I'm a guy with four daughters, ranging from 24 years old to 8 months old. That's quite a range! While my oldest, Christina, writes for this magazine and other ZweigWhite publications, sells real estate and owns a small horse farm with boarders, what the other three will do is pretty much up in the air.

So what if one of them came to me and said she knows what she wants to be when she grows up — a structural engineer! Here's some of what I would probably tell her...

• I'm proud of you! Structural engineering is an honorable profession — that's good. If you have to work, you might as well do something that is really needed, where you help people, help save lives and protect both community and private assets. I would feel a whole lot better about you being a structural engineer — working either in the private sector or for the government — than I would feel about you selling overpriced extended warranties or figuring out how to get young people to start smoking your company's cigarettes.
• Are you sure you are smart enough (of course, I would reassure her that she was) and are you really studious enough to get through the education and testing requirements? I hate to generalize, but if you look at all civil engineering specialties or sub-disciplines, structural engineers tend to be those who make the best grades. This is not a profession for "C" students.
• Are you ready to work your tail off once you get out there? Any profession worth doing is probably one that takes at least 50 hours a week. When you only have 168 hours in a week, and 72 of them are supposed to be devoted to sleeping, that leaves 96 hours. If you work 50, that leaves 46. If you live somewhere where your commute takes an hour each way (don't do that, honey!), you now have only 36 hours a week when you'll be awake. A good chunk of them will be devoted to preparing and cleaning up meals. Then you have to take care of all your stuff, plus pay bills, etc. And what if you ever have kids? This business makes it a lot harder to integrate kids into your life than something such as teaching elementary school might because of the typical work hours and commitment required.
• Are you careful enough? Other people's lives depend on the quality of what you do. This is not a field where you can make mistakes without major consequences. This is a profession that requires someone who deeply cares about people and has a strong sense of responsibility for their lives.
• Do you just love the field? If you aren't completely intrigued and engrossed in this profession, why do it? Have you studied the greats from the past? Do you look at every bridge, building, or other structure and immediately want to redesign it? Is structural engineering something that you think about practically every moment of every day? If not, do something else!

Maybe you have already had this conversation with one or more of your kids. If so, how did it go? Drop me a line at mzweig@zweigwhite.com. And meanwhile, Happy New Year and thanks for reading the January 2012 issue of Structural Engineer magazine! We'd be sunk without you!

Mark C. Zweig,
mzweig@zweigwhite.com