My Journals

Who Am I?

I'm a design engineer. I design hardware for the life science experiments, specifically, things that go on the shuttle as experiments or that are transported by the shuttle to the Mir space station. Those experiments then become experiments on the Mir. Currently I'm working on a beetle kit project in which we are going to fly two kits, each holding 32 beetles. The purpose of the experiment is to record the data of their circadian rhythm and then try to affect their circadian rhythm by using light as a stimulus.

My Career Journey

I graduated from Cal Poly in 1993 with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering. When I got out of college there were no jobs in aerospace or aeronautics. I had a couple of different engineering jobs, one of which was in sales engineering. Neither job fulfilled the career ambitions that I had and they weren't very interesting from my perspective.

I have a friend who works at NASA, who is also my roommate, and he told me about a job opening. I applied for the position and was hired. This job, designing hardware for life science experiments, is the most closely related to aerospace or aeronautical engineering that I've had.

Influences

In college I had a calculus instructor who was phenomenal. He was probably the best teacher I have ever had. Although he only taught calculus, he had an amazing ability to pull math, physics and philosophy together into one bundle and relate them to each another. He had a real passion for what he was doing and I picked up on that.

There was another instructor, also perhaps one of my best teachers, who put time aside to give me aptitude tests. He didn't have to do it because it wasn't part of his program, but he did it because he cared about what I was doing. So I would say those two people really influenced my choice in what I'm doing now.

Personal Information

I love skiing, volleyball and biking. I ride my bike to work, which is about 16 miles each way, and I do that two or three times a week to help keep me in shape. A job like mine is very sedentary so you have to find other ways outside of your job to keep you active.

This job doesn't have a lot of stress. I work an average of 40 hours per week, with every other Friday off. There are some jobs where you work 50 or 60 hours per week.

Within the last job I had as a sales engineer, I once worked continuously for 20 out of 21 days for one particular project. I worked between 12 and 16 hours during the days. Although I could have made a lot more money working there for three to five years, money wasn't everything. I didn't know that until after I had been working there.

Likes/Dislikes About Career

What I like about my job is that although many of the life science experiments are important, the projects only last for a short period of time. This is in contrast to jobs such as designing an aircraft, which can take up to 15 years before the first one comes off the production line.

Since the life science projects generally run less than a year we can start and finish a project within that time. Additionally, since I am one of only a few engineers for each project I have a lot of input. In this way, I feel that I can have some impact on what I'm doing.

That's why I enjoy being one of only a few engineers. I enjoy working on smaller teams; I think they tend to be more effective. If I were one of a thousand engineers, I think I would feel like a number and end up working on only a small portion of some large project. That's not what I'm looking for. With jobs I've had previously, even if they have been with large firms, I have enjoyed working in smaller departments.

One of the best things about my job is that it is a design job. At times in engineering you discover that you don't design hardware, you push a lot of paper. However, my current job is a true design job. My last job was in sales and I really didn't like it. Before that, I worked as an engineer for a private firm that did work for the airforce. The firm tracked costs of missiles for the aerospace program and my job was to track data for these programs. I came up with mathematical equations to figure out the cost of an entire program and estimated future costs. Those things were more related to finance and involved very little engineering.

I like my current job because there is a lot more engineering. I use a special computer program, called AutoCAD, to design hardware. I try to figure out the best solutions to problems. When doing that, I try to find existing equipment or parts that can be modified.

What I find tough sometimes is having so much paperwork linked to everything we do. I understand it is very important because we want to make sure anything we send up on the shuttle is going to work. In space, there is no time to try to fix things that don't work. But there's so much paperwork it's hard for things to move.

Preparation for Career

I've always enjoyed taking things apart and trying to put them back together. Even when my VCR was past its warranty I took it apart so I could try to fix it. I've always had that natural curiosity within me. I've always enjoyed looking at a problem to see if I could come up with a solution.

I think there were things I did when I was younger that I didn't realize were preparing me to become an engineer. I actually didn't start my engineering education until I was 28 years old. When I was very young I would break toys apart and then put them together again. I had one toy that I couldn't break. I asked my dad to help me break it apart so that I could figure out how to put it together.

I have always enjoyed science and watching science programs on tv. When I was younger I enjoyed math but I never really wanted to become a math teacher or "just" a scientist. I have always liked working with my hands, too. I like working with tools to do things like work on my car. So my curiosity gave me a certain natural aptitude for doing those kinds of things.

At 28, I decided I needed to get serious about my life and figure out what I wanted to do so I started college. At that time I actually thought I was going to become a nutritionist. I was in a chemistry class when my instructor pulled me aside and asked, "What do you want to do here?" I told him I wanted to become a nutritionist. He said that although I would probably be good at that, perhaps I should take a look at doing something else in order to broaden my viewpoint. So he gave me some aptitude tests. I started thinking about how much I had always liked math, science and taking things apart. Then I started thinking that engineering could be the area that I should go into.

When I first started college I thought that engineering would be too hard and I wouldn't be able to handle it. But after I got involved in school, I noticed that if I took things in small steps they became more achievable. When you look at the large goal to begin with it seems like it's insurmountable. But if you take one little bite at a time, things seem easier.

Within a year I decided that aeronautical engineering was the way I wanted to go. I've always had a love for radio-controlled planes, gliders and things like that. With each passing year I became more involved with aeronautical engineering and I knew it was the right choice for me.

Advice

My advice is to go to college after high school. A good indication of whether or not you want to be an engineer is if you like what you are doing and if you enjoy subjects like science and math. But I don't think a person must necessarily be super smart in either of these fields. I think a lot of people think that engineers are strictly eggheads and that's just not true. I think that being an engineer takes is a lot of dedication.

There's a lot of work to do in this field, as well. Once I got to college I noticed that the engineers had a lot more homework and classwork. But that was fine with me because I always liked to "learn by doing." Cal Poly uses that as a slogan and the reason I chose that university is because it has a learn-by-doing philosophy. There are many other schools that can also prepare a person for a master's or Ph.D. program in engineering.

The most important thing is that you set a goal for what you think you would like to do. Don't feel that it's going to be too much for you. If you take one step at a time you can set a goal that may be four or five years down the line. But you can also set smaller goals that can help you obtain that larger goal.

Engineers tend to focus on a few things at time and it's sometimes difficult to have a balanced life. At one point I was biking 200 to 250 miles per week because that's what I really love to do. At another time, I was just working on my job. Now that I'm 37 years old I look back and realize that I need to have a balanced life. I need to exercise and have a good career in order to be happy. I think obtaining a balance is very difficult for a lot of engineers to do. I find that my outside activities, like biking and volleyball are just as important as my career. Try to strike a balance.

I have a B.S. in Engineering. Most people actually take about five years to get their degree. In my major, it was about two or three units shy of being considered a five-year degree. I think there are more and more requirements for engineering degrees as the years go by.

Although I took college preparatory courses throughout high school, I didn't go straight into college. I took some time to have some fun and figure out what I wanted to do. I took a couple of years off and went to Vail, Colorado and skied and did other things. I wandered around a lot and tried to figure out what I wanted. It wasn't bad because my experiences gave me a very broad education. Though, it take me a while to figure out exactly what I wanted to do.