Reflections

Why do you want to be an engineer?

I feel in a world that is becoming increasingly complex technology wise there is an incredible amount of potential for an engineer. Every day there are more problems to solve and behind every solution to these problems is an engineer who does all the practical work to make the impossible possible. I also love business but I feel I am better reading about business on my own than having a degree in it. Having a degree in a technical background would open a lot of business opportunities for me.

Consider the following quote: "Engineers must know more than engineering in order to be good engineers.” What do you think this quote means? What do you think it means to be a good engineer?

Engineering is a very technical field based on science and mathematics. However, engineering requires a great amount of problem-solving capabilities which are not always thought as much as physics or some other science course. The quote means that engineers cannot rely on textbooks for problems facing us in the future, so in order to be successful engineers would have to rely on their own creative thinking process and design better and newer solutions for the future.

What aspects of the WCE reinforce your desire to be an engineer? What is one area of the WCE attributes that you would like to learn more about as it relates to your career goals as an engineer?

I definitely want to be more technically broad so I can implement different field of sciences in future projects. An example would be to add technology and software to control the flow of sewage waters. In this example, sewage control is a civil engineering field, however, the software used to control its flow is more of a computer science related field. The answer to any engineering problem in the modern era always lies within several fields of sciences.

World Class Engineering

Teamwork

Listen to the following NPR podcast (just the prologue about the bad apples): ‘Ruining it for the rest of us’ (Links to an external site.) Links to an external site.

Think about what behaviors stuck out with you with each of these challenging behaviors. What are some strategies you will do to help minimize/solve the challenges if you see these in your team projects in this class?

In this podcast hosted by Ira Glass, we hear Professor Will Felps’s interesting research in group dynamics. Felps researched how one person considered as the “bad apple” can ruin the productivity of an entire group of people while also ruining the relationships between group members. The traits that make someone a bad apple, as described by Felps, are: being a jerk, slacking, and being depressively pessimistic. My first thoughts were on the thoroughness of the experiment. I was continuously looking out for the control, independent and dependent variables to see if the experiment was carried out in a proper manner. I particularly liked the effort that Felps put into hiring a good and versatile actor because it was really important for the actor to inhibit the bad apple characteristics and make it seem genuine to the group of people who were not aware of the true motives of the experiment. There were also controlled variables as there were other groups who did not have any members with bad apples so the end result could be compared properly. The groups were told of a chance to win $100 to give everyone an equal amount of motivation to complete the task. In general, the competency of the experiment was definitely not alarming since it was carried out very well. My problem with this experiment was calling the person a bad apple since that does not communicate the essence of the results. A bad apple by its nature cannot spoil a barrel whereas in this experiment the person paid to inhibit bad qualities does. A more appropriate verbiage would be “parasite” as the actor single-handedly destroyed the morale of group from within. What fascinated me in this experiment was realizing how contagious these bad apple qualities are. Not only did the group’s productivity fall, but its members started to mimic the apparent bad qualities of the actor. Mr. Glass makes a good point when he says that in most situations we see an individual conform to its group rather than the groups conform to one of its members, which is not the case in this experiment. The actor was an extreme case of these qualities, which led me to create a hypothesis of my own backed up by some experiments I have conducted in the past. I believe that in some situations a group conforms to its more extreme personality. I was on a plane once that was quiet during the entire flight. Upon the landing of the plane, I decided to place a very awkwardly timed clap wondering to see if the people followed, and they did. Similarly, I experienced the same concept in a class that I joined. This class was very quiet up until the moment I started speaking with the people sitting around me and later noticed that everybody was now social. From this hypothesis, I can extrapolate a solution to this problem: outdoing the bad apple with the exact opposite characteristics and twice the energy. I have found in my experience that energy and ideas are very contagious and one person with the right attitude and understanding can change the entire game. So if I notice a member of my group beginning to exhibit bad Mohammed Hamid Dr. Ritter Engineering Design 8/28/2017 apple characteristics my aim would be to flood him and the group with positive energy, excitement, and ideas so that he does not have a chance to affect other members of the group with bad apple traits.

Leadership

What leadership qualities am I strong in and how can I continue to develop those?

What leadership qualities do I need to improve, and what actions am I committing to do to improve them? Consider the short video (Links to an external site.) Links to an external site. on three basic leadership styles. Would each of them be appropriate for leading a team working on a class project? Under what conditions?

The most crucial characteristic a leader requires is the ability to inspire people into doing something. I know this because there have been a few people who have inspired me in my life, and after this inspiration, I feel incredibly powerful. Under their guidance, I have felt safe to pursue the things that I want to and I felt I had the ability to plow through a mountain on way. I try to imagine the effect a leader would have by influencing thousands of people to a dramatic effect similar to my level and I realize the importance of the ability to inspire people. I have been presented with very few opportunities to inspire people. One of the opportunities I had was being the captain of my rugby team. Under my leadership, we had one of our first victories, in the four-year-long history of our club. However, even after an incredible victory I feel I failed to inspire my teammates to become better than they were. I tried getting my teammates to arrive earlier to practices and to work longer yet I failed because I I couldn’t make them feel the same connection I had with the sport. If I had communicated my love for the sport and the love for my team who make this sport possible I believe I could have done a better job. Another group I believe I have inspired are my best friends. I think I inspire them because they know that when I tell them something it comes from a place of genuine honesty and good intentions. My friends know what I love and the depth of my knowledge for the areas I am passionate about and they respect that. My friend who I thought was better than me at studies was looking up to me for my work ethic that inspired him. He saw me sit down 12 hours straight without any distractions to finish up assignments and he told he realized what hard work looks like. I still think he is better than me at studying since he is more efficient he really opened up my mind about my strengths. I am incredibly bad at delegating tasks. I do not trust that people who I have worked with few times to meet expectations and complete the task appropriately. I then take responsibility of the entire work and do all of it myself. I do not hate this quality of mine because I don’t mind putting in the extra effort for the extra grade but I know that if I learn to use people’s skill set more effectively it will save time for me an allow me to focus on something else. To do this I have to just be a bit more trusting of people by letting people do that tasks that they want.

Credit: Dr. Ritter,

For grading and revising reflections