Believe me I would have loved to forklift a load onto a steel beam during mechanical engineering exams just to test my calculations, but somehow none of us were

Believe me I would have loved to forklift a load onto a steel beam during mechanical engineering exams just to test my calculations, but somehow none of us were forklift certified and the school failed to provide steel beams to toy around with. Looking back at that education the important lessons there were to acknowledge that even if multiple people try for hours under high stress to get things right, chances are more than 50% will still be wrong. And to only way around that is to really know your shit inside out. I had many colleagues who I met uears later which wouldn't even be able to explain basic mechanical laws as all they did back then is learn for exams like other people learn poems. That is what I meant when I said understanding is more important than being right in school. If you construct a plane you better check it ten times and then test it a hundred times.