Engineer，中文叫工程师, 听起来都觉得土。Banker, consultant多洋气，多牛！如果在即将毕业的理工科学生中作一个调研，想做engineer的有多少? 30%? 20%? 其中有多少是把engineer做为首选的? 恐怕不多。估计很多同学这么想，我不做工程师，还能做什么. Engineer是很多同学不得不做的一个选择.

真的是这样吗? 被大家认为没有前途或者前途暗淡的工作果真若此吗?

今年一月, BeBeyond的学员Arnold去了次美国，在BeBeyond论坛上他写道：

这里给大家一个我自己的感受，聪明永远不等于明智。到了米国发现很多东西是我们在国内不曾注意到的，不曾想到的。LA is so different from New York. New Yorkers are sorts of tough people, but LA people are like free-thinker. 在San Diego，你可以看到一个企业，产业，大学，实验室，咨询所，数据库一体化的学术产业链。在这里我第一次visualize了一个bio-engineer可以实现的价值有多大。总有人说, I don't want to be an engineer, or applied scientist, I wanna be a businessman to make money. Well, I'd like to say, they are wrong, they are totally wrong!!!!!! 给大家推荐一些homework，UCSD的engineering school的endowment是 Jacob, USC的engineering school的endowment是Vertibi。看看这两个人都干了什么。Even though financial job is quite gainful today, but for those who really want to challenge the life and value themselves, being an engineer or applied scientist will never be a secondary choice, even for money!!!! 我只是想推广“做一个engineer”的成才理念，因为在未来，这是精英人才主流，至少我觉得。

Arnold的这些想法从哪里来? 去了次美国就有? 不是。他的见识来自于: I've been to 30 places in Stanford for 4 days, talked with more than 40 people, attend many class, colloquia and lectures in Stanford. I've been to medicine, bioengineering, biomedical science, bio-X and Stanford hospitals. It's a lot of fun.

他的见识来自于见的人多。他和Stanford的director聊，人家请他吃了顿饭。UCSD bioengineering chair 告诉他：Always keep your eyes open, it's the only way to success. 他和学生聊. I talked with a guy from BioComp program, he is an undergrad. He introduced me a very brand-new concept, called personal genotyping. It's billions of dollars market, but so far it's completely immature, mostly because of the bioethic issue.

通过去更多的地方，通过和更多的人聊，他对biotech industry有了了解。他说“I know more about biotech industry, the semi-conductor for next generation. it's about trillion$ deal, extremely big market in following 10 years. For EE, CS, anything silicon, is predictable, but for biotech and nano-engineering, it's totally unpredictable. Yeah, it's truly, I've been to 2 biggest biotech areas so far, San Diego and SF Bay. I'm gonna visit Boston, the last one, there are 3 biggest areas in US so far.”

是不是只有出国才能有见识，才有独立的判断和选择? 当然不! 这个, 我们下次聊。