Confessions of a Failed Engineer

I ran across an old journal entry from over a decade ago. It was titled “Confessions of a Failed Engineer” and it was meant to be lessons I learned along the way to help others on their engineering journey.

Here’s the lessons I wrote down with updated commentary from today’s me:

• Failure is an event, not a happenstance. I don’t know what this means. Maybe I thought it sounded clever. It literally translates to failure is a thing that happens, not a thing that happens my chance… I hate my old self already. (Wisdom rating: 1/10)
• Engineering is a discipline that takes discipline to get through. This is better. Nice play on words here Duane. It’s still a little too on the nose for future me’s liking, but I feel it. Not bad, not bad at all. (Wisdom rating: 7/10)
• You must first learn how to envision yourself as an engineer. Seeing is believing, baby. You must manifest. I must have been reading too many fortune cookies. I give this one an “E” for effort. (Wisdom rating: 3/10)
• Engineers are paid for how they think rather than what they know. I genuinely like this advice. Nice reminder that critical thinking > memorization. (Wisdom rating: 9/10)
• An individual assignment means you need to seek help with it. This one hit home. You always need help even if it’s just to ask questions. Big, big wisdom here. (Wisdom rating: 10/10)
• Failing to pay attention to details causes death in engineering. True, but not really a lot of depth here. Telling people to pay attention to details is not really insightful. This is just meh to today’s me. (Wisdom rating: 3/10).
• Even a “genius” will fail a test. * Shakes head approvingly. * Failure is not just an option, but an inevitability in engineering (and life). To take up engineering as a major, you were probably considered pretty smart for the vast majority of your life, but you will fail as an engineer, all the time. To learn is to fail. It is not a sign of smarts or worth. It’ll happen to the best of them; how you react to failure is what defines you. (Wisdom rating: 9/10).
• Class average doesn’t mean they expect average work from you. I’m pretty proud of myself for this one. Nice play on words, better meaning. You did future Duane proud *slow claps.* (Wisdom rating: 10/10).
• ‘None of the above’ is a fail safe that teachers use just in case they made a mistake (it’s rarely used). I like this because it’s both advice to a future engineering student and a shot at a teacher I was probably mad at. (Wisdom rating: 6/10).
• You will never finish if you stop running. This could be a Ted Lasso quote or an inspirational Instagram caption for a selfie with great lighting. Big life guru energy here. Me like. (Wisdom rating: 8/10)

Overall, I appreciated that young Duane took the time to try to help others. There’s some gems in there and there are some duds scattered throughout, but you can’t knock a guy for trying.