Continuing Education and the Time-Pressed Engineer

It should not be done as "chasing papers". There are lots of credentials that do not credit sometimes. Passing a regulatory exam or proficiency or expertise test is always better.

I still remember the saying goes " the more you study is the more you don't know".

I totally agree as Legolaz Posted about credentials and their value. Too often the credential is pursued rather than the knowledge that it will take to do what one wants to do and needs to be skilled to do. "We are highly trained and poorly educated." The "poorly educated" being the practical implementation of what one is "trained" in. Practical, hands-on experience along with someone who is competant and has been in that field for a period of time is always better than a classroom only training.

I often hear "I'm too busy" to go to school or read or learn on my own". That is a crock of horsepuckey. It is not that we, for the vast majority of us, don't have time, it is just that we don't appropriate it properly. I have guys at work who say they don't have time to read and yet they always know what is happening on some TV shows or sports. As I read in Todd Duncan's book "Time Traps", "we don't have time management problems, we have task management problems."

It would seem appropriate to suggest that Engineers supplement their post-graduation work experience with an on-going effort to learn even more about Excel(R) spreadsheets and databases. It lends it self to any numerical task, because it is a ''tool'' by which an engineer can customize additional ''tools'' for their own engineering purposes.

Civil Engineers, in particular, can continue to benefit by continuing to learn more, and apply more, spreadsheet solutions to their on-going professional development.

As a small personal case-in-point, I wrote a spreadsheet that calculates the enclosed area of a bearing-distance surveying traverse, and not just the closure of such a traverse, as shown in my avatar above. I still use it on at least a weekly basis at work.

I'm confident that each Engineer can find their own ways to apply spreadsheets to better meet the needs of their own daily work efforts.

For those non-work-related topics of potential study for personal enrichment,

consider Bingling < www.thegreatcourses.com >

for topics from Photography and/or Yoga

to Differential Equations and/or Quantum Mechanics...