Young Engineer of the Year

In a few shorts months (sometime in July) I will rotate off the NSPE Board of Directors, where I serve as the Young Engineer Representative. You may have seen my starring bit in a You Tube video I recorded in that role. (I’m not providing a link here. If you’re that curious, you can do what everyone else has done and stumble across it with a web search.) When that happens, I’ll no longer have any titles that include “Young Engineer” in them.

...SIDENOTE...In my professional societies, YEs are defined as those 35 years and younger. So, for the last 12+ years, I’ve been tagged as a “Young” engineer. They even have awards designated for “Young” engineers, which I have been blessed enough to win. Currently, I hold the national title of “Young Engineer of the Year” for NSPE and reside on their national board as mentioned above. This is the point where most people that have known me for any period of time are probably rolling their eyes and saying, “How did this happen?” Well, that’s what I wanted to explain…BACK TO THE ORIGINAL POST...

I’m fine with that, really. I’ve gotten to a point in my career that my deeds will be judged based on their merit, without the caveat of “young” or “potential”. I think there’s a time for that, to honor developing skills and relative success. But there comes a time, and for me it is now, when you get kicked out of the nest to see how well you really fly. The answer to that comes later, but for now, it got me to wondering: “How did I get to this point?”

It started about 7 or 8 years ago, when a colleague was stepping off of a fairly new national advisory committee for professional engineers in private practice (PEPP). He recommended that I take his place on this committee for YEs. I did, and that led to eventually becoming the chair of that committee. It also included trips for meetings to Green Bay, Chicago, Boston, San Diego, and Washington DC, among others. I met a lot of tremendous people, and I learned a lot about the profession of which I was a part. It was great fortune that this opportunity fell to me, and it was even better fortune that I had no idea what I was doing, so I kept saying ‘Yes’.

That led to several other “opportunities”. I joined the executive board of PEPP, which involved more travel to meetings in Denver, Portland (Oregon), Tampa, San Juan (Puerto Rico), and Austin. I met a lot more tremendous people, and I learned a lot more about the profession. In the meantime, I served on and chaired a statewide Young Engineers Committee, where, as you might have guessed, I met tremendous people and learned about the profession.

Finally, in 2009, I was elected as the YE Representative for the NSPE Board of Directors. In that position I have met some more tremendous people and learned a great deal more about the profession. I also traveled to St. Louis, Alexandria (Virginia), New Orleans, Orlando, and upcoming to Tuscon and Las Vegas.

Somewhere along the way they started giving me awards. Also, back in my real job, I kept advancing, taking on more responsibility, and putting into practice what I was learning about my job.

That’s the weird part. I started this journey just on a whim. I wasn’t expecting to get anything back. I actually planned to spend a lot of my time giving into the profession, and nothing more. What I found, was that when I turned around 8 years later, I had become a better engineer, a better employee, a better employer, a better husband and father. It was so unexpected, but now I see that it couldn’t be helped. When you start meeting tremendous people and learning about your profession, you can’t help but take it in. I was immersed in it, and I absorbed it. Now I find myself coming up out of the water and wondering how long it’ll take me to dry out. Hopefully, I won’t.

No longer will they call me a “Young” engineer. It’s time to move on. But I’ll take with me a few things of great import. I have a journey filled with memories that are everlasting. April and I made vacations out of most of those trips, seeing parts of the country we might never have chosen to visit. What a blessing. I have friends (even if they are nerdy engineer ones) in every corner of America. Just today, as I spoke with a new employee that had worked in Alaska, I found we knew the same person…one of those tremendous people I met along the way. And I have a few plaques on the wall and some hardware on the shelf. Years and years from now, I’ll remember with fondness what those represent, and how “young” I was once. And I’ll be glad to tell you some of the stories, then or now. From the Young Engineer, at least until July.

Just Passing Through,

Eric