Making a List

Part Two:

Did you do it? Here is mine:

1. Now that our kids are fleeing from home, I want to spend more time doing things with Angie.

2. Increase my time spent volunteering.

3. Enter an Engineering Education Doctorate program.

4. Go to Australia.

5. Shoot a trophy buck.

Now that we have our lists, the key is to identify the steps that need to be taken to enable the achievement of the goals...Something to think about in the deerstand.

Make a List

Part one:

Make a list of 5 things you want to accomplish in the next five years.

Have at least one thing be professional, one thing be personal, and one place you would like to go.

Job Opportunity

Anyone graduating in December (or in the first couple of years of their career) who is interested in working in industry in Grand Rapids, contact me soon.

Community Involvement

One of the things expected by most companies is that their technical professionals are active in the external community. This is often a question in performance reviews or in interviews as you look to move from one company to another. There are many different avenues you may choose. You can serve on community boards, volunteer your time in local schools, become a member of Engineers Without Borders, become active in professional societies. I know it is hard to be a young professional and balance personal life with work life, but I do recommend finding ways to be active outside of your workplace.

Whew!

I again apologize for being a little slow in posting. This has been a hectic week. The wedding was awesome. Everything went well, the party and dancing were great, the new family is kind and fun. Here is a picture of Katie, Colin, and their flower girl.



We arrived home late Sunday evening. At 5:30 Monday morning I headed to school to catch a motor coach back to North Dakota. 40 students and I went to NDSU, Phoenix Insdustries, UND, and Team Industries. Four great tours over two days. We arrived back in town at 6:00 PM Tuesday just in time to race to McGregor for Ronnie's playoff football game.

Anyhow, posts should be more regular now (until deer season).

Busy Week and Wrap on Self Reflection

Greetings!

This sure has been a packed week: We had our first block finals yesterday, which of course meant a finals breakfast cooked by the faculty and Noel. Tuesday afternoon, a first year engineering student was driving in a car and slid off the road losing control, his girlfriend was ejected and died. Today we are on the first day of Fall break, but in our house things are a little hectic. Katie and Colin are getting married on Saturday in Grand Forks so we are finalizing everything we need to do.



Back to self-reflection and why I brought it up in the first place. We all know people in the workplace whose actions leave those around them uncomfortable, irritated, upset, or pissed off. These people, because of the way, they handle themselves, can make being around them no fun, thus making work no fun; or when working with them is difficult, everyone's work production decreases. Worse yet, is when these people represent you and your team and your company to people outside the company. This is bad.

Well, who would want to be "that" person? Nobody! Do they really know how they act and are perceived? I doubt it. Self-reflection is about making sure we are not "that" person. We need to be continually self monitoring ourselves to see how we are perceived by others, to make sure we are comfortable with how we perceive ourselves, and to constantly looking for little ways to improve ourselves.

Self-reflection and analysis are the first steps in improving ourselves.

Self-Reflection Part 4

Last few questions:

8. What are the characteristics in others that I find attractive? Explain how these characteristics are attractive.

9. What are the characteristics in others that I find unattractive? Explain how these characteristics are unattractive.

10. Looking at these characteristics, which of them do others see in me? Am I comfortable with this?

Self-Reflection Part 3

Questions 5-7

5. Am I pleased with the way I do my work? In what ways yes and no?

6. Do I talk much about myself? How do I feel about being the topic of conversation both when I initiate it and when I don't?

7. When I discuss myself, what are the topics and contexts? Who are the other participants in the conversation?

Self Reflection Part 2

Questions 2-4

2. What do I do best? What do I do poorly?

3. Am I pleased with the way I treat others? What ways yes and what ways no?

4. How do I describe myself to others?

Remember just reading these questions is not enough. You need to write down the answers and think about them to decide if there is a place you need change.

Self-Reflection Part 1

Do we spend enough time looking inward to see if we are comfortable with what we see? I don't.

Maybe a better question is, what can be gained by doing this? Well, have you ever heard the old quote: "We are our own worst enemy"?

As professionals in a work environment, we want to be successful at what we do. One of the best ways to find success is to identify what behaviors or attitudes we have the inhibit success and then find ways to change them.

In the following days I am going to post a series of questions aimed at just this. I suggest you take 5 minutes to write down answers to the questions and begin to form a picture of what needs to be changed and how to go about changing. I will be doing this for myself as well.

Question 1:

How confident am I when I begin somehting new? In what ways do I feel confident and in what ways do I feel insecure?

Diversity Part II

Well, Aaron and I have a plan to improve the exposure to diverse people for ICC Engineering students. We hope to bring students from the widest range of cultures to ICC to enter our program and to bring a teacher from a different background in as well.

One only has to look back to the late 90's when Yuli and Pita came from Indonesia to HCC and entered our engineering program. Pita was there first, then Yuli came just as Pita left. They positively impact all of our lives in many ways. They came from the other side of the world and shared their culture with us as they immersed themselves in our culture.

Just yesterday Aaron and I submitted a grant proposal that would enable us to bring in students and a teacher from different cultures for the next five years. Over the past 20 years I have travelled to many different corners of the globe and have lived in the deep South of this country. Who I am today is shaped very much by all of those experiences. The chance to have people from different places share their lives with us at ICC is something I look very much forward to.

Diversity

When you hear this word what do you think of?

A lot of us immediately think of ethnic diversity - usually in the color or shade of skin. With a little more reflection we can come to diversity of gender, diversity of socio-economic background, diversity of political or religious views, and diversity of thinking processes.

Whenever we encounter a new type of person who is different from us, our reactions can be anywhere on a spectrum from rejection of the people for their absurd ways, to acceptance, respect, and appreciation for their differences. If you think about it, most wars have been fought due to one group not accepting the differences of another.

As professionals working in a professional setting, we need to become (or at worst, have the appearance of having become) the type of people who accept those that are different and gain a respect and appreciation for the differences.

People my age watched our grandparents and our parents have outward disdain for people of different races and even different genders. Today this is not, in any way, acceptable.

So here is the question, if we live in northern Minnesota, go to high school in northern Minnesota, go to ICC for two years, and then to a regional university, how can we learn first hand that a huge part of the world looks, thinks, and acts differently than we do? How can we gain respect for different people, when for the most part, those of us who live here are quite similar?