Complex Numbers

Man of Letters

What is this "letter" of which you speak?

PROMPT May 14th

What was the best/worst letter or email you ever received or wrote? Write about the situation surrounding that letter, and why it was so significant.

Fun Fact of the Day: the word "letter," which in English can, confusingly, mean either a single symbol of the alphabet or a collection of said symbols arranged into words, sentences and paragraphs and usually sent via courier or through something called the "mail" or "post" to someone, originally used the singular form for the former and the plural form for the latter. To make matters even more confusing, "lettered" means "educated," and "literature" seems to come from the same Latin root.

Language is weird.

My first professional job distinguished between a "letter" and a "memo" thus: if it fit on one page, it was a memo. Any more than that, and we had to use a letter format.

I can't remember the last time I wrote an actual letter. It was certainly something related to my job, but by the time I retired, pretty much everything was emailed. And I certainly can't remember writing any missive of substance, electronically or otherwise. It was mostly just boring reports and engineering explanations.

The process for becoming, and remaining, a professional civil engineer in the US is, in general, the following:

Graduate from high school
Four years of engineering school (yes, this is less than other professions such as law or medicine)
Work
Take the Engineer-in-Training exam (EIT)
Work some more
Take the Professional Engineering exam (PE)
Keep working
Take professional training classes (in most states)
Renew PE license
Repeat previous three steps until retirement or death

Generally only civil engineers have to maintain a PE license; other disciplines don't care as much. With said license, an engineer has the right and responsibility to approve plans, which basically says "this was done by me or under my supervision, reviewed by me, and adheres to the standards of practice of engineering drawings." You can then be sued if a dam breaks or a road washes out.

With that responsibility usually comes a higher pay scale. Not really high, mind you, but for me it was the difference between barely scraping by and being able to save a bit of most paychecks. So, naturally, I wanted to get my PE license.

I studied for the goddamned exam for at least three months, not to mention all the college and work and whatnot. I've always tested well, but that fucking exam about killed me. I was so sure I'd failed and would have to take it again that, after drinking for the rest of that weekend, I started studying to take it again.

But behold, three or four months later, I got the letter in the mail: "You're a licensed professional engineer in the Commonwealth of Virginia."

And then I drank some more, because I could finally afford it.

That's the great thing about drinking: it can make bad situations tolerable, and good situations better.

A whole lot of bad things happened in rapid succession around 2008-2009, including a lot of personal shit and a recession that pretty much halted all construction plans in my area, and I let my license lapse and retired, but by that time I'd fulfilled everything I'd set out to do professionally. So I call that a win. And that's why I'm calling that licensing letter the best one I ever received.

Ask me again tomorrow and it'll probably be the love letter I got from [name redacted] in 1986, or the one that said I was eligible to go to the Naval Academy, even though it was signed by that assclown Ronald "McDonald" Reagan, or, on the "worst" side, the one court summons I got that wasn't for jury duty. But that's a story for another time. Or, more likely, not at all. (I will say that it wasn't related to my engineering work, nor a criminal case.)