Scientists vs. Engineers - and the shift required in my brainz

I had a really great meeting with my supervisor this afternoon.  I didn't leave feeling like a RockStar, but I didn't leave feeling like a DumbAss or a FuckUp, so I'll consider it a WIN!

We're working on the second paper from my thesis - which probably should have been written ages ago - but the whole thesis thing got in the way.   Either way, there's some edits (naturally) and some more work before I pass it on to co-authors; not as many edits as I expected, so that's a good thing.

In peer-reviewed literature, there's a section where you discuss your work and all of the goodies that come with it (naturally called the Discussion).  It's also an opportunity to discuss the limitations, or pitfalls, wish-I-did's, cracks, flaws...etc, of your research.  If there are no flaws, then you're SCIENC'ing wrong.  I have no quarrels with that.  (In fact, there are so many "doing it wrong"'s that there's an entire Twitter hashtag devoted to it:  #overlyhonestmethods.  I'm giving this buzz line partial credit for me surviving my defense.)

Anyways, I listed a bunch of "things I'd like to change if I was doing this over", and "things that I have to accept that I cannot change" (this sounds familiar...).  Most of them were correct, some I pulled from previous work and tweeked it to apply (which I won't do again...promise), and some I'm still trying to gorram figure out. Either way, I was getting so bogged down by all the limitations of what I did, that I started to forget just how awesome and important my research actually is.  My writing had to change.  My writing is a little bit of my soul.  I guess I'm giving away little bits of my soul in my papers....scary thought.

This led us to the "philosophical" part of our meeting (there's always one, most of the time it relates to BATMAN, but not today....maybe).  It got the two of us really thinking, and helped me gain a little bit of perspective on this whole "SCIENCE!" thing. 

As Engineers, we're trained to find flaws.  I've spent the last 8 years building stuff, identifying what was wrong, then fixing it.  Or (even better) doing equations about flaws and failures so I know if they're going to happen or if something is even possible.  We design things to get around a flaw, or to correct a flaw.  As long as something isn't quite perfect, or quite working the way it should - we go in and re-design the sucker to make it work.  Engineers are trained to aim for perfection (within budget constraints of course - also a flaw). As long as there are flaws, there is more work to do.
Bottom line: I've studied "How stuff is wrong" for the last 8 years.  I've been trained specifically to find out what's wrong, fix the problem, then make sure it doesn't happen again.  Throw that monkey wrench into the mentality of the Scientific Process and that makes for some pretty self-deprecating writing. 

As an Engineer, even if there's something incredibly exciting with the work, we still get bogged down by mistakes and "wish-I-hads", that we forget just how awesome the SCIENCE is.  It sucks!

The conversation ended with my supervisor telling me that I shouldn't be so hard on myself and my work.  This is SCIENCE (well, part of it is, but a small part) and I don't have as much control over an experiment as I would a design or a model.  There aren't as many limitations as I think.  "Only opportunities." 

I think it was a big light bulb moment for the both of us.  I like leaving the meeting on the same page of the same book.  WIN.