To Design or Not to Design - Emulation of Hamlet's Third Soliloquy
Location
To design or not to design - that is the question
Whether 'tis better to follow dreams
And risk not having enough money,
Or not take that leap of faith,
And, by engineering, playing it safe.
To avoid the risk--
No more - and by taking the risk I say to face
The preparation for the skills I must learn
The actuality of failing--
'Tis a situation
I do not hope to face.
To engineer, to not design--
To take the safety route. Ay, there's the issue,
For in playing it safe what opportunities may pass
When we are hiding from the failures that may come
Must make us halt and ponder.
That's the belief
That makes problems of not taking a chance to design.
For who really wants defeat,
The boring job,
The coworkers depressing aura,
The confinement and lack of imagination,
And the bleak looks
That my fellow engineers send in my day-dreaming direction,
When they too may dream
Without other's judgement?
Who would heed the dreamer's call
To wait and anticipate that chance of a lifetime,
But that the terror of missing out on making a dream come true by not taking a chance
The unknown opportunities of being a fashion designer
The possibilities missed,
While we return to our boring lives,
Wishing we had been fashion designers
Instead of taking the risk of making it come true?
Thus the thought of failure does make cowards of us all,
And thus the comfort of being an engineer
Is ruined with thoughts of being a fashion designer,
And thoughts of serenity because we're in our comfort zone
With this regard their peace is stolen away
And lose the contentment of being an engineer, disguised as lost dreams in favor of the possibility of being a fashion designer.
(based on Hamlet's third soliloquy)