Engineering Paper - A Different Perspective

I once had a professor of physics mandate engineering paper for all handed-in assignments, included exams. At the time I was outraged - the paper was expensive, it was unbound, and it wasn't aesthetically familiar to me. Fast forward to graduate school and I found myself more mature and dedicated to the engineering profession, so I voluntarily bought my first pad of engineering paper. I sat through meetings, classes, hackathons, anything related to engineering, always with a pad in my lap. The paper was logical - it was geometric for drawing proportional dimensions and accurately graphing; there were margins for commenting; headers for dates, names, topics, titles, etc. Engineering paper became a fundamental tool to my experience as an engineer.

I spent a summer interning at Idaho National Laboratory, and it was then when I appreciated the role of engineering paper. As a 24 year-old graduate student with little to no experience, a pad of paper is not going to propel your engineering career, however, it can set you apart from your peers by branding you as prepared and professional. A year later I went on to intern for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and the narrative continues from there. 

The whole point of an entry on engineering paper is this - it's called engineering paper for a reason. It's important for anyone starting a career to educate him/herself on not only their industry standards, but also the reasons why they exist. And for the case of engineering paper - I can't imagine a day without it, and I think that says something about the power of trying something new.

Get Yourself a Few Pads here [rendering courtesy of Xiong under CC BY 3.0].