Failing to win

[fbhjr]

Back when I was in college getting my engineering degree there was one
professor that I never wanted to get for classes. I never did well in his
class, often because I just had trouble understanding what he was after.

One particular example was in his class on machine design. That’s
basically what I do for a living these days, so very relevant.
The class was given 7 weeks to design a production line from start to
finish. My lab partners and I were assigned the automated testing station.
I came up with the design of the mechanism. I did the calculations to make
it fit what we needed. Every week in class I was the one who gave the
status report on where we were with the project, what problems we ran into,
and how we expected to overcome them.
I failed the class.

After the semester was over, the professor called me to his office to
explain why he failed me.
He explained that the point of the class was not only to come up with the
design, but to document it so it could actually be built. And, in the
second area I had failed.
At the end of the semester, he had required us to turn in our project
notebooks.
Mine, for all the work I had done, only had a page and a half of notes.
“We’ll use a Geneva mechanism.” “The torque needs to be balanced.” “The
stress numbers look good.” “Use electrically driven clamps.”
I had basically just written down what would be chapter headings in a story
and not actually what went on. And, what went on was what he was going to
use to grade us.
He had told us at the start of the class that we needed to keep good notes,
and that we would be graded on them.
It came down to a question of what are good notes.
I’m reasonably sure that if I saw my “chapter headings” from that book 30
years ago I would be able to rebuild that machine.
But, no one else could.

He did tell me he was very sorry to fail me as it was clear I had done
quite a bit of work and knew what I was doing. But, I had missed the point
and not done what he wanted, therefore I had failed.

This is one of the reasons I get upset with some of my coworkers. I was
taught this lesson when I was only 19. Document what you do, or it just
doesn’t matter. It was a hard lesson, and I was mad about it for a good
long time.
But, he was right.
A design in your head does no one any good. You’ve got to be able to get
it out of your head and onto paper in a way people can build.
The department I run now is the farthest along with documentation on the
project and the only one that the head of manufacturing says “We’ve got
what we need from them.”

As a side note, two years after the story above, it was the same professor
who signed off on my final graduation requirements saying “I’ve worked with
Frank for several years. He’s made great progress and is now ready to be
an engineer.”
If he hadn’t failed me that time, I’m not sure if it would have been true
or not.

Comments

[pallid-regina.livejournal.com]

Lessons learned the hard way are the best lessons, indeed.

[endlessblush.livejournal.com]

I was going to say the same thing

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

As the saying goes - you learn more from your failures than from your successes! Still, I *DO* try to remain ignorant and succeed as much as possible, but sometimes, it just doesn't work out the way I planned.