Monday, November 22, 2010
(with apologies to Aaron Sorkin)
Even as I charged ahead towards a new future in my trips to Boston and DC, in my visits with old high school and college friends I was reminded of an altogether different past—a past in which I envisioned something completely different than the path I now find myself following, a future characterized by Fourier transforms and Smith charts. Delighted as regions of my brain probably last exercised in college sprang back into action talking shop with Amanda and John the electrical engineers and Angela the computer engineer, I nonetheless felt wistful at leaving all of that behind. At the same time, in Donna the teacher, and in other classmates and friends who went onto separate careers, I found some reassurance.
Technology never stopped exciting me. Math and physics still excite me. But are they enough to make me want to wake up in the morning?
Only if I can directly help someone by doing it.
I’ll just have to find some way to be an EE-doc, I guess.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
1. I can be pretty sensitive to sound and perceived sound, especially my own heartbeat, so my first attempts at taking a blood pressure weren’t helped by being in a noisy environment or by having the sphygmomanometer tubes bumping all up against the stethoscope.
2. I need to retrain myself to pay more attention to my senses. Engineers need to make accurate, precise measurements that are repeatable, which we do using various tools (multimeters, oscilloscopes, network analyzers, software debuggers). Nowhere do the five senses factor in as collectors of primary data. On the other hand, medical workers, first responders especially, have to rely on their senses to assess a situation.
3. I’ve become too…left-brained. Back in undergrad, I kept my engineer-side balanced with a healthy dose of acting (some of my fonder memories are of late nights/early mornings during tech week). And after hanging out last week with a couple of high school friends who are also drama babies, I started to miss it. Not to mention, some of those skills would help ease this career transition I’m slowly working through.