My friend is an elementary school teacher. Her grade 7 class is having career day to understand different kinds of jobs and she asked me as a guest speaker. I am a toastmaster, so I thought how hard can it be to speak in front of 20 kids. I was wrong. It is quite hard to explain what is my job to the little kids. I cannot use difficult words or they won’t understands. Many technical, which terms seems very natural to me, are like Martian language to them.<\/p>\n
I did came prepared, but I did not prepare enough. I did not think hard enough trying explain my job in very simple language. I printed some photos Gameboy and iPhone circuit board. They seems quite exciting seeing how a Gameboy looks like inside. I also brought a chips to show them, but I doubt they understand exactly what it does. At the end of the day, I think they sort of know computer engineers build computer chips and there are computer chips inside every electronic device. I bet they are totally lost when I try to explain how we make build a chip. I even used the word fabrication.<\/p>\n
The little kids asked me some questions about my job. Most of them are pretty general questions, like how’s my work environment like, what kind of education I need, working hours, etc. When I said I work flexible hours, I can come into work leave any time I like and I can take breaks whenever I want, the little kids seem very excited. Then I explained a little more that my job is project base, which means I have work long hours when the deadline is getting close. I tried to use handing in homework as an analogy, I hope some of them will get it.<\/p>\n
I like talking to little kids about engineering.\u00a0 I feel I have done some good service to my profession.\u00a0 I wonder did my words inspired any kid grow up to be an engineer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"