Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Chapters 10-17
Well, I haven't exactly been keeping up on my reading, nor this blog. I've been enjoying the Spring weather and accomplishing some long put off yard work recently. I have also come into possession of my old 1980's Puegeot bicycle and have started commuting with it. In fact, I've been commuting so much that I purchased a new bicycle that I can commute with and take on longer weekend rides. The Puegeot wasn't exactly in the best shape after all this time and I went on a test ride of a couple Trek's and coulnd't leave without one. Kinda funny that the Peugeot taught me a little about motorcycle maintenace, err, bicycle mainteance rather. Anyways, I blasted through chapters 10-17 a couple nights ago to finish this book before an upcoming trip and have roughly half left to go. I thought I would reflect on the contents of these chapters since they resonated with me.
During chapters 10-17 the narrator and his group of riding companions reach their destination in Bozeman, Montana where the narrator (Phaedrus) used to be a profressor. He meets up with a couple old friends and they chat, eat and drink. The narrator touches on some points in these conversations about quality and how to teach people to "inject" quality into whatever it is they do. This conversation about quality really connected with me because I have mentored a few engineering students in the past and have found myself faced with issues similar to the narrators. The one thing that really stood out to me was the narrator convincing a girl to write an essay who couldn't come up with content for it. So he narrowed down the topic and she still couldn't think of anything. Finally, the narrator suggested an even narrower topic, that the girl write about a building that she passes everyday. Soon enough the girl turned in a longer than necessary essay all about this building. My takeaway from this is the girl really took that topic to heart for whatever reason but made the essay hers and really made it quite good.
I remember when I was an intern at my current employer in 2015 and had this realization that the project my mentor had given me was my project. Not my mentors, not the teams but mine and only mine. Sure, I could ask for advice from my mentor since they could see pitfalls of my design or anticipate problems I may face but I really felt that I had to take ownership of this project. I finished the first revision of my project before I ever asked any questions about it thinkingt it would be better to ask for criticism/improvements of my design rather than asking how to design it. After my internship my employer hired me and I have been on the other side of this where I have had interns asking me for how to design something rather than criticism/improvements. I'm sure that as I mentor future students I will get better at giving advice, not only how to design, but how to be an engineer. If I can get my interns to realize that they are the experts on their project and I will be looking to them for answers I think I will have succeeded.