As an engineer and an educator I battle a persistent misconception that engineers are not good communicators. In fact I actually find the opposite to be true. My students are well spoken and have strong writing abilities. These are increasingly important skills in a global economy, and engineers that function well in teams, can handle presentations with ease and can express themselves clearly in reports have a real advantage over others. In fact, much of our engineering education focuses on group dynamics and written and oral communication skills.
I have always enjoyed writing, and grew up in a family that really valued both reading and writing as a way of life. My father worked in the newspaper industry and is a talented writer himself. I feel that writing is a part of my inherent DNA. My mother is an extremely talented communicator, a person that has the ability to connect with people on a very personal basis and make every person she interacts with feel valued and important. I feel that I have taken something from each of them have developed my own strengths in written and oral communication. It is interesting how much I draw on these skills in my career. Obviously as a teacher I need to draw on strengths in oral communication, and the lessons that I have learned from my mother in interacting with people really make a difference in how I connect with my students. But I also draw extensively on my writing skills. I have published more than 50 peer-reviewed technical articles and submitted almost 60 different grant proposals. That’s a lot of writing just 12 years into this career. I have spent the past three months of my sabbatical doing nothing but writing, and hope to add 10 more papers to my list of publications as an outcome of this “time off”.
I have always been a writer. I remember writing collaborative books with my middle school friends during the lazy days of unstructured summers in rural Ohio. I edited and wrote for my high school newspaper, even when it was apparent that no one beyond the editorial staff cared or even seemed to know that it existed. I wrote for my college newspaper for all four years, rising to head editor of the sports section and devoting up to 15-20 hours a week to it on top of my busy engineering courseload. Why sports? Mainly because my freshman orientation counselor was the sports editor at the time and I thought he was a wise, worldy, cute college guy who thought it was great that I was a writer. So I went to write for his staff. It turned out he wasn’t wise or worldly, and wasn’t really that cute either, but I had found a home on the newspaper staff. I’ve even written for local newspapers as a sports stringer, reporting on local girls’ high school basketball games and other interesting local events.
Now I have the opportunity to write for myself. This trip should provide a lot of interesting material, as we travel through Europe and experience different people, different cultures and different approaches to life. I have felt for a while that I would like the opportunity to have the time to write recreationally, not just as part of my job, and this will give me the opportunity and time to do so. Like so many other people, I feel that I have a book inside me ready to come out, and I hope that finding the time to write regularly will allow me to determine if that’s truly the case.
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