the best in your industry. There isn't a stopping point in the competition. You have to continuously look towards the future and see where things can be improved upon. Just look at what happens when you don't, you may become the next Kodak..

It's probably for the best that engineers don't finish. If they settled and felt like they "finished" their product, advancement would be slow. It's the drive to never stop going that make engineers who they are. It's their strong-will, motivated, determined, persevering personalities that make this world a better place to live in. It's a satisfying feeling knowing that their isn't a finish line (or roof) and that you never have to finish.