Will you Succeed in Electrical Engineering?

so I was having that conversation with a colleague of mine who's a professor of electrical engineering and we were talking about electrical engineering students and since he's a professor at SUNY Polytechnic Institute I'm a teaching professor at Xavier University we've both worked with students before and we were talking about what makes some students much brighter than others and why is it that some students are just so fantastic to work with and others are just God bless them not so great and it really boils down to three indicators that we notice in the students if the student has it I think they're going to have an absolutely amazing career and if they don't have it well if they don't change anything it's gonna be very hard and while yes they could work on these things it's just going to take a lot of work and the first indicator we would notice is that the students who are really really good they have like an internal desire to learn like they themselves want to learn and they enjoy the learning process they ask questions and they're constantly wondering how to like improve things meanwhile the students who are like not very great they just do the bare minimum to get by and they do the like the bare minimum to complete the project and they just seem to be like very disinterested now keep in mind this sometimes not a reflection of that person like this does not mean that the person is lazy maybe they're just not very interested however in this case because it's like an electrical engineering project that means that they're not very interested in electrical engineering which means they're probably in the wrong major either that or they don't have the right work ethic or that internal desire to learn the students who were really good were very like process oriented and they were curious about like the underlying mechanisms that enable things to happen for example when I would assign like a student to work on designing an antenna the really bright ones they would always come up with questions around like why is the antenna behaving this way or like what can we do to improve this part or like why do we connect this waveguide to the antenna and you can tell they're curious about how this antenna Falls within some like dick picture project and they want to know why that is and they're more interested in like the behavior of the antenna itself rather than just what the antenna is trying to achieve and that's a really good indicator because that means that they're going to be like that means that their own curiosity will fuel their learning and you don't really have to like spoon feed them too much and then they go on to Google stuff they watch YouTube videos and then they can even go as far as reading books and these students are absolutely amazing now if you don't have like those traits or you don't employ those trades like again this is not an identity thing you can adopt these things so next time you work on a project if you're not already that way try to be a bit more curious about it ask yourself why are things the way they are and why do things work the way they are and be more courageous to ask questions to your Mentor or the person signing the project or professor and just try to like learn more about the project itself rather than like what the Project's trying to achieve or some grade or some outcome second key indicator that students will go on to be great electrical engineers is that they are self-starters and they are self-motivated and I say that because I've had in the past some students that I worked with where I would spend 95 percent of my energy like motivating them and convincing them why doing the work is like important and I felt more like a cheerleader than like a mentor and I'll be honest these students I do not miss working with them at all I mean they're great people they're very nice people I'm sure they are but these people are not fun to work with at all the ones are that are really good are usually self-reliant and they're self-starters like before I go and tell them hey this is what you should do they come and tell me hey what should I do and you can tell they're very engaged and one really quick test to like differentiate between these two types of students is to just watch them get get stuck or like give them a difficult problem and you'll see that the students that are self-motivated self-starters once they as soon as they get stuck they're gonna try to Google it they're gonna try to figure it out on their own they're gonna try something you know the mid-level students will like probably come and ask a question immediately without like Googling it or anything and that's okay because like that means hey like at least you came and figured out there's a problem and you ask the question ideally you would have tried to figure it out on your own for a little bit but it's good that you still came and like a really bad indicator is the students who just give up like they get stuck and then they say oh well I don't know how to do this I've never seen this before and they just like go watch YouTube videos for like four hours about something not related to the project and then like days and weeks go by and then like nothing gets done which again is probably like a strong indicator that maybe they're just not interested in the project but assuming they're actually interested in the project this is a really bad character trait to have and this is something you want to fix as soon as possible if you find it to be yourself again none of this is a permanent identity thing all this is changeable you just have to be like conscious enough to detect those patterns and change them in yourself now the third trait and this one is wonderful if the student hasn't and horrible student does not have it and it is essentially humility and ability to admit that they're wrong and to ask for feedback and accept feedback you could probably agree with me that the most annoying people are the people who like think they're really good but like they're very mediocre and the other side of that is the most fantastic people are the people who are like exceptionally talented but they're always think they could improve or they always think that there's more room for improvement and I'll be honest I had to go through that transformation myself because when I first joined my PhD program I had a very high ego I think I was like the coolest thing ever and at the time I was only 21 years old I got into a PhD program directly I had done multiple internships including one at Nasa I had been to like 10 countries I had many friends like I think that like I'm like some hot and then I submit my I wrote and submitted my first research paper and it got rejected and the comments were not very nice and to me that was such a a heartbreak like I think it took me like six months to get over that and ever since that moment I was humbled and I started like being more introspective and saying no like I should always look for ways to improve and now I intentionally go and find ways to improve and now it's like almost an identity thing for me where I always look for ways to be wrong and I always look for ways where maybe I'm like I don't know what I'm talking about and I could learn more and I try to learn from everyone and I think that paper rejection at the time was the best thing to ever happen to me because I think the best skill you could have is to have the humility to learn from everyone and to always be open to learn because if you're not learning you're not growing and if you're not growing you're like dying like in life there's no neutral State you're either like growing or you're declining and if you think like you're the and you know everything and like there's nothing for you to learn and you're just so cool well guess what you're probably not gonna like learn new things and you're not gonna adapt enough and you're not gonna succeed so humility is definitely important valuing the truth more than looking competent and just like being conscious and like aware enough to have your ego in check now I will say an added bonus is students who are comfortable with math and have good technical skills now they don't need to be like math experts but interested enough and knowledgeable enough and have basic math skills that they can like write scripts run simulations and do things of that nature now I did make a separate video on the type of math used in electrical engineering which should be over here so if you have that you should already be good to go so you can click on that video to find out

Channel: Ali the Dazzling

Views: 12,679

Keywords: will you succeed in electrical engineering, is electrical engineering for you, is electrical engineering for me, electrical engineering

Id: FWxloPLdD6U

Length: 6min 21sec (381 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 26 2022