After watching the video, I started to retrospect myself, asking me a question: What is engineering? As a Chinese student, under the specific circumstance and particular influence, I always thought that to be an excellent engineer is just to get high score in basic courses. I believe that one of the main reasons why Chinese students choose Engineering is that they have an impressive performance in science examinations. I always thought that engineering is just staying in laboratory, checking data and calculating equations. Engineering is kind of isolated, from social society. However, after watching Professor David E. Goldberg’s speech, engineering consists of not just experiment, data base or technique. It is tightly connected with social activities and involved with human interactions. It is a system, from the first beginning of designing, modeling, construction and to the final stage of application. Not only do engineer create scientific products but also they have to utilize what they discovered and created into daily lives. Engineering is not just a specific major but a system which is connected with people and society.
Based on the ability Professor David has mentioned, I would like to enhance my ability of communication. As I am a Chinese student in the United States, I have to get myself involved in the local society, getting accustomed to American food, chatting with native students and local lifestyle. During the very first semester, I will practice my listening skills and try to figure out what my friends’ interests. Understand their discussion and catch their jokes. I strongly believe the communication could help me set up the connection and network among friends and obtain benefit from it. So at the first beginning, I will enhance my ability to communication with different people with different education and background.
Besides, I will also sharpen my skills of visualization, decomposing and modeling. I believe that during engineering education, we will encounter countless abstract problems and profound conceptions. In order to penetrate these contents, we have to establish a system to solve the problems. It is undoubtedly that visualization and decomposing are basis of solutions. We have to translate book-learning knowledge to our own understanding, visualize questions into words and graphs and divide problems into several parts to ease the difficulty.
I believe we have to obtain these abilities through long and arduous process. However, we could divide this problem into several pieces. I will learn to decompose and separate questions in daily life. For example, I could separate the homework into a number of sections, and set a due date for each part, and I could divide the project into several phases and ensure a deadline for each phase. In addition, I will gain ability of modeling and visualization through homework and practice, like designing a computer program, abstracting the main points from articles and grasping the principle of a robot. I hope these practices could help me gain the “missing basics” and be comprehensive.
No matter the “Basics” or the “Missing Basics”, either of one is important and should not be ignored and neglected. Thanks to Professor David E. Goldberg, I have a bran-new understanding of engineering and I hope I could gain the abilities through my practice and hard-working during the education of iEFX and ENG198.
