this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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My field has a physical coordination and spatial reasoning test you have to pass before you're accepted into grad school, and a lot of employers in the field will retest you before hiring.
Apparently there was an issue with a certain portion of people being able to pass the book learning aspect of the field but then getting injured or being afraid of the machinery we work with.
I can see the safety aspect. My wife has no spatial awareness. Almost every night or morning she is (while fully awake) turning over or stretching and smashing everything off of her night table.
Or if we are cuddled watching a show and she goes to scratch her nose she doesn't take into account where her arm my be in the embrace, or has even smashed me in the bottom jaw and clacked my teeth together trying to find her nose.
I would not want her anywhere near moving or fixed machinery, for her own safety and the company's "n days since accident" sign
Yeah. Unfortunately with the equipment we use everyday most everyone will rack up a somewhat serious injury over the span of their career.
I've had my hand broken in the lab by someone being negligent with pressurized gas. A coworker had his finger broken this last year when operating some machinery with gloves on when he shouldn't have.
In school I saw a girl get her shirt ripped off, the same type of machine is famous for yanking out chunks of long hair. The worst injury we've had at our facility happened to a resident who hit the back of her head on a riveting bar when she went to stand after picking something up off the ground. That was the saddest because she got a pretty life altering tbi that ended her career before it ever started.
I am legitimately struggling to figure out what grad school field has a spatial reasoning test. Civil engineering? Physical therapy?
Close with the physical therapist guess, at least a similar field. I'm a certified orthotist and prosthetist, we build and fit people with custom bracing and artificial limbs. We have to do a lot of 3 dimensional modeling to create plaster molds of people's bodies, and we have to use a lot of heavy machinery to build the orthotics and prosthetics, so you have to have a pretty good eye, decent hands, and know a decent amount of medicine.