Losing Our Real Culture

One of the responsibilities of my job is to interview, select, and hire recently graduated engineers. I then place them in a job that is a literal pressure cooker. The position I put them in is simultaneously the best and worst possible job. At the worst, they have to overcome insurmountable problems in order to satisfy the customer while making an acceptable profit. At the best, they develop skills which will afford them a multitude of paths for career advancement.

All of the engineers I have hired and put in this position have experienced failures during their tenure. However, to date, none of them have become failures. I recognize this as a “God thing” and give Him the glory. There is no way an ordinary person such as I could have as many hiring successes as I have had without a huge amount of help.

Recently, as a result of a couple of these engineers being promoted to new responsibilities, new batches of recent graduates have come through my office for interviews. In order to obtain a feel for how they will perform in the role they are applying for, I usually talk to them about their senior project. Their project requires them to use most if not all of the skills they learned throughout their engineering education. The project is usually completed as a team.

Every time I go through this process, I am reminded of my senior project. There were four of us on the team. I am proud to say our project was completed successfully and I received an A for my efforts.

This is not to say that the project was without problems. Indeed, we had one member who did not complete tasks on schedule. He routinely ignored requests and constructive criticism. In the end, the other two members and I told him what he would put in his final presentation. To the extreme frustration of the three of us, he ignored us and his presentation did not fit and the information given made no sense.

Throughout the process, while we were demanding to see progress, he would tell us how his ancestors had contributed a building block which made what we were doing possible. It was as though the contributions his ancestors made centuries ago released him from all responsibility to accomplish his assigned tasks today. We three attempted reasoning with him by pointing out the contributions each of our ancestors made and then pointing out what we had done to bring the project to a successful completion. We finally resorted to simply but bluntly telling him that regardless of what his ancestors may have done, he was going to fail if he did not work and his attitude was placing the grades of his fellow team members in jeopardy.

In the end, I approached our professor to discuss the issue. He informed me that he had already recognized the problem and would be dealing with it fairly. I don’t know what grade he gave the other students. I would think that the other two who had worked as hard as me also received A’s. The grade of the fourth fellow is of little consequence if he never understood why his contribution to the project was more important than his ancestor’s contribution to engineering.

Then I look at our world today through the eyes of that college student I was all those years ago. I look at how we celebrate diversity by emphasizing the contributions of the ancestors of various groups. I realize it is important to be proud of our heritages. I am glad to see groups being recognized which were previously ignored.

That being said, what is lacking is a frank discussion as to how these groups contributed. The contributions were not made as a result of the groups in question getting together and deciding they were going to place their mark on history. The contributions were made by individuals or small teams of individuals literally rolling up their sleeves and creating something by the sweat of their brow. They may or may not have known what their ancestors contributed. If they did not know, it didn’t matter. If they did know, they were probably proud of the accomplishment but recognized they could not rest on their heritage and still be successful. They had to make their own contributions to be successful.

This is what made America great. A diverse group of individuals came to settle this nation. I believe for the most part they were proud of the heritage they were leaving behind. That pride fueled a desire to succeed on a personal level. That pride did not stand in their way of learning the commonly used language in their new land. It led them to recognize that when opportunities were not available, they had to create their own opportunities. They worked hard. They made a contribution of which we Americans can be proud.
What we can not do is rest on their contributions.