Surface Mount

Today I had to attend this 2 hour training seminar on "Surface Mount Testability Guidelines". Reminded me a lot of the times spent on ECE Senior Design, when we were trying to work with those tiny chips with a huge soldering iron ("huge" in relative terms). It was an eye-opening experience to see that in the rich corporate world, there are actually nice tools available to make surface mount soldering easy ("easy" in relative terms). Meanwhile, the U of I ECE department skimped on supplying us lowly undergrads with quality equipment. Now I'm a little bitter, thinking about all those chips we burned and the time we wasted because of that.

Another thought I was pondering is, how does my 4 years of taking ECE courses apply to the larger picture of the "real world". Besides what I do at my job, it doesn't seem like my knowledge or understanding of the Electrical Engineering curriculum really helps out much in the broader sense.

I mean, if you spent 4 years learning about plumbing, that at least gives you one big practical skill under your belt. Not only is it your job, but your expertise in plumbing is gonna help you out a lot when your own toilet clogs. Plus you got the tools and everything already there at your disposal.

Same could be said for almost any profession. If you were a mechanic, you never have to worry about where to take your car when it breaks down. If you were a doctor, you could diagnose your own ailments and write your own prescriptions. If you were a personal trainer, you can bet on having a healthy and good looking body for yourself. If you were an interior decorator, you'd never have to pay someone else to make your house look nice. If you were a stripper, you'd save lots of money because you wouldn't have to buy as many clothes. If you were an accountant, you should have no problem filing your own taxes and handling your finances. For some professions, your skill/job is more useful than for others, but you get the point.

What side benefit do I gain from my knowledge of Electrical Engineering? Hmmm, I can explain why my cell phone makes noise come out of my computer speakers (maybe). I can tell you the significance of the third plug for electrical sockets. Not very useful at all. When am I ever gonna use a Fast Fourier Transform? And is my proficiency in using Digital Oscilloscopes really gonna come in handy one of these days?

The field of EE is so specialized that outside of a desk or lab environment, your knowledge is effectively meaningless. I think I wrote about this before, but a lot of people mistakenly think that Electrical Engineers should all know how to fix TVs and that kind of stuff. To some extent, maybe we know a little more than the average person, but you're better off with an electrician graduating from DeVry. Other people think an EE degree automatically makes you an expert computer programmer or web designer. Wrong again, you're thinking CS.

But the interesting thing is, I also know a lot of EE graduates in society go on to become some of the world's most influential, respected, well-rounded people, and many of them accomplish great things, that are often times well beyond the world of electrical engineering. How is this possible, and why does this happen, when the field of expertise we're talking about is so abstract and distant from the practical world?

The only theory I have is that to graduate from EE, you probably have to be one of the best and brightest people to begin with. There are a few exceptions, but, at the risk of sounding elitist, nobody who is stupid ever becomes an Electrical Engineer. So you end up with this pool of the "best and the brightest", and from this pool, a lot are bound to stand out and lead exceptional lives.

Of course, it's just a theory, and even if there was actually truth to it, it doesn't mean that all EE graduates will become hugely successful. The fact is, they don't. At most, it says that achieving the degree shows you can hang with the upper percentile ranks of the population, and only up to that given point in life. You might be "statistically" more likely to prosper, but that's hardly a guarantee.

I would compare it to college vs. professional sports. You could be dominating in college basketball or football, be named to All-American teams or win the Heisman Trophy, but easily end up as a huge flop in the NBA or NFL. But still, the likelihood of a college star being good in the pros is much higher than that of a random schmoe off the street.

I went off on a huge tangent from what I was originally writing about, but I guess here is my patchwork conclusion about the subject. The important things have little to do with what school you went to, what you studied, and what your GPA was. You could be valedictorian in high school, but if you slack off in college, you will fail. You could get a Ph.D from Harvard, but if you stop learning and improving yourself after graduating, it will largely be a waste in the end. The most important thing is to have a driving force inside you, to constantly strive for the best, for perfection in whatever you do, for making the most of what you have. I think if you have that drive, no matter where you are in life, it would be hard for you not to succeed.