Blogpost #3 - Due September 24th

Option 1: Free Write/Directed Writing
At first I didn't really think I could write about anything that was related to communication in engineering, but then I remembered a time when I went with my brother in law to work. He works for the city of Beloit, which is just north of my hometown, as a Civil Engineer. Throughout the day I learned many things, but I guess one of the biggest things that I didn't even observe at the time would be a miscommunication and mix up caused by a thing as simple as not knowing the definition of a word. At the time there was a road that was being torn up to be redone, and everyone was surprised when there was concrete underneath of the asphalt. This caused several things to be rescheduled, money needing to be allocated to take out the concrete, and various other problems. While it was being discussed in the office, one guy came forward and said something along the lines of "Oh, of course there was concrete underneath. That's what sheet asphalt is." This was being discussed previously as well, and he never spoke up. I think that he thought he was being the smart, knowledgeable guy by speaking up right then, but from my point of view it was entirely the opposite. If he would have spoke up earlier, no one would have been surprised by the outcome, and there wouldn't have been any trouble getting the project done on time. Of course now everyone knows what sheet asphalt is, and this will help in the future, but it was a stupid thing to not speak up sooner.

In short, problems are caused daily when people just don't speak up at the right time. If you know what something is, and no one else does, don't withhold the information thinking it makes you more of an asset. It doesn't; sometimes it even makes you a liability. I'm sure people have been fired over things like that.

Blogpost #2 - Due September 17th

Over the last week or so I have done several things to help towards building a new network, as well as tried a few that did not work. One of those was just getting to know people in my classes. Of course this is easier in Merit Discussions (there are less people, and it's not as daunting). Most of the classes do the work for you though. They split you up into smaller groups, and then you get to know your individual groups better. So I have, of course, tried to be friendly and get to know everyone in these groups in each of my discussions.

This is looking to be relatively easy however, so I decided to try something a bit different and bold. I tried sending an e-mail to the president of Nintendo (Satoru Iwata) asking him what inspired him to follow the path that led him to be so successful. The one e-mail address I managed to find only resulted with me getting an automated message saying that the e-mail address provided did not exist. So obviously I need to continue searching for a working e-mail address. I could just use one of the many provided on Nintendo's site, but I know those would only lead me to customer service or some similar lower level branch of the company. Even if I don't manage to find a way to contact him, it's not like it was all worthless. I learned a bit about the Mr. Iwata along the way, like where he started out; that he majored in computer science back in the late '70s and early '80s-which must have been drastically different than it is now; and that his first job was with HAL Laboraties, which is a subsidiary of Nintendo.

In each of these things I learned the value of teamwork with my fellow classmates and that with it, things get done more quickly, as well as the fact that networking can often be easy, but at times it can be incredibly difficult - especially without having a definite means of contact. And even after finding that contact, that does not mean things will get easier.