I messed up big time. I forgot to write a good article for this week. I had an idea. A terrific plan to unmask Big Sister before the student body, but something got in the way (cough, cough, Big Sister herself intervened), and now I’m here last-minute, struggling to come up with something to blow you all away. I debated writing about artificial intelligence, standardization, even the railroad, but realized the ideas were half-baked. If I tried to present them now, all that would come out is a disoriented slop. That’s when I got the idea for this article, inspired by some others I’ve read in the past. Today on Expedition Engineering, I’m admitting to my faults, to the fact that I don’t have an answer or a plan, and telling all you engineers that it’s okay to be in the same position. In fact, it’s imperative to admit when you’ve messed up.
As engineers, we carry a culture unlike any other profession. All professions have an ethical standard, but engineers carry the largest burden. We design bridges, medical devices, and virtually anything that society uses. And because we are all human, we make mistakes. If you are an engineer who hasn’t made a mistake, first, how the heck did you do that, and second, you’re not doing your job right. An engineer is a person who gets paid to fail. Velcro. Sticky notes. X-rays. All of these are inventions developed through accidents. A failure is nothing more than a success under a different lens.
I will admit that failures come with a cost. My previous paragraph listed some failures that resulted in immediate benefits for society, but many have produced catastrophes. Challenger. Tacoma Narrows. The Lac-Mégantic rail disaster. These are incidents that took a toll on society and humbled us as engineers. They remind us that failure has a human cost. The question is, who takes the fall when the situation turns dire? In the case of X-rays and sticky notes, the cost was irrelevant. For Challenger, it was devastating. Innocent people paid the price of someone’s miscalculation. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but that is the reality of the world we live in. Every time we propose a design, every time we develop something, and every time we fail or even succeed, a cost is placed on someone else.
I know each and every one of you will hit a point in your life where you will fail. The good news? That’s okay. That’s what’s supposed to happen. What’s important is that you accept failure, learn from it, and at all costs, stop it before someone innocent gets hurt. In my case, to admit my failure is to re-write this article and follow the rules of Big Sister. If I didn’t own up, I would get in trouble, and students would lose out in this opinion column. But trust me when I tell you, once you compromise yourself once, it becomes easier to escalate. One day I forget to submit an article. Next, I neglect my column altogether. Hence, I admit to my failure now. I consciously remind myself that I made a mistake. I then corrected it, learned from it, and footed the bill before it landed on someone else’s head.
