Engineers vs. The Rest of the World?

I have been dating an Engineer for the past eight months. I had dated Bankers and Managers before, but never an Engineer. It's been great so far, but last week I had an eye-opening experience.

I am currently pursuing an MBA and while pouring over my Quantitative Analysis and Decision Making notes, my boyfriend kindly offered to help.

While explaining topics such as Exponential Smoothing, Weighted Average and Moving Average, I found myself getting a bit impatient as I was unable to comprehend and follow his explanations. During one of our tutoring sessions, we had to pause for one hour to 'thrash out' an issue we both had - I explained a problem the way I was able to comprehend it, and he was deciphering the same problem the way he was able to comprehend it. We had a very 'spirited' discussion (to say the least) for one hour, at the end of which, he said, "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying." You can imagine how peeved I was, that my tutoring session was interrupted for one hour (I'm not exaggerating here), only to realise that we were both saying the exact same thing!

I immediately called my mother and said, "Mummy, I realise why I am so averse to understanding mathematical computations. It's Daddy's fault!" My father is also an Engineer and I recalled how painstaking it was for me as a child to ask him to explain anything mathematical. He would always seem to go on a tangent (much like I experience when my current hubby is explaining something). Bless their hearts. I love them both so much.

Today, I had another such session with him - This time, I was the tutor, teaching him Supply Chain Management and taking him through a Vertically Integrated problem. He was a joy to teach. He's just a pain to learn from. We took a break from studying and he explained to me that he tried to explain the same problem we were 'thrashing out' to the Engineers in his Department and lo and behold, they all got it!

This got me thinking...Is the way we learn, based on our profession or our gender? I teasingly told him that all Engineers seem to think alike and they are all wired differently from everyone else. He jokingly responded, "No. It's just that Engineers can think".

I lovingly smiled at him and decided that I would not pursue this 'argument' any further. I let him think he won this one - but I'm sure it will come up again.

Camille.