04
Oct
Open Discussion
byThis will probably be modified later, but I’d like to experiment and see how a stream of discussion would work. This can be about anything, so fire away! If it works, then I’ll expand it to separate categories that are frequently talked about.
I’ll start it off with some example questions you might want to talk about:
What is the biggest hurdle you face in continuing education?
Do you find informal learning or structured learning more satisfying?
What are you currently engrossed in? What made you interested in it?
What hardware and software do you use to organize information?
October 4th, 2008 at 5:29 pmTracy - I like the new format and will throw out a few of my own thoughts. I am a PhD student in business and I am currently engrossed in my dissertation. As I take on this research, along with other research projects, I must have a method for effectively tracking, separating, and integrating: ideas, thoughts, facts, academic journal articles, business periodicals, examples, class material, project timelines, project members, priority lists, and everythings else I need to keep life going in academics. Along with that, I also need to track personal interests such as Bible study notes, prayer lists, family activities, coaching notes, coaching reference materials, gift ideas, and shopping lists.
Ideally, I would just use my brain for all of this, but the failure rate is much worse than most software programs that are available.
I should also mention that I try to do as much paperless work as possible.
I use many software programs, but the primary ones that keep me going are OneNote, Access (I love tracking contact lists, etc. here vs. Excel), EndNote (keeps my library in order), Outlook (Task Manager - including assigning tasks is great), Napster, and SugarSync (so that I can get at everything from everywhere). Of course, these are just organizational in nature, I also use other programs for “doing stuff” but I need to use a variety of applications for organizing because they each have their own unique purpose.
I know it sounds complex, but it has worked out quite well for me…
October 9th, 2008 at 6:01 pmHere is an example of how I use multiple programs. If I am going to start a new project, I will search EndNote to see what I currently have in my library. As I come across relavent information, I will open up OneNote and take some notes from the papers or books referenced in my library. Within OneNote, I will also create a table on the first page of the new tab to manage project timelines and deliverables. My notes go on subsequent pages. As I find that I have gaps to fill, I will search for additional material online and directly import new material to my EndNote library. Then I will go back to making notes and sketching out diagrams in OneNote (on my Tablet). As I progress and update my project table, I will create Outlook tasks from OneNote and set reminders to keep on track with my due dates.
I am very curious to hear what others have to say on this topic, as well. I have learned a great deal from other “paperless” colleagues and hope to continue to pick up pointers.
October 9th, 2008 at 6:11 pmScott - Hm, it sounds like we’re in a similar predicament. I use OneNote, Project, Access, Excel, iTunes, Outlook for work email, and my iPhone apps. I really haven´t found a better program for inking in than OneNote, but I organized my entire 300 person wedding in Access, not hardly at all in OneNote.
I have a whole bunch of books in español in PDF and .doc formats now, and most of my personal books and notes are in PDF. It really makes using them later on easier than just keeping them in OneNote.
I like how you use EndNote for organizing your material. That might be an interesting thing for me to look in to just for fun.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:28 pmHave you read the book “Innovate like Edison”? It is a good read for anyone interested to problem solving. You don’t have to be trying to build a better light bulb for the material in the book to be relevant.
Any kind of innovation (like creating a better business process) can utilize the techniques Edison used. I bring up the book because Edison was an Endless Scholar (maybe you mentioned that on the site already).
I haven’t read a “novel” in ages. I know that isn’t right because they have their place. It’s just that there are too many interesting things to read.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:52 pmNo, haven’t read that one but it sounds interesting! I’ll look for it next time I’m at Barnes & Noble.
I haven’t read a novel in forever also, except when I was traveling and used a cheesy love story novel to keep my mind off feeling sick on the plane. I don’t cound that :-). I’ve wanted to finish the Ender’s Game series so I picked it up in Spanish to combine fun reading with…well, other fun reading.
Robert made me feel bad for not reading more with his books website and 50 books in a year challenge :-D.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:57 pmHere’s a question for you (and it may be too soon for you to answer). Having finished college and now you’re a worker bee at some company, do you feel like something is missing or a let down?
I was a ME (Mechanical Engineering) major and really enjoyed my last two years of college. I learned a lot of things that helped me understand the world we live in.
After working for a couple of years I felt unfulfilled or work wasn’t what I was expecting. The first year or two was OK. There is a lot to learn with the new company and lifestyle. However, after that I found that Engineering jobs wasn’t about solving challenging problems but integrating some vendors solution to my companys product. It was more about getting spec data from the vendor and building brackets. Maybe I had grander visions of what to expect or was just not in the right job. Even the guys with the fun jobs have to pay their dues.
The work was necessary and had it’s challenges but I really had to change my mindset from the college days. Twelve years of public school and four years of college programed me a certain way.
For more than one reason I have since morphed into a programmer and now an IS Project Manager. At first the transition was confusing but once I realized that building software was like building a mechanical system just a different medium, I was fine. I found that building software challengened my brain the way college did. There was a lot of reading and self teaching along with applying that knowledge to solving problems. Software is alsways changing so it is fresh. Like starting a new semester.
In the end I am very proud of my degree and feel I have something my Computer Science collegues don’t. My father (a CE who has worked in Petroleum since 1968) once told me “Engineering is just about problem solving”. I remember those words often. It took a while to figure out what that meant and understand it just took me awhile to figure out the kinds of problems I like to work on.
Maybe this should be in another post but I can’t tell you how much I cringe when I hear some IS guy refer to himself as an engineer.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:24 pmWell, it probably is too soon to say for sure, but it has been a…change…from what I was doing in college. I’ve been more frustrated with how little work actually gets done at work and how much time is wasted doing doing non-engineering things like creating spreadsheets that should have been created years ago or finding ways to monitor things that REALLY should have been monitored for years before now. Part of that is just how thrown together my field is (petroleum engineering) since it had rather unconventional beginnings, but part of it is just what the engineers before me did.
I have the advantage, I suppose, of enjoying Six Sigma like activities and business topics. I see the lack of actual engineering as a challenge to find ways to let me do what I learned in college.
With the programming experience I have, I would go crazy. I would seriously go crazy. I need that daily change of activity and pace, and I need more human interaction than I get while programming. I get so frustrated when I can’t figure something out and then I end up having just a roller coaster of emotions that drive me nuts! I’m not a roller coaster emotion type of person!
I do completely agree that engineering is just problem solving, which is likely why I like where I am career-wise right now. There are a lot of problems to solve!
But about “paying dues,” that’s how I feel right now. Some companies put their new employees through six months of training; mine puts their engineers through six months of “field work” where you pretty much just observe and do nothing for six months. On top of that, I have to drive way out to the field everyday, so the combination is driving me BONKERS. I need the challenge of actual responsibility and work, but I know many others who loved the six months. Oh well. Two more months to go, and I started my own little projects to keep me busy until I become a “real” engineer.
I think petroleum engineering is just a different animal than other engineering fields. I never had any desire to change engineering fields simply because only the petroleum classes ever interested me. It’s so abstract and complex but in such a simple way (how much easier does it get than wet rocks) and it just had such a different background and has such a different future and world-wide impact that I’m not sure my interests will decline.
I do think that I’m more made for consulting work (for the constantly changing fresh challenge) than I am big company drone, but big companies offer the best training and have the best resources for a new person, so I’ll be in the big leagues for a while.
Anyway, that’s my analysis at the four month point in my career :-).
October 19th, 2008 at 11:01 amI have been back to school so many times I shudder to think how much my stock would be worth had I invested it all along in the market (well, before the recent bank crisis anyway). I started off in ChemE but discovered I did not care for the aroma of chemical plants. I finished in microbiology just to get out. Well, I did and started teaching in high school. That was a blast but did not pay much. But it exposed me to that Apple II thing coming along and so I went back to bet a computer /electronics degree. That training did not teach me how to keep from killing myself when I took the back cover off a TV set. So, to get real hands on training I joined the US Navy. That did the trick, but 4 years in the Philippines was not exactly a fun way to repay uncle Sam, so I got out as soon as my time was up. Then off to EE school. No regrets there but I started studying for the PE. And then came all those IT certifications: Cisco, Microsoft, Bay Networks, Xylan, Intel,etc, etc, etc. Then I finally had time to study what I really loved - philosophy of religion and science. After that Masters (part time so it took a while, along with flexible working hours) I decided the doctoral level was just too much. So, I now just finished an accounting degree and wished I had done it years ago. All businesses are about money and its ebb and flow. The more you know the more valuable you are to a company and to yourself (read Tax). Ok so now I am studying for the CPA. My plans after that is to study more in the philosophy of mathemetics, ontology of logic, and all that. This new atheism hubris has me all hot and bothered so I like to intelligently debate those issues.
So anyway, I am the perennial student. The biggest hurdle in continuing one’s education is maintaining motivation. If it is fun while doing it then you will be successful. If it is a square filler, then it will be drudgery. Study what’s fun and keep at it -the mind needs exercise. But I think a diversity in one’s knowledge really is a better thing that putting your eggs in one basket because things change so much so fast. Just my thoughts after many years of this kind of stuff…
October 20th, 2008 at 4:29 pmHello. I’ve been following this blog since the student tablet pc days and really appreciate all the advice you all have offered over the years.
Can you recommend a resource for learning HTML for beginners? For someone without formal education in programming who wants to learn a little to help start a website, can you give any pointers?
Thank you! Keep up the good work.
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:45 amWell, I learned html markups at Kaplan Learning Center using Hot Dog. It was crude but effective in learning. Nowadays, Frontpage can do so much more automatically as well as other shareware/freeware programs that do not require a knowledge of HTML. But if you want to peek under the hood look no further than HTML For Dummies. They will suggest some good cheap web page development software, etc.
The future is in XML - go learn that stuff while you are at it!
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:53 amTracy, I was literally rolling on the floor laughing after I read
…it has been a…change…from what I was doing in college. I’ve been more frustrated with how little work actually gets done at work and how much time is wasted doing doing non-engineering things like creating spreadsheets that should have been created years ago or finding ways to monitor things that REALLY should have been monitored for years before now.
I can relate soooo much! Here we have a truly outstanding student scholar with tons of motivation that runs up against traditional, stodgy corporate America. Perhaps a bit of a Dilbert Zone. It is no wonder we can’t compete in some sectors globally. This is why Wired Magazine and Fast Company are so popular. You really need to look at going with a start-up or becoming one. Identify a real need among management there were you work and see if you could venture out to get the work done much faster and at a more lucrative level. This is done every day.
Keep us up to date on how you are getting on there in the meantime.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:01 am@Jason: Having taught myself everything I know about HTML and web stuff (no formal classes either), my best advice is to just create a personal page with SOMETHING and start having fun. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to do anything at first because there are many programs and websites to help get the basic foundation down (how to make a page, how to link a page, etc). It’s the tweaking that helps you learn how things tie together (what if I put text here…or here…or add this tag,…or how do I…?).
And if you’re learning HTML, I would dabble in CSS and figure out how the two connect. It is sooooooooooo helpful to use CSS in web design (CSS is just defines the “rules” for the website, like what to do everytime it sees something with a link tag, or with this tag, or with this certain property, like put some padding around everything that has this![]()
tag). You can do some REALLY cool things just with CSS. Feel free to check out this site’s CSS and HTML and ask any questions you have. I didn’t create it, but sure tweaked a lot. Web design is all about tweaking, it seems.
FireFox has a great plugin called WebDeveloper that can give you pretty much any information about a webpage you want which is extremely helpful when you’re trying to disect an example page and figure out how it works. Personally, I think reading about HTML/CSS is very boring, but there are some good books out there.
@Will: Wow! Aren’t we the “Endless Scholar” heh! You sound like you’ve had quite the interesting life and thanks for sharing! My only rule I really live by (other than the obvious ones) is to only do things I want to do, which means I try to make things I have to do interesting enough to want to do them, like cleaning and mandatory classes. I completely agree that as soon as learning loses it’s fun, it also loses it’s advantage since it probably won’t sink in anyway and then you’re just wasting time. And I’m always on the lookout for new fun things to learn (right now I’m playing with SQL :-D).
But yes, I think I would REALLY like a join a startup or to own my own business, but I need to get some more experience first and my current company has a great 5 year training program where you can go to 7 weeks of training anywhere you want so long as it’s job related, and that’s on top of any tuition reimbursement programs that you complete in your own time. And who knows, maybe I’ll really come to fit in in the big company setting but as a “do-er” and get rewarded for it. I’m not sure, but I do think consulting would be the funnest job ever.
Anyway, I will CERTAINLY keep y’all updated with likely more information than y’all care to know, so no worries!
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Seems to work well.
joljol2
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