Tonight I received an e-mail from a former student assistant of mine who is a now working for a major microprocessor manufacturer in California. (Hint: It’s probably “inside” most of the computers you use today.)

He started out by saying:

“Thanks for teaching me how to fish Yoda! Hope all is well -j”

I thought he was referring to teaching him how to fly fish for trout back in the day, so I asked him if he had caught anything.

Turns out he meant something different:

“…sorry, didn’t have time to finish the email. Thanks for helping me fish…aka learn linux with the rtfm comments…”

By way of explanation:  Back in the day at the University, we shared an office space.  He was eager to learn Linux, and I was happy to have his help with my projects and daily work.  Whenever he would get “stuck,” instead of giving him the answer so I could go right back to work, I’d take a little extra time to give him hints and guide him to find the answer on his own.  I can’t tell you how many times I would say, “RTFM, dude.  It’s in there.  I found it, so you can too.  Now, let’s start by looking here…”

Eventually, he was given some of his own projects and systems to design on his own.  At first he would ask me how he should build things. Eventually, as I let him have more space to spread his wings, I would turn it around and ask him “So, how would YOU like to build this?”  It was a great feeling to watch him grow.

He finished his E-mail to me with this:

“This has helped me a ton in my life ever since. ”

Wow.  What a great feeling.

Now, back to the coworker that got me thinking about this post again.  Earlier this week, my coworker took and passed his CCNA on the first try.  This is no small feat, especially considering he only came on board a few months ago.  I congratulated him on passing his CCNA, and as we we talking he stopped and said, “I wanted to thank you for something.”

“Ok…what?”

“When I first started, remember when I asked you [something about subnet masking within firewall rules]?”

“Sure I do, but…what’s special about that?”

“Well, you didn’t just give me the answer.  You told me where to start looking, and I learned much more from than if you had just answered the question, so thanks for that.”

I guess it’s like they say:  “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

“In every scheme of happiness she is placed in the foreground of the picture, as the principle figure. Take that away, and it is no picture for me.”

–Thomas Jefferson

So without further explanation, I present:

Chuck Milam’s Seven Secrets of Academic Success at UW-Oshkosh

This was originally a presentation given in the fall of 1999 to my fraternity pledge class as part of the “Academics” component of The Journey. I speak from experience. I almost failed out of school in 1995, left school to take a job before they could kick me out, and then returned to complete my degree in 1998. Most of what is presented here was learned in my “second go around” from 1998-1999.

1. Go to class. Nothing is more important. No matter how hung over, sick, or just plain tired you are, go to class. Even if you are only semi-conscious, you can at least absorb enough through osmosis to pass the class. You cannot pass a class if you’re not there to learn the material or take the exams.

2. Your advisor is not going to help you. Contrary to popular belief, your advisor is not going to bend over backwards to help you plan your academic career and help you graduate on time. You advisor is most likely only concerned with getting you out of his office so he can get back to his game of computer golf or surfing to college-sluts.com. You are better off consulting with professors or fraternity brothers in your major. Which leads us to point #3:

3. Use your resources. Through the fraternity, you have access to brothers who have “been there” already. They know what professors to take, what professors to avoid and what classes are a guaranteed “GPA booster.” Make use of brothers in your major, especially–they’ll be happy to help you.

4. Don’t fall into the “GPA trap.” In many academic majors, if you drop below a certain minimum GPA, you won’t be able to take upper-level classes. If you can’t get into upper-level classes, you can’t graduate. So, you end up trapped in a vicious cycle, blowing tuition money, accruing useless course credits and not making any real progress toward graduation. If you’re following rule #1, above, this will not be a problem for you.

5. Don’t believe the “Academic Major/GPA Hype.” Since high school, you’ve been told that you have to have a “decent major” and a “decent GPA” (usually 3.0 or better) in order to have any hope of getting a job out of college. This is quite possibly the biggest lie told to students today. Major in something you really are interested in, not something that you think will get you a good job. After you have your degree, an employer isn’t going to care if you majored in business or art. He’s not going to care what your GPA was. All that matters is that you get that degree. After all, it’s why you’re here, right? Right.

6. Everything can be appealed and/or waived. Don’t let academic advisors convince you that you cannot get into the upper-level courses because you are missing one or two classes. (College of Business advisors are notorious for this.) Remember step #2, above? Your advisor could care less if you have to take an extra semester to meet some silly prerequisite requirement. These kinds of things can be waived. Ask for a waiver or an appeal. If you’re not happy with the answers you’re getting from your advisor, go to the department chair, to the dean of the college, the provost, whatever it takes to get what you need done. It is your right as a student (paying customer) to make steady academic progress and graduate on time.

7. Demand the same level of performance from your professors that they demand of you. Don’t tolerate professors who don’t show up for office hours or class, who don’t clearly explain their grading criteria, or who don’t grade consistently. Remember, everyone answers to someone. You can take your complaints to the department chair, to the dean of the college, right on up the chain, just as in step #6, above. Some professors are beyond hope. Avoid them by making sure you consult with others on who to avoid. See #3, above.

Remember these seven simple steps, and you’ll be on the road to graduate “on schedule.”

This nice round-numbered year is making it really hard for me to
engage in what I’ve come to call “decade denial.” Allow me to
explain: In previous years, let’s say…2009, for example…it was much
easier for me to imagine that “…2005 wasn’t that long ago.” Here’s
where it hit me: I was just looking at an article dated 2005 and I
was trying to determine if it was still fresh information…and a month
ago, I might have used it. However, with that big fat “10” at the end
of the current year, the easy math gets me thinking, “Holy crap,
that’s five years old already.”

I bet I’m not the only one seeing this. Subtracting from 10 makes
for easy math, which means I can no longer deny that time is marching on.

“So much for my new computer…I woke up this morning to find out my new computer was already broken. So after having the computer for less then 12 hours it wouldn’t even work. Thanks to the Geek Squad I now have a brand new computer tower that is finally up and running! Now I have no time to play on the computer because I have to go to work:(“

Being only partially awake and a little grouchy, I posted this admittedly not-very-helpful comment:

“www.apple.com…”

A few minutes later, I was notified by E-mail that someone had responded:

“She didn’t say apple or pc. Pc’s easy to work on and half price of apple. The only good deal is the Apple Ipod touch which I am typing on. Easy choice for the money is PC .”

I just smiled to myself. I will admit I am making some assumptions here based on what little I know of this person from briefly viewing his profile, but I think I have a pretty good guess of his “type.” This person is likely a computer hobbyist who enjoys providing technical support to his friends and family. Since he is only comfortable in the PC and the Microsoft Windows world, he probably recommends people stay within his technical comfort zone so he can help them out and feed his hero complex.

What really got my attention was the phrase: “Pc’s easy to work on and half price of apple.”

First, PCs in many cases can be had for even less than half the price of Apple computers, but I will come back to that little nit-picky point in a later post. Let’s talk about “PC’s easy to work on.” I’m assuming that this “type” of guy is saying “PCs are easy to maintain, repair and upgrade,” rather than “PCs are easy to get work done on.”

Assuming he means the former, my response is: “So what if the PC is [arguably] easier for technical people to work on? The user does not care about how easy it is for the technician to work on a system. The user wants the system to ‘just work.’ Ask a Mac user, especially one who has recently switched from the PC, why they like their Mac and the answer will often be: ‘It just works!’ In the end, that’s really all most users care about.”

So often, those of us with a technical focus forget that that the computer is there to help the users get their work done, not for us to practice our craft and show off our technical acumen. If a computer system “just works,” and makes for happier, more productive users, we should celebrate and advocate, rather than disparage and reject that system.

I should point out that when I went to reply to his comment on facebook, he had deleted it.

Next post (who knows when that will be): “Are PCs REALLY cheaper?”

The Case for Working With Your Hands – NYTimes.com.

It’s a great (and long) read, and oh-so-true. Simply put:  Skilled, hands-on-trades should have just as much value in our society as those that require “college learnin’.”

I remember when I first got down to the farm here after leaving the big corporate job.  I enjoyed mowing 30+ acres of grass, a job that took almost two weeks with the equipment we had available.  In some cases, it almost seemed when the job was finished, it was time to start again.

Someone asked me why I liked such a mundane task.

I responded, “At the end of the day, I can look behind me at all the mowed grass and be satisfied at the sight of a job I completed.  I know ‘I did that.’  No manager is going to come along and invalidate the work.  It’s done, and it’s mine.  No one can take it from me.”