Meteorologist Sam Sparks and Inventor Flint Lockwood on a date (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Sony Pictures Animation.)
“People don’t set up accountants with accountants. They don’t set up teachers with teachers or PTs with PTs. So why do they think they have to set up engineers with engineers?”
~ MF #1
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Bad for Shidduchim 
This is an easy one. The reason why engineers must date engineers is because really smart people cannot interact with people not as smart as them, so the only people they can date are other very smart people.
Then you – and everyone else – are making an egregious framing error. Namely, that to be an engineer you need to be smart. This is factually inaccurate. To be an engineer you merely need to graduate engineering school with a B- average. (Or something like that.) I would think that someone with a PhD or an A average in any subject is plenty smart.
Oh cause accountants lawyers doctors are what? Anon, its thinking like that as well as about a million other things (like she’s shy he’s not ect…) that keep tons of people from setting up people that would be perfect for each other. Or cause people to reject someone based on the most ridiculous assumptions.
I just saw that movie with my children yesterday at the library. The inevitable pairing of the scientist/inventor and meteorologist is not just due to their shared interest in science but to their shared feeling of isolation. He feels misunderstood and unappreciated, especially by his father. She has to hide her knowledge, dumbing down her conversation and removing her glasses. We see that both have been persecuted — she as a child, and he by the policeman. BTW it’s really odd that she says she still needs them but doesn’t wear them when the policeman in the movie refers directly to contact lenses earlier on.
If it seems I over-analyze a child’s movie, it’s because I have a PhD. I can also point out the 3 father/son pairings that serve as foils to each other. But really, I thought the movie piled a lot of extraneous stuff on top of the simple short child’s story that I read to my kids when they were younger.
@bad4shidduchim I think I’m proof that you can be an engineer and still not be smart… 😀
If I would have to guess it would be because engineers seem to share certain personality traits, they look at the world a bit differently. (I haven’t done any testing on this matter, so I can’t 100% vouch for this theory.)
I think that would actually make an interesting study, couple’s occupations and how they do/don’t relate to each other…hmmm.
That’s not entirely true. People do set up teachers with teachers and other professions, too- it’s not just engineers. “Oh they are both going into Chinuch…it would be such a great match!” They think it makes sense because the people have common interests. Engineering is a more unique interest than other professions, especially for females, so that could be why engineers have it worse.
the worst is setting up two teachers- recipe for starvation. personally, i’d rather date engineers than individuals of any other profession, as long as they’re not debilitatingly awkward. and also, as you astutely mention, provided they’re actually smart.
I was once set up with a fellow teacher. It was all we had in common. We spent the first date basically talking shop, decided we had nothing else for each other, and parted ways. Hey, I’m all for PD with free coffee 🙂
Ok being that I was an engineering major for a semester I can tell you that to get a B+ in that major is equal to getting an A in many other majors. Also I have many friends in Cooper Union and they told me that the average GPA there is close to 3.0. Are you going to say that they are not smart because they only have a B average in engineering? There is no way you can say that a unintelligent person can become engineers because the reason why engineers get paid so much money is because not everyone can be an engineer.
or psychologists with psychologists. thats a really popular one. Why can’t people in completely separate fields get along? I mean it may make talking shop easier, but plenty of guys will marry girls who the husband is learning and the wife is working- in an unrelated field
Agree with #6 – ppl do often set up similar professions – particularly chinuch. Also medicine – female Jewish doctors are often set up davka with male doctors (although of course not the other way around as much)…
And anyway, so few Jewish guys go into the therapies that it’s not a good example. Often, the women therapists get set up with doctors because “well, it’s close to medicine”!
I know ChEs (Chemical Engineers) married to each other, but I don’t think I would preferentially look for another engineer to marry. My dad’s a ChE and my mom’s a dancer so arts and sciences do mix. That may explain why I’m a ChE and professional trained actor. As for two psychologists marrying, that’s bad news. I’ve seen the outcome of that.
my parents were in the same field until relatively recently (they weren’t set up), and, while i always thought it made dinner-table conversation interesting, my mother once revealed to me that it isn’t always ideal. two people in the same field may be competitors, or at least both trying to move up parallel ladders. they may also have the same schedule and have to kvetch their way around that.
re psychologists- WORD!
🙂
I don’t pretend to know the answer to this one, but I can assure everyone that it’s exceedingly annoying when the one guy’s name that always came up was someone who had also gone to engineering school. It got to a point where everyone thought it was bashert b/c he kept being redt to me, but it was really b/c he was the only other single engineer people knew… We went out and it wasn’t “bashert”; so much for that.
But I do understand it, engineers do think a certain way, and it is somewhat of a personality description (for good or bad it is pretty definable).
I would also agree with bad4 that being an engineer just means you graduated with an engineering degree, not that you’re smart (I’ve met both smart and “really not” smart engineers).
I also know of a lot of engineers who have married other engineers. But you also hear of them marrying other professions. So it really could go either way. Depends on a lot.
I’m an engineer. I don’t think all engineers are smart, but the engineering curriculum requires a good deal of effort. I did go out with a couple of engineers but only for one date each. A classmate from high school married another engineer; they were about the only frum engineers in their program.
I married a medical student.