Most people know what it is to be thoughtful, at least that is my take on it. The problem is that most places don't expect "thoughtfulness" of us. Even much of higher learning these days is dominated by a "finish line" mentality that doesn't promote thoughtfulness or genuine accomplishment as much as it promotes task oriented behaviors and accreditation.

Here's a debate I've been having with the professor of my capstone course. We're doing chemical processes related to oil and carbon chain cracking and all of that fun stuff, and it's very similar to what we did last semester for our Design with Constraint course so far. Granted, in 5ish weeks it's going to transition to in-depth design but right now it's the same exact kind of thing we did last semester. My argument is that there is a lack of soul and thought provoking situations in making us spend half the semester doing the same thing we spent an entire semester doing, his argument is that practice makes perfect. I believe that both of us are right but there's a more interesting underlying point, and it's what you've brought up. This is entirely a task oriented project, there is no thinking outside of the box, there is no applying principles outside of humanity or trying to imbue a sense of yourself into what you're trying to accomplish.

And I think that's why I don't like engineering so much, because it strips away the soul and leaves you a problem solving machine that is there to fix issues for somebody else or improve an existing process. There's not much room for creativity, there's not much room to leave a piece of yourself in the project, and there's certainly not enough to risk anything in the end. This was rambling, I just feel that most of "classical" (mechanical, electrical, chemical) engineering suffers greatly from the "finish line" mentality.

There's actually a question here and that's does the pursuit of systems optimization and engineering result in a reduction of soul and creative solutions? Does it remove the "thoughtfulness" from any perspective that is not analytical? Am I right, is my professor right, or are we both right in our own ways?