The Life of a Contract Engineer: Week 1

Since I like series, and especially series that end, I'm starting a new Monday series about, well, my life. I figure I'll talk about... stuff. Just read it to find out what I say.

The first week of work was great! I put in my 40 hours and it was nice. My first day was a little stressful because I felt a sense of urgency that if I wasn't awesome from hour one they were going to fire me. Strange, but that's how I felt. Fortunately, I got over than and finished my first ANSYS simulation project by 10 AM the second day. Yep, about 10 hours into a new company and using a new software I finished a simulation that has practical application to work. My ego is still huge from that.

Fortunately for the size of my ego, the rest of the week turned out to be a little more challenging. I worked on a stress analysis simulation and another steady state heat transfer simulation. My quote of the week was, "I'm not interested in how much heat goes into the heat sink [in a steady-state heat transfer problem] I want to know how much goes out of it." Steady state means that what goes in equals what goes out. That is Heat Transfer 3003 week one: steady state conduction. My bad. Fortunately, I was corrected without much fanfare.

In the 12 hours and 25 minutes of my life that I spent running last week I ran 102.2 miles for a ridiculous 7:18 average (fast for me). That included a 7974 meter tempo in a blistering 27:09 which is faster than my open 8k 27:34 personal record. Then I ran 5xmile averaging 5:16 pace over the five miles with only about 300 meters in 1:40 rest in between each mile. Also in there I had a 15 miler at sub 6:50 pace. Plus I had a 23 mile long run at the beginning of the week at a decently fast pace. That's two very solid workouts and two respectable workouts all in one week. I wasn't expecting my week of running to go that well.

Other than that I kept writing on my manuscript and I'm over 20,000 words now. What Gen Y Wants You to Know was only 5300 words so I figure that getting past 20k means I have a significant amount to talk about.

Oh and since most of you will read this Monday, I'm going skiing tonight at Sunburst. You're welcome to come just give me a call or text.

What and Who Conspired to Aquire Me a Job

This story starts with me, but most of it has nothing to do with me. So we begin...

1. There was a boy (yours truly, call me a man if you want but don't kid yourself). 
2. Boy worked moderately hard for years in school and out of school to be awesome. 
3. Boy finished all the formal school he aspired to as a 14 year old and tried to find a job.
4. Boy failed, about 400 times.
5. This particular boy had a father (aka dad) who was a social worker with a component of his job in public motivational and ethical speaking. 
6. One particular person, an engineering manager, who attended those motivational and ethical speeches noticed that the father had a son in engineering. Out of respect for the father he was interested in a short after work coffee meeting with the son about job opportunities at his place of employment.
7. The meeting took place in October and the engineer advised the boy to apply for one job in particular, because it would be a good fit.
8. The boy applied for said job.
9. The boy received a rejection email several days later that they were pursuing more qualified people. 
10. The boy forwarded the rejection email to the engineer with a sparse note about them finding someone more qualified.
11. Engineer was surprised.
12. In December an unexpected temporary position in Engineer's group opened up for a person with almost exactly the boy's skills. 
13. Without the boy applying, the engineer asks if the boy would like to come in for an interview. 
14. Desperate for a job he agrees.
15. In interview number one before the end of year most of the employees are gone so the interview is rather informal.
16. A second interview is scheduled with more people in attendance.
17. At the second formal interview the boy presents his thesis, is grilled about past experiences and how clean, or rather dirty, his room is. 
18. Several days later the engineering manager is still unsure of a decision and asks the boy to meet him at Starbucks at 7 AM ten miles from his house.
19. The boy agrees without hesitation.
20. At 7 AM meeting in a snow storm the two talk for over half an hour.
21. The boy leaves the meeting having no idea where he stands.
22. Several days later the engineer emails and calls the boy to offer him a job.
23. Boy accepts.

It's humbling. I thought that it wouldn't take this much effort to get a job, but I was wrong. I know that my experience is not typical for everyone, but it is the only situation that resulted, thus far, in a concrete job offer.

I Love My Life.

I've said that many times, dozens, probably hundreds of times. However over the last year I haven't said it as much. Unemployment is depressing. Really depressing. Now that I have a job, it's like everything is different. I wake up before the sun is up and get home just as the sun goes down, but strangely when I go for a run in the dark around here the snow reflects so much light that it is far brighter out than any run in Massachusetts I ever had at night. I thought running in the dark would be depressing, but it really isn't.

I haven't been paid yet, I don't have a company email yet, I can't login to my computer, I barely know how to use the software, and I know about three people so far, but it's such a good situation! They are going to pay me to hang out and make colorful pictures on the computer! (It's actually called finite element simulations, generally stress analysis or heat transfer and it requires a bunch of math and science, but the results are generally colorful pictures.)

For some strange reason I know hundreds of the most interesting people. Every time I turn around I meet another person who is incredibly interesting. Life, for me, is about relationships. Therefore having an awesome life means having awesome relationships, and I do. It was hard for me to appreciate that fact as I was sucking the money out of everyone in 2010, but I didn't forget! Over the years you all (those of you that I know) have given me so much! I can't believe that I actually lived to be 24 in the year 2011 and get an engineering job! There were so many barriers and events that have happened in the last two years that I am surprised I'm alive. Not in a depressing way, but I am truly happy that I lived to take a six thousand mile road trip though the middle of nowhere and huge cities without killing myself. I didn't take a final fall off a rock or ice cliff. I didn't get hit by a car while I was running.

I am just so thankful for everything that I know I have and I am also thankful for those things that I have that I am too ignorant to know that I have. As long as I am able to contribute to society and my friends in particular, I plan to. I certainly did not get here on my own. I can not ignore those who helped me get to this place or those that might contribute more than I in the future. I love my life. I think I probably have the best life in the world. You are welcome to argue. I mean your life is hopefully the best life in the world from your point of view. For all of those depressing blog posts that people sat through the last 57 week, here is your reward, weeks of happiness are to come, probably.

It's Pay It Back and Pay It Forward Time

The movie Pay It Forward is one of my top twenty, perhaps even top ten, favorite movies. The basis for the movie is a theory that if one person would help three people in some big way and those three people each help three other people in a big way and the process continues, we can change the world. It is a moving concept. It is also in line what what I value highly in life, relationships.

I was asked once what I thought my ideal church would be. Specifically, what the people would do. My answer was help others who were less fortunate. From my rich, privileged, sheltered, ignorant United States upbringing I have been given more in my short life than some families around the world ever have. Yet I can't give back my education and experiences so I must move forward.

Fortunately for my long term money management skills I have tens of thousands of dollars that I owe to various companies. That very detailed blog article is going to show up after my second paycheck (the article is already written). Thus I must pay my bills. Some of those bills also have interest rates that are less than desirable. So I'm not in the black yet, and I won't have a positive net worth for at least a few years.

Scores of my friends and family have given me food, shelter, drinks, driven me places, lent computers and movies and all manner of generosity. I feel that I must pay forward to others what has so generously been given to me. I'm not saying I'm buying my sister a brand new car in a few months, but I am saying that I'll pick up the check for dinner. Just pay it forward, please. Most of the people that read this blog have had it pretty easy in life. I just want to encourage you not to get caught up in the numbers and to remember the people.

And if I was trying to raise money for a charity I would put the link down here. I can't tell you what to support or which less fortunate people to help, because ultimately, your charity in life will mean more to you if it is something that you really stand for.

My First Day of Work

They wanted me to show up at 9:00 AM, so of course I woke up at 6:30. Paranoid that I wouldn't have time to run shower and eat breakfast and drive six minutes down the road motivated me to get going. I was ready to go by 8 AM so I spent time watching the news and I went out for a mocha. Then I finally drove to work and walked in the door 15 minutes early.

I had to sign a few forms and one particular form mentioned that if I had any previous inventions I should disclose them in an attachment. I didn't sign it immediately because I wanted to make sure I attached info about my patents. The person who was helping me didn't know what to do because that had never happened before. The other person in the office didn't know what to do either. Then their boss got involved and read the form to see what it really said. I suggested that simply attaching the second page of my resume would probably suffice since it listed my patent numbers. Yep, 15 minutes into my new job my ego was as inflated as ever.

Then I drove from the main location to the location I will be actually working at and I missed the highway interchange. I nearly had an emotional episode because at the rate they are paying me I don't want to waste a minute. I managed to finally get to work and start working on tutorials for the software that I will be using, ANSYS, which I have never used. At lunch I went out to my car to get my lunch and I took a few wrong turns and had to get directions on the way out. Then I was locked out because my security badge wasn't activated yet.

In the afternoon I started working on my first "project". It's pretty simple but I had a few issues, such as how to partition in ANSYS. So I was stressing myself out trying to be perfect. I did manage to do a few original finite element simulations, probably half a dozen different ones focusing on two different models. I didn't finish the project, which was upsetting while I was at work. However, as I thought about the day on my evening run I had to laugh. I created and ran a successful 3D heat transfer simulation with 45,000 nodes using software I had never touched until today. HA! I might just survive...

In other news my computer has a bunch of cores and 20GB of RAM. That's the difference between the Mercedes level computers I did my thesis on and the F-22 that I'm working on now. It's a whole other realm. I am totally going to do a 1,000,000 node simulation in the next few weeks! (If I can actually justify it.)

The feeling I had Monday of stress trying to finish everything immediately was unlike any other feeling I have ever had. In college when I had a lot of work to do I just worked 14 hours a day for a week or so. At work, no one really does that. Part of it is that I am terrified that I am gong to screw it up and get fired, which is a little ridiculous, yet it is what I felt Monday. I have not adjusted to working for eight hours and not doing homework yet. I feel lazy.

It's terribly exciting! I don't know what to make of it yet. I even ran about 13 miles over two runs Monday (the day after a 23 miler). It's everything I wanted at this point in my life, minus the mountains. I mean I met half a dozen awesome people over the weekend so my social situation is looking more interesting all the time. I don't know what to make of it.

It's Not Rocket Science: Week 42... THE END!!!

In the world of finding a job... I found one! Monday I was offered a job and Tuesday I accepted it. It is a contract position which for me means that I will only have work through the end of April. They could easily extend the contract or they could hire me as an actual employee. "They" by the way is Kohler Engines. Kohler is famous for bathroom fixtures, but also has a thriving division of several hundred perhaps even a thousand employees that build engines and generators. I will be doing finite element stress analysis for concerns like wind loading on engine covers and skid structural optimization.

The job is local so I will be living at home with my parents at least through April. I am not allowed to discuss "directly or indirectly" what my salary is, but I have a masters' degree in engineering and using Google you can figure out what that means. I also signed at least two different documents saying that I will not share proprietary information and that things I create while using company owned equipment or time is not mine. So I am not sure if I will be able to write any more finite element tutorials using screen shots from work (of course I would never write the actual tutorial on company time, but I would have to take the screen shots at work) but I will figure that out in due course. I am disappointed that what I create will not be owned, even in part, by me. That is going to warrant a blog post in the future.

57 weeks after graduating with my masters' degree I have an engineering job, and only temporary one at that. Wow, that is not how I expected things to happen. It still does not feel real yet. As I write this I haven't actually been to work yet. As you read it I will be at work (and you will probably be at work too, shame on you for not working). In part, until I get that first paycheck I probably won't feel like this is all actually happening.

I don't want to dwell on having an engineering job just yet. After all it is temporary and in May I could very well be out on the street again. I also haven't done anything yet. Finally, I will not place all of my self-esteem and value upon the fact that I have a job doing what I want to do. I learned through unemployment that I have to value things in my life like relationships, health, and my time, not just what I do for 1/4 of the hours every week.

Unemployment taught me that my life "situation" is a whole lot more fragile than I knew. Hopefully you never experience living on credit cards, and if I wasn't so proud perhaps I would never have experienced it either. For the next several months I expect to have more revelations about what unemployment meant to me. So stay tuned. I feel no one can ever fully appreciate a situation until after it is over. Only then can we view the event or events with more objective eyes.

I had a great week running! I ran three workouts plus a 20 miler. I ran a total of six miles faster than 5:10 per mile pace, which is more miles at that pace then I have ever run in one week before. As part of that I ran a 4:56 mile in practice and two 5:00 miles. A 4:56 is the fastest mile I have ever run in practice. I also ran a 6.6 mile tempo and did some strides which puts my quality at the end of the week near 13 miles, which is a much larger amount and percentage that it has been in months, perhaps even a year or more. My total for the week was 101 miles, my third consecutive week over 100 miles. Needless to say running is going very well. I hope, and I feel from fall of 2009 experience, that my running is going to continue to be on the up and up. A job adds stability and routine and I do well when I have a schedule to follow. Which is to say I feel my life is more productive when I have some demands on my time, up to a point. But I can't imagine how working 40 hours a week will demand much of my time. I've never had a job that is only 40 hours a week. School and Boy Scout Camp always seemed to be 60+ hours a week. Who knows, maybe my mileage will get up to the magical 130 miles a week? (I tired about a year ago and ran myself into the ground for a 127 mile week.)

I am also writing another book.  It is about new college graduates and trying to find a job in this economy. While we have officially recovered from the recession, we are having the worst recovery from a recession that I have ever head of. So many things are changing that many of the expectations that younger people have, or did have, are naive and unrealistic. For example, people are living longer and due to the recent economic problems many people close to retirement chose not to retire so that they could earn a little more money to ensure their lifestyle in retirement. Thus jobs are not opening up as quickly due to retirements. Another example is the growth of less developed countries and the relative economic stagnation of developed countries. We are not building and constructing like we have been the last 60 years. Almost everyone in the United States has a cell phone and a house and a car that they drive on paved roads. The markets for those things are pretty saturated compared to a place like China or India.

I am up to 13,000 words with no clear idea how big it is going to get. The goal for this book is to get it taken up by an agent who gets it taken up by a publisher who prints a few thousands copies. Hopefully that will means things like Barnes and Noble and fan mail from people who were helped from reading my book. It's not about the money because I just got a job! Also, if this book has any amount of success and I write a second book in the future I can likely expect a pay check from that. I would rather help 5,000 people than get a $5,000 check.

How is this book going to be different than just reading the last 57 weeks of my blog? First, it's going to be far more organized. Second, it's going to include information that is not on my blog such as research and examples of other people who have encountered unemployment after graduation. Third, I'm going to address the mental aspect in more detail that I typically do on my blog. For example, everyone who regularly reads my blog or knows me knows that I love to run. I'm really going to try and explain that because I feel it is a critical aspect of my mental health during my 57 weeks unemployed.

I Am Slow

This has so many implications and examples from my life that I do not know exactly where to start (ha! perfect example!). Anyone that has ridden in a car that I was driving for long enough probably complains about how fast I drive. I've sped, I've gotten a speeding ticket, I could have gotten a much larger speeding ticket many times, and I like to imagine that I learned my lesson. So I drive near the speed limit, not 10 miles an hour over it. That way I figure it, I am driving to something that I want to be at, something that matters to me, something worth my time and 100% of my attention while I am there. It does me no good to die in a ditch, get in a car accident, get a speeding ticket, or have some other problem because I might never arrive at my destination. Same for texting and phone calls when I drive. I won't answer or respond and I usually don't check when I'm driving. I'm not getting killed so that you can know I'm 2 hours and 17 minutes away.

I am not a fast runner. Well, okay, I am. But it wasn't always that way. In middle school I got lapped by all of the boys and beat by the girls. In high school it started out the same way and I got a little better but nothing to note. In college I was the rotund kid that showed up and my coach actually told me a few years later that when he first saw me run he thought 'well, this kid is never going to be any good but at least he tries'. Also, I tend to get better the longer the distance is, because I am slow, I have the ability (and I work pretty hard) to have more endurance than just about everyone else. My 400 meter personal record is 58 seconds and my 800 meter personal record is 2:11. Thousands of high school kids run faster than those times every year, but after a decade of tracking my training, that's still all the faster I run. Also, I have ridiculously high standards for myself and I would like to look back at where I am running now and think about how slow that is compared to where I hope to run in the future. For me defining "fast" as world record pace makes getting to 90% of world record pace possible because it is not that "fast".

I am not a fast climber. I try to climb faster, but I still do some routes more than 10 times slower than the fast kids. I spent two days (probably 12 hours total) on the Nose on El Capitan and I didn't even make it to the fourth belay out of 33. The speed record on the Nose is like 2 hours and 44 minutes.

Timing is not my thing. In relationships I always seem to do things too late. Yeah I don't known enough to say anything deeper about that.

I used to think that I was a fast learner. Then I became an engineer. It took me over a year of working with one specific computer program before I believed my own results. A year! I tried to tell myself that it was so complex that it would take anyone that long to understand it, but I don't really know. It took me until March 2006 to understand that running more would make me a better runner. I remember running an 800 meter race competitively in sixth grade (1998). Over the next eight years I had about five coaches directly coaching me on how to run faster but I didn't get it. I even self coached myself to a 1:27 half marathon at age 16, but I still didn't get it until I was almost 20. Eight years!

I feel like all of those examples are just the tip of the iceberg. What else am I missing out on or don't I understand?

All of that being said, some things take time and I'm not in a huge rush to do everything. Part, if not most, of the adventure is the process of progressing toward the goal. In other words, the adventure is in the journey not the destination.