I was your basic anti-tech type; then I became an engineer. Here's how I made the shift.
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I was your basic anti-tech type; then I became an engineer. Here's how I made the shift.

I was 22, fresh out of college with a degree in Slavic Languages and Literature and a newly appointed lieutenant in the US Army Signal Corps. I was pretty tech illiterate—math and science had always seemed mysteriously unfathomable, yet my new job was to oversee the technical work of 50 experienced enlisted members, installing phones and working with advanced computer switching systems. Every day felt like I was wearing a clown costume.

Eventually, I asked for a new job, where I mostly shuffled papers for another year until the end of my commitment. Here I was, age 26, at a seeming career dead end. I had no idea what I’d do when I got out of the service, except I was certain it wouldn’t involve anything technical.

Just years before this career debacle, I’d been at the top of the world. I had enlisted in the Army right out of high school to learn a language at the Defense Language Institute. I did so well in my studies of Russian that the Army sent me through a Reserve Officer Training Corps program, to the University of Washington—where I earned that college degree in Slavic Languages and Literature.

At the Institute, I discovered good learning techniques. One of the most important of these was discovering how to “chunk” key phrases and conjugation patterns in Russian. That is, I learned to build well-practiced neural patterns (chunks) that I could instantly pull to mind when I needed them.

I studied flashcards, so I could instantly spit out verbs in either English or Russian. You could think of my mastery of a Russian word as one neural chunk. (Although quibblers might argue that I was learning even smaller chunks beforehand when I mastered the Cyrillic alphabet that I used to read the verb.) Eventually, I began to mix and match the varying versions of Russian verbs like повторить in sentences without even having to think about it. The neural chunks were building up. I was on my way towards mastery.

Building neural chunks, as it turns out, is important in acquiring expertise in any subject—including mathematics. Now mind you, nobody ever told me “You need to build neural chunks if you’re going to be fluent in Russian.” That’s because, at the time, nobody had ever been able to look into the brain and understand what we do when we start becoming an expert. Instead, we students of Russian at the Defense Language Institute just drilled and practiced over and over again until the language flowed easily and naturally.

When I got out of the service, my Russian language skills didn’t exactly have recruiters pounding at my door. I had to do some rethinking. Gradually, I realized if I’d learned one thing in the military (besides Russian), it was that technology was a lot more useful than I’d ever thought it could be.

I was going to have to learn something new anyway when I got out of the service. Why not try to learn something that would provide a lot of new career opportunities? I set my sights on becoming an electrical engineer.

Start with Humility

I’d already discovered when learning Russian that it was best to start at a very low level and slowly work my way up. Internalizing small chunks and practicing with them had ultimately led to me being able to speak a language that had at first seemed to be impossibly difficult.

I realized that a big part of the challenge for me as a Signal Corps Officer was that I’d been thrown in at too high a level. The military had given me several months of training at the Signal Officer Basic Course, but with my low underlying levels of analytical know-how, it was like asking a kid fresh out of summer basketball camp to play in the NBA.

I figured that, if I began at a fundamental level with math, just as I’d done with Russian, it might help. So I started my post-military retraining regimen with remedial high school algebra. The course was at so low a level that I couldn’t even get college credit for it. Even so, I often found myself so frustrated that I’d pound the book and slam it shut in frustration. But I kept at it, trying to learn math in steady doses, just as I had learned Russian. I even began treating math problems as if they were language chunks—I’d practice solving them repeatedly until I could just look at the problem and the solution would flow step by step through my mind.

The higher I went in the world of math, the better I began to do, because unlike my childhood (I’d moved frequently and was always behind in math), I was building on a firm foundation.

Embrace Your Inner Imposter

It might sound as if when I decided to make the shift to from linguist to engineer that I knew exactly what I was doing. Nothing could be further from the truth! I often felt like a complete imposter and was constantly filled with self-doubt. How could I possibly compete with others who were obviously way smarter than me about math, or at the very least, mostly much younger and therefore “obviously” able to learn better? The first few months of my retraining were full of angst and uncertainty. I was a year into my new plan of studies before I finally became optimistic about success.

Reflecting back, it’s clear that my inner unease—my sense of “imposterhood”—was an asset. The inner certainty of self-confident students somehow often seemed to close them off to their internal need for change. These cocky learners felt that if other students did better, it was simply because the other students got lucky, or the test questions weren’t fair. Self-confident students also tended to be too proud to ask for help, even when they began to flounder.

My sense of not being as good as the others kept me open and listening, with a sort of “beginner’s mind.” Over the years, I’ve learned that starting out feeling like an insecure outsider is a good indicator of long-term success.

At age 42 I reached another milestone—I received my doctorate in systems engineering, and became an assistant professor of engineering at Oakland University. Again, I found myself feeling the imposter—years older than the other assistant professors around me.

But working in higher education, I found another surprise. Many professors have spent their entire lifetimes in academia, going straight from undergraduate studies to graduate school, to professor-dom. This sometimes made it difficult for professors to relate to students, or to have a more general sense of the real relevance of their discipline. The fact that I had several careers before getting into academia meant that my perspectives weren’t that of a typical academic—as I muddled along, I found my sometimes unusual research being published in top journals. It wasn’t that I was a genius, it was just that I’d suffered through feelings of imposterhood enough times that I was comfortable with the uncertainty of thinking differently.

I’d learned from research findings we can learn well even in our advanced years.

Nearing sixty-years-old, I took on a new hobby—video editing—and learned to create online coursework. The course I created, Learning How to Learn —built by a technophobe who became an engineer—has become the most popular massive open online course in the world. This isn’t a tribute to any natural smarts on my part—it’s a tribute to what your past can bring if you’re willing to start humble, continually embrace your inner imposter, and bring the assets of your past into your life of continued learning, even in your “golden” years.

Barbara Oakley, Ph.D., is the Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University and the author of the new book Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential (Tarcher-Perigee, 2017). 

This is a great and inspiring book!!

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Muhammad Munawar

Program Manager @ Institute of Business Administration | MBA

5y

Thank you Barbara for sharing such precious information. 

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Johnathon Wright

Certified IPC Specialist and Engineering Major

6y

Wow! This is just like my story on so many ends! I mean, not a professor or anything yet, but starting in the same way as you. Humble mind, small bites, developmental math while seeking an engineering degree. Great read! Thanks!

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Nathaniel Gomez

Web/Mobile Engineer at Software Engineer

6y

Mind for numbers was a great read and excited to check out this new book

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Looking like like Jennifer Anniston shouldn't hold you back from a great careers

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