Reason #15: It Becomes Your Identity, For Better or Worse

Like it or not, mechanical engineering becomes your label. At home you are the cousin who “knows machines,” the neighbor who “understands HVAC,” the friend who can “fix anything.” At work you are the ME, the default brain on call. The degree does not sit on a shelf, it walks in first and tells people what to expect from you before you open your mouth. See Reason #3.

This plays out most clearly in social interactions at work. Sales treats you like the resident egghead who can rescue any deal, then forgets to train you on the product. You are dropped into a customer call to solve a failure you have never seen, with test data you were not given, while the people who own the relationship go quiet. Support wants instant answers because you are the engineer, yet the ticket lacks photos, serial numbers, or even the right model. Technicians roll their eyes when you hesitate, they know the machine by smell and you know the drawing. Managers praise your “problem solving” in public, then route every petty decision to you in private because it is easier to forward an email to the ME than to fix a broken process.

The same thing happens inside the engineering group. The board is chosen, the software is set, suppliers are locked. Your social role is the closer, the caretaker. You move holes on drawings, call out threads, argue over a torque table, and rewrite test plans so the unit limps through vibration. Everyone thanks the engineer, then they return to their real jobs. Credit travels up, blame sticks sideways.

Outside the office the label keeps working. Relatives bring you lawn equipment. A neighbor asks you to “take a quick look” at a rattling furnace. You explain that engineering is not repair work, and the explanation does not land. Strangers are impressed, people near the work are relieved to hand you their mess. As you learned in Reason #1, a crowded market makes labels do more sorting and less listening, so the social shortcut hardens into your job description.

Try to pivot and the same dynamics show up. You talk about adaptability, they hear mechanical. You ask for ownership, they send you a markup file. Do they want your judgment, or just a mascot that makes the deck look technical?

Either way, the label stays while the person gets smaller.