There's certainly a fair share of "boring" engineering work but a lot of it is not. We all have days where nothing goes right, where we're stuck writing a long boring report, or in a meeting, but when you get that final working product at the end of it all, it makes it all worth it. Maybe I just haven't been in the field long enough, but, overall, the work is far from "boring."

If, however, by boring you mean from the viewpoint of, say, my mom, well then sure.

Your posts of:

and

make me feel like you are an engineer who has somehow become embittered with the profession. I'm sure you have a reason you feel the way you do but I work as an engineer at a small company with around 20 other engineers and none of any age are nearly this cynical about it. As previous posts have mentioned, engineering classes are hard, there's no girls, and you probably will never get the respect you deserve from the rest of society, but we do it because we love it. To be successful as an engineer requires that you enjoy what you're doing. Once you stop enjoying it, then it's time to move on. Keep in mind here that "successful" does not necessarily equal "high pay" or "upper management" position; many would define it as having a job where they don't actually feel like they are going to work.

Setting aside for a moment that the article is concerned with K-8 specifically, college textbooks are just as horrible. Math (calculus) is the worst. TFA says that: "It could be that key information or steps are missing." If you wanted to teach yourself calculus, my calc book was the worst. Sure there would be some examples, but, in almost all cases, some term would magically turn out to be zero, one, or negative one, meaning that you got to skip a number of steps in solving the problem and never actually learned how to use the technique that was being taught. Fast forward to the problems for that chapter, and none of them are anything like the example.

Not sure if serious or mocking article choice of verbiage

Nevermind. Read TFA.

Arrested Development has been available streaming on Netflix for quite some time; I'd say at least 6 months.

My prediction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(film)

I agree with this. College is certainly a time for students to take responsibility for their own education. I'd go on to say that since I'm paying for the opportunity to learn from an expert, I should be given a fighting chance to learn the material. Please don't take this to mean that I'm of the mindset that professors should bend over backwards to accomodate students in terms of handing out As and Bs for sub-par work and/or bending due dates on the basis of "the student pays the professor salary and thus should get whatever they want." What I mean is that I think that part of the opportunity means having professors who are reasonably good teachers, willing to meet with students during (and outside of) office hours, and are able to instruct students in a manner that they can comprehend.

I had my fair share of professors who were just really bad teachers. Some of them know their subject TOO well and thus have trouble bringing it down to an introductory level where undergrad students, even senior ones, can understand it. In the same vein as the above, looking back on my undergrad engineering education I feel like I shortchanged by poor teaching on at least two critical courses. One of these was intro circuits where I didn't learn all the concepts I was supposed to because I took it with the "wrong" professor. As a result, I had a harder time in subsequent courses while students who took the same course with a different professor had a much easier time.

Part of the problem is that companies are expecting engineers that are basically ready-made to fill the exact position they're looking for. I've tried to help my wife, who is preparing to graduate with MSEE, find a job in engineering. Many jobs that are even "entry level" require a minimum of 5 years experience doing something very specific (e.g., worked on specialized proprietary missile targeting system X), requires a security clearance, and or military experience. How are new engineers right out of college supposed to be able to have years of experience right off the bat? Couple that with the apparently not-uncommon practice of rejecting applicants who have been unemployed for more than a few months and we're on our way to building up a huge pool of wasted talent.

When Macbooks, iPhones, and iPads are old news and no long pushing the creative envelope, then things may well take a turn the other direction. Jobs drove those things to be what they are and it's hard to imagine someone else taking over and having the same impact and ability to drive the company forward.