i was once like you.

i left work early yesterday and headed into the city to speak in a class at my alma mater, cooper union.
i should pause for a sec here and explain what a statement this is.

first, cooper union is free, as in each admitted student receives a full tuition scholarship.

people frequently ask the following questions about the free thing...
is it state-funded? no.
is it only for city kids? no.
is it a good school? yes!!
well then how can it possibly be free?!? it is funded by an endowment, set up by peter cooper and continually added to thanks to investment and further donation.
wow! how do i get in? well if you can't figure that out, you probably shouldn't go there.

so, we've established that the school is free and good.

next, i was a terrible student at cooper. i scraped by and did as little as possible because i was sure... i mean sure that i didn't want to be an engineer, at the time. of course, i am now an engineer. this is the way things go. of course back then i was also sure i didn't want to work in heating and ventilation, didn't want to work at a huge company, didn't want to sit in front of a computer all day.... i've succeeded on these fronts, thank goodness. i get to design parts and work with actual human people and build things and break things and parts i've designed actually exist! still to this day it blows my mind that i 1) never flunked out and 2) actually got a job... also 3) haven't been fired yet, but that's another story for another day.

so, anyway, it is quite an honor to be invited back to speak in this class, global engineering operations and management, or some such thing, oh and by the way i think i got a c in this class, or maybe it was a b... all i remember is that professor jacoby thought i was really good in the play (the importance of being earnest... i got to wear a peach bridesmaid's dress and see vik in makeup) and gave me obscene amounts of bonus points for charisma in my in-class presentations. come to think of it, that charisma usually came from the pre-class trips across the street to st. mark's ale house with david levine, but again, another story for another day.

professor jacoby, i should mention, rocks. she was trained as an engineer in romania, because, as she says, in romania, you become a doctor, you become an engineer, or you become hungry. anyway, she escaped... came to new york and got a new job, took classes at cooper at night to get her master's, met her husband at an engineering seminar of all places, tried to move to hawaii (an exotic but useless island in the middle of the pacific, according to her husband) but ended up in suffolk county (on an exotic but useless island in the middle of the atlantic, i suppose).

so professor jacoby totally thinks i'm this brainy but misbegotten fine young woman with multitudes of knowledge to share with today's youth... umm, right... so, she has me come back and speak to her class every year about what it's like to be me, how smart and charming i am, how tall and muscular i'm looking these days... oh, i also talk about my company and my work and try to put some kind of global engineering operations and management, or some such thing, spin on my life... basically it's a moderated ego-boost with a technical undercurrent.

so these precocious kids who think they are the next big thing remind me of how big i thought i was when i was 21... and how small i'll probably seem at 25 when i am 29, and 39... and 109... and each year i go through this and think about how young and annoying i must seem to everyone around me. anyway, i may realize i am young and annoying, but that doesn't stop me from pontificating on the greater meaning of life and engineering and hey! i was just saying that the problem with charisma is that charisma is so close to annoyance, especially when charisma constantly bombards those around them with their irrelevant social commentary and superfluous personal details.

so there you go. professor jacoby took me out for a goat cheese and mushroom quesadilla and told me not to worry about being single until i turn 30, and that i should try to meet someone soon just in case, and that whatever i do, i should be sure to marry up. so, it's a mixed bag of advice but she is my favorite former professor by virtue of the fact that she's the only one that doesn't deny my existence, so i take everything she tells me very seriously especially the part where she tells me how great i am.... umm, right.

so, anyway, here's my advice for cooper union engineering students, and the world in general, and even you, yes you... one of the two, or possibly three people who actually read this and yes, that does include me...

i actually wrote this down and took it with me into class and now i'm putting it here for all eternity, or for a while... or at least until this whole internet thing blows over...

1. learn how to write; learn how to speak.
2. realize that not everyone is as smart as you... likewise, you are just a beginner. they may be dumb, but they each have something to offer you.
3. take any training anyone ever offers you, and if you like it, add it to your resume immediately.
4. find a job you enjoy -- if the interview isn't fun, neither will the job be. if you hate your job, leave.
5. know your value and always have an up-to-date resume in both MS Word and html formats ready to mail off at a moment's notice.

that's it... go forth and be prosperously content... in retrospect i forgot my other rules of thumb... the first is always remember that your job isn't supposed to be your life -- it's just supposed to pay for your life, and second is never turn down free food unless you are in one of those foot and mouth countries. or if the food being offered is fish. never eat a free fish.

Posted at 11:05 AM in category Old (this category is huge!)