Sandia’s Engineering Sciences Center helped mark National Engineers Week with a contest, asking Sandians to complete the following sentence: “You know you’re an engineer when… .” The contest drew dozens of endings for the sentence, and Sandians voted on which they liked best.

Barbara Lewis won bragging rights—as well as a pocket protector stocked with new pens—for her winning entry, “…you’re lying in the hospital bed asking the nurse how the light on your finger is measuring the oxygen level (and then you hold your breath to test it).”

“It actually happened, and that’s when I realized engineers can annoy non-engineers without even trying,” says Lewis, who also received a Star Wars mug and a restaurant gift certificate as prizes.

Second place went to Jerome Cap for, “…your kids say, ‘Dad, I don’t want to know the theory, all I want is the answer.’”

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