Reading this article about Brook Drumm, fellow Lincolnite and 3-D printing champion, brought to mind my journey of building, and breaking, everything I could get my hands on.
I remember many years back when I was 10 years old, I had a friend at my house, along with some family. I was proudly showing off piles of electronic parts which I had scavenged by disassembling anything I could get my hands on, and one of my family members mentioned, “Oh yeah, that’s more of Austin’s junk…”.
Fast forward 25 years, and what I learned from obtaining that “junk”, is what feeds my family. The lessons I learned as a child, the lessons my parents gave me the opportunity to learn, built a foundation of understanding which I leverage on an almost daily basis. What if my parents had not let me take things apart, as that would have been far too dangerous or messy, right? All those sharp edges and electrical wires? What if they hadn’t allowed me to build, and later race, remote controlled airplanes? The skills and lessons learned in my projects, servo control, radio control, engines, wing design, weight and balance, epoxy and fiberglass work, wiring, soldering, power, have popped up again and again in today’s work, and have allowed further pursuit of more serious work.
I recently completed an optics class at my oldest son’s school. In teaching this class I learned two things, one, It’s hard to keep young adults focused! Secondly, and of far more importance, is that they are able to learn, and do, far more than we give them credit for. Most people consider 18 simply too young to be responsible, and yet at 18 we have members of our military driving tanks, submarines, patching up wounded soldiers, or making a decision whether or not to shoot another human being under the fog of war. We expect far to little of our younger generation, and they rise to meet our expectations…
Of course, no one doubts that the thinking of a person with years of failures behind them is far more pragmatic, but we allow far more mediocrity in our youth than we should. We expect far less than they can do, and is it then any wonder why they are bored? I remember hearing as a child a simple phrase, “If you shoot for the bottom, you’ll hit it every time.” By basing every test we place for kids on “what if the last kid feels bad?”, we devalue the effort and ability of those who excel, we rob the winner of deserved merit. As a parent I’m making every attempt to involve my kids with my work, the good and bad aspects of it, the technology I use, and my passions outside of my career. I’ve found more often than not they grasp concepts which I’d never imagine they could understand. Why not push a little harder to see what they can do and grasp, and allow the opportunity for learning to take place in failure? In every endeavor I’ve taken on, I’ve found that I am educated in defeat and failure, and learn only to increase my ego in success.
For those of us who are parents, why not place that little bit more extra effort into involving the family in your work and projects? For those of us who aren’t, why not lend some of your time to a local school, church, or community organization where you can share what you’ve learned to the next generation? It’s up to us to enable youth, and if we fail to do so, it’ll affect our quality of life in the end! Who knows, maybe you’ll inspire the next breakthrough idea in the mind of a child, simply because you shared a small chunk of your time and knowledge, or set a high standard, only to allow them to realize their potential in achieving that standard. The next generation can be as bad, or as great, as we encourage them to be…