In engineering, as in most things in life, there are several different ways to arrive at a given outcome.
During one of my first mechanical engineering classes in college, I took an unusual approach to a challenging homework problem. Rather than following the strict process that had been taught in class, I followed my intuition.
And at first, it didn’t work.
I spent hours checking and re-checking my work, but I couldn’t figure out why the answers I was getting didn’t match the provided solution. So eventually, after my patience had given out, I went to my professor for help.
When I got there, my professor looked over my work and we struggled together to see if we could find my mistake. But ultimately, he concluded that my only option was to start over. His opinion was that I needed to solve the problem the way he had taught, or I wouldn’t be able to solve it at all.
Given my stubborn personality, this only further motivated me to find a different way to solve the problem. So I went back to reviewing my work, and eventually, I figured it out: I had mixed up sine and cosine in the first step of the problem. By messing up the simplest step of the problem, I virtually guaranteed that I couldn’t come away with the right answer.
But as soon as I fixed that silly mistake, everything else fell in line and I came away with the right answer.
My approach hadn’t been wrong at all. Literally everything other than a calculator error had been perfect.
In that moment, I learned something about teaching.
The best teachers don’t force their opinions and techniques on their students. They cater to the individual.
Everyone comes to new challenges with different backgrounds and preconceived notions. It’s foolish to expect that they’ll all face challenges the same way.
But, the tough part is that this requires that the teacher really understands the material they’re teaching. And it requires the ability for that teacher to set aside his or her own biases and opinions to see the problem from their student’s perspective.
-Brandon