People Who Taught You-Page 2| Off-Topic Discussion forum |

JThw8 SuperDork
8/15/11 12:38 p.m.

Salanis wrote:
Keith wrote: Not all valuable skills involve using tools, you know
Very true. Best things I learned from my dad weren't specific work skills, but the basic tools of how to tackle a new problem or new challenge.

^This. I am now teaching my father to work on cars (since he decided to DD a 69 VW). He always loved cars but never tried working on them much. He tries like hell to be handy and much of what I learned was going behind him to fix his "work" at times. But he certainly showed me how to evaluate problems and not be afraid to learn and do.

I think the biggest part with anything is just overcoming the fear and doing it. It is a lesson I had to be taught many times by many people but it finally stuck and I try to pass it on.

Apexcarver SuperDork
8/15/11 12:57 p.m.

My father was a nuclear criticality safety specialist. I loved to help with projects around the house, we would build things like rockets from scratch, electric motors, etc. I helped him (in a small way) restore a 68 mustang growing up.

He passed away when I was 12, I still got some tinkering with my grandfather (moms dad), but he was more home improvement/woodworking and absolutely not automotive.

By and large from then I had to learn by myself. magazines (started out with mustang magazines, outgrew them quickly and learned much faster by getting my hands dirty). My love of cars got me interested in engineering and I went to OSU for M.E., while there i joined the FSAE team and learned a bunch more. (did i mention that i got the carrol smith books while in highschool?) Family issues enacted a move to western maryland and a change of schools, ended up shifting to materials science. My hands on ability (in a broader scope) and ability to think through a problem and get my hands dirty with it landed me a research internship with one of my professors in nanotechnology. You may laugh, but i can diagnose a problem with a CVD system in nothing flat! So far I have 4 papers published with my name on them from that. I graduated in the spring and stayed on for the summer with the research gig, looking for a job to start at the end of the month.