[lit-ideas] Re: Was this English Major really a Major???
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 17:22:18 -0700
Interesting. How long did she stay in the military - was it the Marines or
the Navy?
I didn't know that about the commandant. There is no reason why an English
major wouldn't be of use to a general, but I'm surprised none-the-less.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John McCreery
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 4:43 PM
To: Lit-Ideas
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Was this English Major really a Major???
Side note: My daughter is an Annapolis graduate, class of '98, B.S. in
English Literature. Why B.S.? Because being an English major didn't excuse
her from the core curriculum at what is basically an engineering school:
Three semesters of calculus, probability and statistics, a year each of
chemistry, physics and electrical engineering, plus all the military stuff.
I will never forget the time I asked, "What will you be taking this
semester?" and she replied "Satire in the Age of Reason and Weapons II."
"Weapons II?" I asked. "Basically a physics course, how far things fly and
how big a boom they make." When I asked about doing English literature at an
engineering school, she replied, "No problem career-wise. The commandant of
the Marine Corps is an English major." And, oh yes, she married a Marine.
Cheers,
John
On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 8:15 AM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I described the current challenge to my description of my engineering career
to an engineering friend who wrote back, "You might find your career at DAC
as "ordinary", but to many (most?) people a career at a top flight (no pun)
company working on exciting hi-tech projects is far from ordinary. Imagine
some guy working as a purchasing agent for Best Buy, as one of many
examples.
"You have an exciting resume and most people with lots of time to post on
the internet do not. I see this on the firearms forums, where I have become
convinced that most participants in the discussions do not actually own or
shoot guns; they are engaging in ritual fantasy and really do not have real
working experience with the topic."
That's an interesting perspective - I previously had a thought something
like that, that I had a certain sort of advantage by working at Douglas,
McDonnell Douglas, and Boeing for all those years, but the thought was in
regard to things I wrote or the way I approached debates in the forums. But
when I think of influences, I usually rank the Marine Corps at the top. In
one of the Civil War histories I read, the author said something like "most
enlistees enlisted at about age 17 and 17 through the next few years are the
most impressionable for any young man" -- something like that. That period
for me included my three years in the Marine Corps and without doubt I was
affected by those years. After that I stormed through four years of college
as a Marine and not as I might have if I'd entered college right out of high
school. I was very aggressive (intellectually) in college and that
aggressiveness extended into my first job after graduation: working at
Douglas. I started in a group where I assembled and rewrote engineering
proposals going to the Air Force. The Air Force had complained that Douglas
Engineers were such poor writers that half the time the Air Force had no
idea what was being proposed. The Chief Engineer decided to hire some
likely-sounding young men who could write in order to make these proposals
presentable.
That was fairly interesting for an English Major. Old time Engineers didn't
appreciate young people telling them their work wasn't up to snuff and if
they could, chased them off. "Get out of here. I have work to do." But I
was a Marine, a Buck Sergeant no less, and wouldn't be chased. Many of
these encounters were like the sand-box fights one has as a young boy. You
knock each other down for a while, get up, shake hands and become good
friends after that. It wasn't long before these old-timers were confiding
in my about what they liked and didn't like. I had become one of them.
That happened at Santa Monica beginning August 1959. I worked on Thor
mostly, but when we won the Skybolt program I worked on that - no longer on
proposals but mostly on something called the "Task Plan" which was to
itemize and describe every element in the Skybolt Program. By the time
Skybolt was cancelled (Christmas 1962) there were just a couple of us left,
we who were hired by the Chief Design Engineer because we could write. Most
who worked on Skybolt at that time were laid off but I was able to wangle a
transfer to Long Beach to become a "Specification Engineer" on the DC-8.
More experienced Spec Engineers were working on the just-launched DC-9. I
was given a few airlines and was responsible for the "Delivery
Specification" for each delivered airplane. No airline accepted a baseline
configuration; so changes had to be processed. That was also one of my
responsibilities.
I didn't like being a Spec Engineer and so wangled my way onto each new
major proposal. I worked on the C-5 proposal for almost two years. We lost
the proposal to Lockheed. After that I was accepted back into the "Spec
Group." By that time we were working on extended versions of the DC-8.
When the KC-10 came along I worked on proposal for that as well. This time
we won the program and I finally got a job I really liked: Program Engineer.
I worked for the Director of Engineering and did many of the wide variety of
things necessary to the launching of a new program. During our peak effort
we had perhaps six Program Engineers to cover the various engineering tasks.
The tasks that were most memorable for me were the electronic systems. I
had to not only make the proposal to the Air Force but sit through the
pricing and negotiations and then oversee the work and be a liaison with the
Testing Division as we proved to the Air Force that our system worked. A
system that comes to mind was Rendezvous Guidance -- as one might imagine
the "Rendezvous" system was of vital importance. The KC-10 tanker and the
planes it needed to refuel needed to be able to find each other, but enough
of that.
Back to Edmundson: Consider the final paragraph in his article
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Ideal-English-Major/140553/ :
"What we're talking about is a path to becoming a human being, or at least a
better sort of human being than one was at the start. An English major? To
me an English major is someone who has decided, against all kinds of pious,
prudent advice and all kinds of fears and resistances, to major, quite
simply, in becoming a person. Once you've passed that particular course of
study-or at least made some significant progress on your way-then maybe
you're ready to take up something else."
Since I did what Edmundson is recommending, do I see these matters the same
way he does? Not quite. If I had gone directly into college after High
School and then been sent to Douglas Aircraft Company, I wonder if I would
have succeeded any better than the myriad of Liberal Arts graduates who left
Douglas as quickly as they could for more congenial work. My Marine Corps
experience said as much about who I was if not more than my English Major.
I was a Marine who could also write. That identity was much more acceptable
to board engineers and engineering managers than a mere English Major.
Also, I didn't "take up something else" as a matter of choice. I didn't say
to myself, "now I'm ready to become an engineer." After I graduated from
college I had bills, needed a job, looked around and couldn't find one, went
to the Bliss Employment Agency, was sent to Douglas Aircraft and began the
aforementioned career with a good deal of reluctance which I buried,
apparently successfully, for the nonce. Is there any justification here for
the boasting I was suspected of? None that I can see. But perhaps I
should be more appreciative of my career than I am, for as my friend
illustrated I might have ended up a Purchasing Agent for Best Buy . . . Nah!
Lawrence
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3211/6590 - Release Date: 08/19/13
_____
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3211/6588 - Release Date: 08/18/13
Other related posts:
