I also studied FEM in undergrad and grad school. There's something very satisfying about breaking an intractably difficult real-world problem up into finite chu

I also studied FEM in undergrad and grad school. There's something very satisfying about breaking an intractably difficult real-world problem up into finite chunks of simplified, simulated reality and getting a useful, albeit explicitly imperfect, answer out of the other end. I find myself thinking about this approach often.