Author: Tim Ochsner

I feel ya

I feel ya. As in I feel ya man, I understand. That’s because of empathy. I understand feelings, emotions, sadness and happiness that you convey.

Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings (such as sadness or happiness)

Empathy is not easily overlooked. It’s not only one of the things that makes us human, but it ties us together. In Daniel Pink’s chapter Empathy, he uses a very awesome example. He shows two pictures, side by side. In one picture, he’s smiling. In the other picture, he’s also smiling. The difference is that one is a genuine smile caused by something humorous someone said while the other is a forced smile, when there’s nothing funny to laugh or smile at.

What’s interesting is that I was immediately able to point out which is which. This is the concept of empathy. Humans can express their emotion in amazing ways and other humans are able to pick up on that, like a universal language.

For this chapter, there are a few exercises that interested me. The first was the activity on Volunteer work. All it requires is for you to go volunteer. Although this isn’t something I can go out and simply do as an assignment, I think it’s an important concept. My mother has always encouraged volunteer work. In high school, we were required to turn in 10 hours of community service per year. That’s not bad at all. By the end of the year, I had turned in 110 hours of community service. It’s not about the hours, it’s about what it means.

Volunteer work is a basic way to show that you care. It shows other’s that emotion. By volunteering, you’re identifying with less fortunate people. Even if it’s something insignificant like picking up trash on the side of the road, people will see that and empathize with the wonderful, selfless work that you’re doing. For that reason, and because I’ve learned that helping others is often the best way to help yourself, I will never stop volunteering. I remember that one of the happiest, most enjoyable experiences in my life was pain-staking manual labor on a mission trip for hours on end. It’s not what you do, it’s why you do it.

Another exercise that I really truly did identify with is the exercise on cards. It says that instead of buying cards, try making them by hand. This shows that you care. This is almost a verbatim repeat of what my mom always told me as a child. I never use pre-made birthday cards. It’s not because I’m cheap, but because of what my mom taught me. I used to do it, not complain about it, nor care about it. It didn’t make a difference, but I didn’t truly understand. One year for my birthday, I got a large amount of cards, as usual. But my favorite was the piece of paper with a picture of the person and very sloppy handwriting and drawings in crayon, from my little sunday school student. The effort makes one identify and feel empathy.

Here’s the way I used to love to do my birthday cards (colors unavailable). This is about what they looked like when I was doing them as a younger child…


2010

20 million dollars is a lot of money, and 10 years is a lot of time. I’d be 29, and when you say it that way it suddenly feels like less time.

10 years ago from now I was 9. Now I’m 19. And those ten years went so quickly, but so much happened. I don’t want to regret anything I do or wish I’d done something that I hadn’t. But I also don’t want to dwell on the past, just take every day as it comes to me and make the most of it.

So what would I do in the future? I don’t know. I can’t plan 10 years of my life, but honestly I’d want to continue living the way I do. There’s a reason I live this way. And that’s to build on my life experiences.

As much as I want to say I’d drop out of college, I don’t think I would. College is a life experience. It’s supposed to be among the best years of your life, and building  yourself, having an education and grades to work towards gives your life meaning. 10 years is a long time – there’s no need to drop out of college.

I may transfer – I may move somewhere else. I may transfer multiple times, hop around – see what I like – no pressure. Maybe move closer to home and be near my girlfriend and family. But I’d keep studying – I’d get a degree – I’d get a job.

So I’d first put $200,000 in a savings account for my  brother. That’s how he’d go to college. I’d give my mother ownership of the account and then pay for the first two years of his college. The other two is up to him to earn, and if I feel he strongly enough is willing to do anything to go to college, then and only then will I pay the second two years. I don’t want him to take it for granted.

I’d pay off my mother’s debt, add some comfort and settlement for my grandmother.

In my free time I’d do what I’ve always wanted to do. I’d go skydiving, take a trip to Africa, travel the world. Backpack through Europe (although I’ve sort of done this already), and try to stretch my limits by doing stuff I wouldn’t consider in the past.

I’d buy myself a car for college. An old porsche. And use the money to pay the expensive parking fees.

I’d buy my mom her dream house in our hometown of Hilton Head. Make her life less stressful because of everything she’s given up for me.

And I’d place most of it in a savings account. I wouldn’t go crazy spending it. I’d spend more than I would if I didn’t have it, but I’d try and invest the money and build on it.

And I’d donate $2. Not sure where.

After I graduate, I’d travel the world, live somewhere strange. Maybe Brazil (I have family there). I’d go to the world cup, and attend the olympics.

If I meet the right woman, and I’d get married. Is it selfish to say I’d have kids? I’d just want her to understand my position but know that I can provide for them long after I’m gone.

It’s tough to say exactly what I’d do, but I’d want to continue my life the way it’s going without the question of “should I do this or not?”. Just do it – have the experience.


The Story of Stories

The latest Dan Pink chapter assignment entitled Story has gotten my mind all worked up, and I’m sure you’ll see why. If you think I’m crazy then I apologize in advance.

Instead of directly performing one of the tasks like we’re supposed to, I’m focusing more on reflecting on one of the exercises.

Riff on Opening Lines
“Craft a story that evolves from this “opening line.” Or do your own form of storytelling improv by asking someone else to feed you an opening line. You can also turn this into a gorup activity – ask anyone.”

If you’ve been following my blog at all, you’ll know we had a project to do for this class. If you’ve been following it a bit more in-depth, you’d know what our project was. It was a story of stories. It evolved from getting people to tell stories with objects as their guide to getting a group to create a story based on an opening line we’d set up.

Do you see the connection? Yea, me either. And that’s what I’m so worked up about. This chapter caught my attention for this reason. In our project, we wanted to inspire creativity by getting people to collaborate, and in story form. The connection we never made is that people want to hear stories, they don’t want to hear facts. So go back to one of my old blog posts and click the google doc to see the story we came up with, based on that opening line.

On a side note, I’ve also decided to try another exercise, and that is to write a mini-saga. I like that they chose the word saga.

sa·ga/ˈsägə/

Noun:
  1. A long story of heroic achievement.
  2. A long, involved story, account, or series of incidents.
Synonyms:
legend – story
Unbelievable sheers of pain, feeling miserable. I couldn’t stand it, but there was little to separate me from insanity. I’d just won an Oscar, I should be happy, I should be celebrating. But all I could think is that I want to go home.
Don’t make fun, I tried!

Self-Assessment

I decided that a good way to analyze my undecided engineering options is to analyze myself. Since for this project I’m focusing on fields that interest me, I’ll similarly follow those fields: Civil and Environmental, Industrial, and Mechanical Engineering. I’m going to answer the interview questions as honestly as I can and see where I would stand years from now looking back, and possibly help me identify with questions I would want to ask myself and questions I should ask for this project. This will force me to compare each field and see where I truly stand.

These are the questions I had composed in the last blog post:

  1. What motivated you to pursue a career in this field?
  2. Were any of your career decisions made on gut instinct or were you certain of what you wanted to do.
  3. Do you wish you’d studied something else? Or have you ever? Why?
  4. What do you see in the future of this degree?
  5. If you could identify one thing you love about this degree, what would it be?
  6. What kind of research have you done and why is this significant to you and your experience?
  7. What was/is your dream job?
  8. More to come!!

1. My motivations are mixed. What I know about my life is that I like (and am skilled at) art & drawing, math, and computers. Over my life this has obviously pushed me away from medicinal and language studies. I’ve always had a general idea that I’d pursue management/economics, engineering, or architecture. Because of the way the economy is going I’d decided to pursue one of the other two. I can always study business later, engineering is much more direct in this advancing technological age. But that’s where I’m stuck. I want to pursue industrial because I feel like that’d be a more business aspect to study. I want to pursue mechanical because I think it’s a great overall engineering that can involve my art. And there are less reasons for civil, but I want to pursue it because of the environmental status and potential huge field that could be in the future.

2. This isn’t answered yet, but I’m an indecisive person. I want my decisions to be made smartly, I’m uncomfortable with gut decisions and don’t want to wish I’d studied something else.

3. Not yet – but I may – and that’s something I’m scared of. That’s why this is an important interview question for me.

4. That’s something I think about. Applicability in the future. Obviously, I want it to be something I enjoy, but I think I can enjoy them all (and I say think for a reason). I feel like Industrial will be dead, but that’s only because of my perception of business/management/economics. My parents are bankers, they worked in economics (in Switzerland), but it’s a dying field. It was huge back then, but not anymore. We’re in a technological era, which is not industrial engineering. But everyone seems to love this field. That’s where Mechanical comes in. It can go anywhere. It’s very general. I had drawbacks at first because I thought it was just cars. It’s not – I can go anywhere with it, including environmental. It’s a good undergraduate study but it’s also tough. And Civil and Environmental has obvious bonuses for the future. More and more we need to find ways to save energy and save our environment. Eventually, oil will run out. Alternative energy has already gotten huge but it will only continue to get bigger and bigger.

5. I’m indecisive, and as far as loving the degrees I have no idea which one I would love more. That makes this an important interview question to me. I really want to know what they love and try to identify with that – try and identify with their experiences and visualize myself with those experiences.

6. Research is a big part of college, and I can’t imagine how to do research in industrial engineering. Mechanical and Civil have more obvious forms of research to me. And mechanical can go anywhere. Hearing about research experiences gives real-life examples of what this degree can do and will be a nice contribution in my opinion.

7. I don’t know my dream job. If I did, this wouldn’t be so tough for me.

 

This exercise may do little to advance my project directly, but indirectly it has caused a lot of forced thought. Looking back on this and continuing this kind of thought will help me identify what’s important to me about this project and what kind of questions I truly want to ask and why. What will I get out of this project? I want it to mean something. I want to use this to enforce my decision and decide my future.


Significant Other’s

I don’t mean significant other’s in the usual way. Rather, I mean significant other people in my field of engineering. As an undecided engineer, it’s tough to choose 3 people alone that would qualify as people I would want to interview. It’s important to choose topics that interest you, which is why it’s normal to simply use proffessors in your major. As an undecided engineer, I’ve decided to seek out interviews with proffessors in the fields that interest me, including 1) Civil/Environmental Engineering, 2) Mechanical Engineering, 3) Industrial Engineering.

For Civil and Environmental Engineering, this may mean someone like Reginald DesRoches or Bruce R. Ellingwood. I chose Reginald Des Roches.

 

Reginald DesRoches

Dean’s Professor, College of Engineering. Associate Chair and Professor
Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Materials

Reginald DesRoches is an Associate Chair and Professor in the School of Civil andEnvironmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He completed his PhD in Civil Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His primary research and teaching interests are in earthquake engineering, seismic design and performance of bridges, structural dynamics, application of protective systems, and applications of smart materials. Dr. DesRoches is an Associate Editor of ASCE Structural Engineering Journal, and a member of serveral commitees, incluging EERI, TRB Seismic Design of Bridges Committee, and the FHWA Virtual Seismic Design Team. He currently is director of the Mid-America Earthquake Center Transportation Program.
I chose Professor DesRoches because of his high-standing in the Civil and Environemental Engineering Field and position as a chair.

 

Peter H. Rogers

Rae and Frank H. Neely Chair in Mechanical Engineering and Professor. Dr. Rogers began at Tech in 1983 as a Professor. Prior, he was with the Naval Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research.

I chose Dr. Rogers because of his high-standing reputation in the field and his very extreme amount of time spent in research. His work in the Navy, etc, lead him to receive 5 patents as of yet.

 

 

Ellis Johnson, Ph.D.
Coca-Cola Chair and Professor

Ellis Johnson is the Coca-Cola Chaired Professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. He received a B.A. in mathematics at Georgia Tech and a Ph.D. in operations research at the University of California. Before joining Georgia Tech in 1995, he was at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center for 26 years. There, he founded and managed the Optimization Center from 1982 until 1990, when he was named IBM Corporate Fellow. In 1980-1981, he was at the University of Bonn, Germany, as recipient of the Alexander Von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award. In 1984, he received the George Dantzig Award for his research in mathematical programming. In 1986, he was awarded the Lanchester Prize for his paper with Crowder and Padberg. In 1988, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In 2000, Dr. Johnson won the INFORMS John Von Neumann Theory Prize. From 1990 to 1995, he began teaching and conducting research at Georgia Tech, where he co-founded and co-directed the Logistics Engineering Center with Professor George Nemhauser.

I chose Ellis Johnson not because of his high-standing in the field but because of the real-world practice he has had working with Coca Cola and the numerous numbers of awards he has received.

Possible Interview Questions

But the question is always, what will I ask them and what do I want to know? Here’s a list of possible questions.

  1. What motivated you to pursue a career in this field?
  2. Were any of your career decisions made on gut instinct or were you certain of what you wanted to do.
  3. Do you wish you’d studied something else? Or have you ever? Why?
  4. What do you see in the future of this degree?
  5. If you could identify one thing you love about this degree, what would it be?
  6. What kind of research have you done and why is this significant to you and your experience?
  7. What was/is your dream job?
  8. More to come!!



en·gi·neer/ˌenjəˈni(ə)r/

en·gi·neer/ˌenjəˈni(ə)r/

Noun:
A person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works.
Verb:
Design and build (a machine or structure).
Synonyms:
noun.  machinist – engine driver – mechanic
verb.  plan – design – scheme – project – construct

Engineer’s as a whole are very general. Anyone can act as an engineer. In today’s world, engineers are much more innovative than just a person who does these things. The influential engineer’s in the world are those who are innovative with their thinking and they get recognition for their independent innovation.

A fantastic example of this type of person is the lately passed Steve Jobs. Sure – he may not have a degree in engineering. Sure – he may not have graduated from college at all. But because of the contributions he made to changing the way of the computer he is considered an engineer in my eyes. He’s not only an engineer, but he’s a hell of an engineer and one of the most innovative ones I can think of. Steve Jobs’ work would be compared to that of a computer engineer or electrical engineer, which are both huge fields in the world today. The way he thought changed the technology entirely. His innovation wasn’t through his degree, but he is an innovative engineer because of the ideas and passion he put into work. He was adopted at a young age, after being born to a pair of graduate school parents. In 1976, Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded Apple. He was co-founder of both Apple, inc. as well as Pixar animation studios. Jobs was fired from apple, and claims that being fired from Apple was quite possibly the best thing that every happened to him. After leaving Apple, Jobs founded NeXT computer in 1985, with $7 million, which was later sold for $429 million after his return to apple.

Another significant engineer is Henry Ford. He was the first of six children and he grew up in Michigan. In 1879, Ford went to Detroit to work as an apprentice machinist. His efforts continued and he married happily, running a sawmill to provide for him and his wife. In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, and after being promoted was able to spend more effort pursuing other things. He created the Ford Motor company after inventing a quadricycle, and he’s famous for his assembly line method of putting together a car. His efforts in the automotive industry are what shaped automobiles today.

Similarly to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates was a world-changing engineer. He directly altered the path that the world took. He realized that software was important before anyone else did. He was one of the first programmers, and he created Microsoft with his Harvard roommate, Steve. He was consistently ranked among the world’s richest for 13 years but he dropped down in 2007 to spend more time on his foundation, which donated large amounts of money. Shortly after, Warren Buffet donated $31 billion to the company.


The Pursuit of Satisfaction

Sat·is·fac·tion    (noun)     \ˌsa-təs-ˈfak-shən\
      a : fulfillment of a need or want

      b: the quality or state of being satisfied: contentment

      c: a source or means of enjoyment: gratification

All I want in my life is to be satisfied. Of course that’s very generic, but it’s a pursuit that is worked towards in every small decision in my life. Being satisfied involves being happy, making the right decisions, and of course making those decisions because it’s what I think proper based on my values. Of course these values will vary from person to person and equally so the actions done in pursuit of fulfilling these values and/or becoming satisfied will vary from person to person.

And that’s where it ties to my upbringing. My personal set of moral codes and the experiences I’ve been through set the building blocks for what I consider the right decision. Ultimately, I believe that for one person to be successful in life they need to be satisfied, and although some people may be satisfied with a leading a modest life, no matter who it is, I strongly believe that every person should live life as sin free as possible. In the simplest form, this involves a set of basic morals that includes: don’t hurt others, don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t lie, etc. These are the basics. Everything else can vary from person to person.

I grew up in a strong christian family. Besides the necessary morals that I think should be a part of every person’s life, I was raised to be successful. I was always encouraged to study hard so I can get a good job, but not just so I have a lot of money. Getting a good job was always tied to supporting a family. That is one of, if not the single most important goal in my life. I want a family. I hope to marry an amazing girl and spend the rest of my life with her. I hope to have kids with her, at least 3. And I hope to be able to give my family what they need and deserve, which includes love and financial stability. I don’t mean to spoil them, but based on my upbringing my beliefs are that the best thing you can do in life is raise a family, get a good job that you enjoy. And it’s key that you enjoy it, or what satisfaction do you get out of that? I’d rather have a lower income job than a high income job I hate.

These believes have led me through my life. Going into my freshman year in high school, I had little motivation in school. I was an average student with B’s. Suddenly it hit me. It’s High School now, this is important. These grades are going to factor into my college acceptance, and I want to get into a good college. I want to get into a good college so I can get a good job, so I can make a lot of money and do something I enjoy and raise a family. These are my morals, no one else’s. And that was my motivation. It’s what I believe. Suddenly, my Freshman year’s grades improved drastically to all A’s. I put the effort into school because it’s what I believe I need in my life to be satisfied, and to get where I want to be.

I chose TECH because I love math. I love art. I love computers. And I sort of love science. I don’t know exactly what I want to be. I was never adamant about my decision to attend TECH until the final decision deadline. I’m not a decisive person by any means. And in no way do I know what I want to do for the rest of my life. I’m still in Undeclared Engineering. I look at life like a road with a bunch of intersection. Every intersection you reach, you make a decision that will turn your life in one direction. So far, I knew I wanted to get a good job so I chose to study. I knew what I enjoyed so I chose to study at a Tech school. And as my life unfolds, these decisions will unfold with me and lead me to be a happy husband, father, worker, servant of god and the community, and more in 25 years.

Of course, there are many more factors in life that will play a part in being satisfied, and I don’t pretend to cover it all. I just know the important things in my personal life and what I would want as an adult and I use this to make decisions as my life unfolds.

 

Know where you want to go and do what you have to do to get there. Every decision you make will affect the path your life takes – know why you’re making the decisions you are and how it will affect you.

-Tim Ochsner

 


FRUSTRATION & “On Blogging…”

First off – BLAH!

I spent like 5 hours working on something that I didn’t even have to! But I wanted to. At least at the time.

A few weeks ago, I joined an independent co-rec intramural soccer team. I love soccer. In case you were wondering, yes I am a goalie. The name of our team is “The Justice League”

I’ve taken a moderately strong interest in art throughout my years. I’ve spent decent good amount of free time exploring photoshop as well as a class in high school. So I decided instead of making  a very boring team shirt, I’d design a shirt. After many hours of pen-tooling, adjusting, editing shapes, creating, etc. I finally came up with this (5 hours+).

I just tried to submit it.  No go. The lady said copyright would not let you. She said the logos make it too obvious of what it is. I figured this would be the case because of the logos. So I redid it WITHOUT logos, and she said it still wouldn’t, because the silhouettes are pretty identifiable and the words Justice League make it very obvious what it is.

So now what do I do? A general superhero, just some man wearing a cape? If you guys have some ideas, I’d love to hear them. But it does need to say “Justice League” because that is the name of our team…

Frustrations come and go. Right now it’s come. And right now I just finished it and have a lot of homework to do, but I can’t even concentrate because I never got the satisfaction of getting that done. Maybe in a few hours. I’ll play some FIFA….

On Blogging

On that note, you’ll have to excuse my grammar, or lack of interesting writing style. I didn’t think about it, I just vented. I think my blog is finally turning into the kind of (for lack of a better word) “thing” it’s supposed to be. I’m not treating it as an assignment. When whatever just happened did happen, my first thought was how I want to vent my frustrations and my first place to turn was my blog. I’d say it’s a good thing, because blogging is one way to record your thoughts, look back on them, remind yourself of what you have thought before, and also sharing your thoughts, ideas, and mind with other people around you or anywhere in the world. Not only is sharing caring, but sharing is the key to expanding our world and developing it.


Tumblr

Stop – don’t make fun. At least not yet.

 

Yes, I am talking about the blog Tumblr. Much like wordpress, you can leave replies and follow people; however, what’s different is that posts show up on your dashboard. Sometimes it’s a silly video, sometimes a deep picture, or sometimes some words with some meaning. Any kind of art, or literally anything. To me, it’s a great place to entertain yourself, share, and learn.

Tumblr, sometimes styled as tumblr., is a microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can follow other users, or choose to make their tumblelog private. The service emphasizes ease of use.[

Until today, I hated the place. I refused to go near it. My beautiful girlfriend has one and has asked me multiple times to go on there

- just make one – or even just look. But I never did. I thought it was stupid, and quite frankly I still want to say it is.

But it’s not. It’s awesome. Tumblr adapts to your interests. Based on who you follow (and you follow anyone, not just people you know), their posts show up on your dashboard and you can reblog what they put. That way, it spreads to people who are following you. And here’s the word I know everyone’s thinking: creativity. An amalgamation of thoughts. It’s almost like a huge invention mob. People get together and can share literally anything through tumblr, and that’s the beauty of it. After I first looked, I spent a few hours today looking at it. Amusing myself, finding awesome things, and even reblogging them. Since creativity comes from sharing, things like tumblr can help with that.

For example, here’s something humorous. And the creativity lies in the whale. I would never have thought of using that shape as a whale. It’s nothing lifechanging, but the amount of stuff you can find and share on tumblr is amazing.

I encourage everyone to join and try it. It’s an incredible site, not just for it’s academic viewpoint but because of the entertainment behind it. And feel free to follow me, timhhi.tumblr.com

-Tim Ochsner

P.S. Here’s another one of my absolute favorites. Pure genius.


On Participation

One thing I’ve noticed is that it’s easy to contact a lot of people, but a lot harder to get people to participate. Even if people read it, and it just takes a second to help, no one does. It’s a lot easier to think of an idea that involves mass participation then actually incorporate that idea and GET that mass participation expected. It involves either fame, or mass advertising. People need a reason to want to participate – and that’s why we created the video.

Ze Frank achieved fame through his projects, which makes it easier for him to have mass projects now.

So we took a few more measures to advertise.

First, I posted it on the Georgia Tech Class of 2015 Facebook Page!


Our project was also copied and sent per email to a bunch of students, and the Facebook post was reposted on other group member’s facebooks.

Immediately, we noticed more traffic to our document. What’s awesome is that you can see whose in the document and see what they’re typing as they type it. Already, our document has evolved.  The image above shows the traffic to the document in the first half hour after increased advertising. All users besides the three anonymous logged in (our other group members) are random people that we have no idea about. Again, click here to look at it or contribute!!

Lastly, we added a second story. The second story incorporates names of people and their location. Here’s what we have so far!

Thanks for the help guys! I look forward to continuing this.

-Tim Ochsner