I had this bit on my main page, but I think it might be better suited to a blog post.

Where I want to go

Where do I see myself going as an engineer? I want to break the perception that engineers are boring and poor at communicating. I see where this stereotype comes from, but I have also had the pleasure of being in engineering classes with and working with some of the most interesting people I have ever met. I want to bring people together who would otherwise have difficulty working together. I have the same background in math and science as any other engineer, but that background is next to worthless without an ability to communicate effectively and work in groups.

My experience traveling abroad and representing my home has given me a certain humility because I have seen the tip of the iceberg that is communication across cultures. I claim not to be an expert, but I am confident in my ability to perform and improve through active effort, and by accepting the instruction of those wiser than I. It is a pursuit just like that which I desire: one that can always be improved, never mastered, but with competence within reach.

Some personal Background

I graduated from Kansas State University in December of 2019 with a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Minor in Modern Languages, Japanese. If you would have told me ten years prior that I would be graduating college with this combination, I would have called you crazy. That is because the interest that was in the foreground of my youth was music, which I did spend one year studying before deciding it was better left as a hobby. However, if you went back ten years and told my mother about the degree I would be graduating with, she would not be surprised. As a youngster, I spent a great deal of time not asking “why?” but asking “how?”. I also had a bad habit of setting all sorts of mechanical traps, usually incorporating mouse traps in some way, for my family to trip, for some reason. It probably had more to do with curiosity than anything else.

When I left for K-State, I added a minor in Japanese for one main reason:

• It was my dream to learn Japanese and spend a year in Japan as a student

I accomplished my goal and if I had it all to do over again, I would change nothing.

Partially as a result of that experience, I come to the table with the same basic background as any other mechanical engineer; marginally competent in thermodynamics, fluids, circuits, etc., but with one major difference: I am a communicator.

I spent the two years leading up to my study abroad keeping up with my lower-level engineering classes while as immersed as possible in the Japanese language; I created my own homework for myself, I listened to Japanese music exclusively, I changed my phone to Japanese. As a supplement to the truly excellent instruction I received in class (Sensei has since left KSU and gone on to teach at Yale!), I set my own goalposts and measured my own progress towards functional ability in Japanese. In August of 2015, after landing at Centrair International Airport near Nagoya, Japan, it paid off. I spoke to a man at the airport. He understood what I asked, and I understood his answer; proof that my studying had not been in vain. It was a high similar to that which I experienced on the stage as an actor, back when I was one.

I learned a lot on my year abroad, and that experience has opened so many doors to continued learning for me. I am keeping up with my Japanese language and, while I have given the time I would have spent improving my language over to my work and other interests lately, I have not regressed. I spent the summer of 2018 in Japan, and it only took me about a week regain my full confidence while speaking. But I learned more than the language on my study abroad. I lived in a dorm full of international students so I had the profound honor of living closely with people from all parts of the world; Australia, the UK, France, and Korea, to name a few. Cultural differences are real, and sometimes those differences can make it hard to communicate. But I believe that with a little sensitivity, curiousity, and mutual understanding, we stand to learn so much by working together with people from all kinds of backgrounds.

This ability to communicate has already served me well on several occaisions. A few of those are:

Chicago-Osaka Sister City Award (2017)

After returning from my Study Abroad in 2016, I had to take two semesters of special studies in Japanese to fulfill a requirement for my minor. My project in that class was preparation for the Japanese Speech Contest at the Consulate General of Japan in Chicago. Under the guidance of my Sensei, I drafted and memorized a short speech in Japanese about the importance of having an open dialogue when addressing controversial issues. Please feel free to read my speech, if you would like. This speech won me the Chicago-Osaka Sister Cities Award, which included traveling to Osaka for a two-week homestay as a representative of Chicago and ambassador for the Midwest. I learned so much about acting as a representative of my home country in those two weeks that I am still able to extract some sort of learning each time I reflect on the experience.

GE - Hitachi Internship

In the spring of 2018, I had the profound honor of being selected as a Field Service Intern for GE - Hitachi Nuclear Power in Wilmington, NC. The GE half is American, and the Hitachi half is Japanese. I was told that what made my resume stand out was my background in Japanese. I even had the opportunity to speak in Japanese in my phone interview– though all I could really say was that the signal was bad! Obviously, my phone skills could use some work.

After my internship ended, I took a trip to Japan and was able to get lunch with some GE employees at the Tokyo office.

Yosakoi Ambassador

In 2017, I was contacted by Mr. Yamamoto from the city of Kochi, Kochi prefecture, Japan, which is the birth place of a style of dance called Yosakoi. I was president of one of 6 Yosakoi dance teams in the United States. Mr. Yamamoto had seen our presence on social media and reached out with an invitation to become official ambassadors of the style of dance. This involved three representatives from my team, and representatives from other teams around the US flying to Japan to participate in the festival, which has been held every year since 1954 (until 2020). Planning flights and itineraries was carried out by myself, in Japanese. Activities are still ongoing as tourism is getting ready to ramp back up.

Kizuna International Team

While I was in Japan for the Yosakoi Ambassador ceremony, I had the honor of meeting the leader of the former Sakuramai Poland International Team, who also participated in the festival. For 2019, she worked hard to lead the team, with the new name Kizuna International Team, back to Kochi again! It really was a colossal undertaking, organizing dancers from 13 countries and taking care of all the other arrangements including accommodation, truck rental, and fund raising. To help out, dancers were divided into groups, each with a leader and a subleader. I was the subleader of the American group, so it was my job to work with the leader of my group to lighten the load of those in higher management positions. We have no corporate sponsors or professional managers; just people who want to participate and musicians, choreographers, and clothing designers who are invested enough in the team to volunteer their time.

From 2020 and moving forward, limited vacation time and global conditions have made further participation difficult, but I still like to help out as a small part of the translation team.