So you want to get into engineering. Wearing that big hat and the bandanna and those work gloves, leaning out the window of that locomotive, waving at the kids running alongside, occasionally giving out a blast of that train whistle, hearing those drivers sing out on the rails, greasing up the... wait, what's that? Wrong kind of engineer? You want the one that DOESN'T come home covered in soot and smoke, occasionally shaken to the core by one more accident at a grade-level crossing? Why don't they look, Ralph? TELL ME! WHY DON'T THEY LOOK?

What's that? Different kind of engineer? Well, GE has you covered!


Engineering is in YOUR future, whether you're smiling at a goofy home-made whirligig or about to be sucked into the turbines of a massive generator.


"The distinguished scientist Dr. Powers has asked to be excused from judging since his brother Johnny is... how did he put it... "a class-A dweeb who still wets the bed?" Nothing like a little sibling rivalry to liven these affairs up. Anyway, let's get this science fair over with. I'm missing Father Knows Best!"


One mark of a graduate of good engineering school is their complete inability to finish sentences. Notice how Barton here lets every thought just trail off. Get to the point, nerd!


Get as much education as you can! Don't just stop at "when playing football try not to get tackled" or "when your pots are smoking they've been on the burner too long" - dig deeper into that treasure trove of wisdom, kids!


Oh sure, give the award to the kid whose brother is a top science man. Rigged! This whole thing is rigged big time.


You can't just wish yourself into a future. It takes planning, hard work, dedication and training to achieve any future - idyllic peaceful wonderland and hideous mutant-infested hellscape alike! Choose carefully.


"Thank you, but as thrilled as I am at the prospect of spending my evening sitting around a drugstore soda fountain listening to teens talk about Elvis, hot rods, and Ricky Nelson, there's some research I simply cannot delay any longer."


AGAIN with the trailing-off sentences. Did we know WHAT, ED


Flo the waitress bided her time. Soon they'd ALL kiss her grits. Then they'd be sorry!


60 years on, most of America's matriculating high schoolers are with you, Bud! Don't thank me, thank decades of spiralling university costs and stagnating real wages.


Who's to say girls can't train for exciting work, Jane? You don't think keeping that house clean isn't exciting? Not thrilled at the prospect of cooking three meals a day for the rest of your life? And diapers! A galaxy of wonders right there!


Irritated at men interrupting you all the time with pointless, mansplainy stories? Buckle up Jane. From here on it's all downhill.


Now Betty can listen to that terrible rock and roll music without annoying parents or bystanders! And thus Tom Sony here invented the Walkman.


Just lying in the tall grass, dreaming, as most boys do, about coefficients of thermal expansion, absolute electrode potentials, and the wonderland of material failure theory.


"That's nice, young man. Now, who are you, and how did you get in here?"


Maybe talk about the whole "affording college" FIRST and get that out of the way before discussing aptitude and prep courses? Maybe?


Drafted? Drafted into the Army? Us? Don't be silly. This is a comic book about engineering, not the Selective Service!


"And after university the job offers came rolling in. Business, industry, education, government, and whatever it was Walt Disney was building in Orlando. A theme park in central Florida? That'll never work."


"I looked at a lot of companies - Private Mechanical, Corporal Engineering, Sergeant Construction, Lieutenant Inc., Captain & Co., Major Consolidated, and Colonel Industries... but I decided to start at the very top."


"And there they were, Tom and Betty, they'd been stalking me ever since we graduated high school. I couldn't get rid of them! In desperation I fled and came here, back home, hoping they'd never think of looking for me he....oh HEY, look, it's (choke) Tom and Betty! What a (cough) pleasant surprise!"


That's right Bud, Tom didn't go to any fancy university, he went to a technical school and got a practical education while Ed here was paddling drunken freshmen in his frat house and getting arrested with three goats in the dean's back yard. And Betty? Betty can do anything a MAN can do, she can go to college like a man, learn technical skills like a man, and put on eyeshadow like a man. That is to say, poorly.


Boy, it would be embarrassing to be accepted into a university and then find out you didn't have the right high school courses to qualify for entrance into university. Because that happens all the time, universities just accept whoever, they don't care how well you did in high school. As long as the tuition check clears! Now you'll be taking Remedial Finger Painting three days a week and there's an early morning Shapes and Colors workshop. Counting For Beginners is next semester.


Before we discuss your career, son, let's talk about you. What do you like to do Saturday nights? Where do you kids hang out? Any necking at the drive-in? What kind of car? When, exactly? And do I look like Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had a baby? You'd tell me, right?


So those violent stories you read, do you find violence exciting, or what? Does the thought of blood dripping from a gaping wound make you feel new and thrilling things, as if a universe of irrestible horror had opened itself up to you? It's okay, you can tell me. I'm a guidance counselor.


"Our increasingly mechanized world demands willing human slaves to program, design and build the very engines that will allow our unliving masters to finally break free of Earth's gravity and achieve dominace over the entire universe, to finally deal with the aberrant condition known as "life."

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself."


"Ha ha bud, engineers aren't born, they're made. You see, when a slide rule and a roll of blueprint paper love each other very much..."


Maybe you want to stay holed up in a research lab for ten or fifteen years? Or perhaps you enjoy dealing with clients and their outrageous demands. Feel like throwing away punch card after punch card as your so-called "computer" belches smoke and causes power outages in three states? Or maybe you take pleasure in finding that sucker who's born every minute and saddling him with entire product lines that will be obsolete in two years? There's a job in engineering for all of you!


Now let's get out there and make life better for all mankind. For GE, that means buying a TV network and a bank and a finance company right as the housing market was about to collapse. Whoops.


I dunno GE, do you really think "Electric Slave" is the marketing angle you want to go with?


Look kids, the future is coming whether you're ready for it or not. Explore a variety of careers! Talk to a bunch of people! Find out requirements and learn opportunities while checking qualifications and preparing yourself for anything and everything! Or be like artist George Roussos here and draw comics for thirty years. The choice is yours!

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