by DONELLE GAN
Wow, it has been almost a decade since I last wrote for The LaSallian. People get old way too quickly. With age though, I have learned a few things, so let me share some of these things.
Learning never stops. Let me talk about this in 3 dimensions.
The first one is: I have never gotten to use majority of the things I learned in DLSU. Courses like trigonometry, calculus, engineering mechanics, strength of materials, computer aided design, electronics – none of these had any direct relevance in my line of work.
We might think that these courses are ultimately useless unless you go to academia. When I was younger, I convinced myself by thinking to myself, “you’ll never know when you will need them.” Now that I’m older, I think learning these difficult courses helped me understand how to learn new things. At the rate with which humanity produces new knowledge and deprecates old knowledge, this is a very important skill to have. In my last few working years, I have had to learn new things across fields ranging from digital marketing/eCommerce, to outsourcing, to supply chain, and skills like project and operations management, people management, negotiation, pushing back (saying “no” gracefully), and understanding accents! It is pretty challenging having to learn constantly, but in a way, this makes it fun too. I can’t stress continuous improvement enough. The bar is always rising so what’s good this year will be the base expectation for the next year.
Even with that said, it wouldn’t hurt for the university to connect to industry and adjust its courses to be more relevant.
The second one is: One change I’d be happy to see is for the university to start being focused on problems. As our CIO loves to say, fall in love with the problem and not the solution. In the process of working on the problem, the university can enable cross-college learning/problem-solving. Let’s say the problem is traffic along Taft. The problem could have a technical dimension (traffic lights are not optimized or smart enough), an infrastructure dimension (roads not wide enough), a psychological dimension (why drivers act the way they do), an industrial engineering dimension (bottlenecks and capacity analysis), a financial dimension (what is the financial implication of the traffic), and more. A team comprised of students from any one college will not be able to cover this diversity.
Upon graduation, projects usually require a multi-disciplinary approach. So it’s a bit odd that in university – at least what I experienced in university – we adopt a more siloed approach.
The third one is: We learn both from the past and we learn by looking at what’s new. I like to learn, and propose solutions, by looking at what’s new because it’s sexy. However I have learned that by looking at the past, I can also learn a lot of things. A problem need not be addressed by utilizing the latest technology. Sometimes, a decades-old countermeasure can achieve the same effect for a fraction of the cost.
It’s the team. This means that you do not always have to have a team comprised of stars/highly educated people to deliver good results. One of the operations teams I managed before was able to deliver “all green” results and yet, this was a team of third party contractors who came from mostly small colleges and vocational schools.
These are the things they brought to the table: They brought an insane amount of skill and knowledge of the work built through practice. They brought huge dedication to the work because they have grown to love the job. (I remember this most vividly during storms because we had people who braved the rains and floods just to make it to work that day. (We ask them to go home, for their safety)) They brought a “can do” attitude. They brought a sense of continuous improvement to the work. These are things that are not always correlated with the scholastic background of a person.
It’s about managing energy. University is a relatively short 3-5 year endeavor, so it’s easy keeping oneself engaged throughout University. Stepping out of school though, work/business becomes a lifelong endeavor so now it’s easy to lose the energy you need to constantly inspire or spur yourself to do things.
The best analogy I heard about this compares professional life to a marathon, and not a sprint. What this means to me is…
To be aware of what the finish line or goal is. There could be long term goals and there could be short term goals. Why am I doing this in the first place? This is a choice, and it’s different for everyone. In tough situations, it’s natural for me to be disengaged but if I stop and think about the goal I set for myself, it can be a source of energy to go on. This has helped me a number of times.
The other is to realize that we need to level out the work. High intensity weeks need to be balanced out with low intensity ones. Better yet (but very hard to achieve) avoid having peaks and troughs in the first place. Don’t take on too many things at once – it may seem faster but it actually slows everything down.
That’s about it. I wish the Lasallian community the best in the years to come. And I thank The LaSallian for inviting me to once again share my thoughts.
Donelle Gan served as The LaSallian’s Editor in Chief in 2006.
