After crash landing on Planet Rochester, Friday night, Anne and I had recovered by Saturday morning. We picked Dave up at his apartment and decamped to the Mount Hope Diner, for breakfast. Even though, I tried to commit seppuku with my razor, the cat wouldn’t take its medicine and we got lost, several times, we still made breakfast and U of R’s Order of the Engineer ceremony, on time.
In between breakfast and the ceremony, Dave gave us a brief tour through Rochester’s two year old Biomedical Engineering building. It is a very impressive facility. The various senior project presentations were prominently displayed about it. Dave, pictured below, is showing the footwear portion of his senior project team’s product.
Saturday’s main event was the Order of the Engineer ring ceremony. This ceremony was open to all graduating engineers and any of their parents that are also engineers. Being an engineer in good standing at a certain Fortune 100 corporation, I elected to participate too. There were eighty some student participants plus more than a few of their parents. After some preamble, history and explanation, Dave, the rest of the student and parent inductees and myself stood to take this pledge. We all repeated the parts in bold.
I am an Engineer. In my profession I take deep pride. To it, I owe solemn obligations.
Since the Stone Age, human progress has been spurred by the engineering genius. Engineers have made usable nature’s vast resources of material and energy for Humanity’s benefit. Engineers have vitalized and turned to practical use the principles of science and the means of technology. Were it not for this heritage of accumulated experience, my efforts would be feeble.
As an Engineer, I pledge to practice integrity and fair dealing, tolerance and respect, and to uphld devotion to the standards and the dignity of my profession, conscious always that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making the best use of Earth’s precious wealth.
As an Engineer, I shall participate in none but honest enterprises. When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given without reservation. For the public good. In the performance of duty and in fidelity to my profession, I shall give the utmost.
After the ceremony I got to meet the other three members of Dave’s senior project design team in person. Pictured above are David, Hannah, Shekhar and Nicole. In their YouTube video, Dave played the patient, Hannah played the operator, Shekhar was the narrator and Nicole was the camera person. Dave’s primary engineering participation was in doing the project’s software development.
As an aside and just to make Annie jealous, Nicole is a second cousin to Lady Gaga. Her dad is her Godfather. It is a small world after all. That makes it only easier for a pinky ring to rule it all.
The oath you list above reminded me of a song from my Michigan Tech days. it went something like this —
well I am an engineer
I can drink all of 40 beers
(forgotten line(s))
so drink up, drink up, drink up, drink up!
for we don’t give a damn for any man who do give a damn for us!
and here’s hoping none of you drank 40 beers yesterday.
I have never done the Order of the Engineer.
I guess my pinky ring will just have to wait.
(Don’t recall them offering this at graduation – either bachelors or masters)
Very cool.
Jane:
“We are, we are, we are, we are, we are the Engineers.
We can, we can, we can, we can drink all of 40 beers.
Drink up , drink up, drink up, drink up and come along with us!
For we don’t give a damn for any man who don’t give a damn for us!”
And that is only the chorus. Somewhere I have a number of the verses – according to history, one verse gets added by each graduating class. The best-known verse begins: “My father was a miner on the Upper Malamute, my mother was a hostess in a house of Ill Repute. And at the tender age of 3 they threw me on my ear, for all I wanted to do was to become an Engineer!”