An open letter to all Virginia Tech Engineering Students
Let’s Invent the Future and Change the World
I’m writing this article for the current Virginia Tech Engineering students sitting in the same rooms I sat in over 10 years ago. I’m writing this because I wish someone would have written it for me when I was in your shoes. While I hope it has a much wider audience over time, even if it can help just one person in Blacksburg, it will have met it’s purpose.
I was inspired to write this video after watching Joe Rogan’s interview with Elon Musk. If you haven’t watched it yet, you really need to. It gives you insight into the brain of Elon and you start to understand that he isn’t just smart at engineering. He is smart in understanding the issues of the world.
Engineering our way to solving global problems
Elon is able to relate the problems and issues facing this planet to how he can use his engineering knowledge to tackle them. He’s not building electric cars to make money, he’s building electric cars because we have to to save this planet by using less fossil fuels.
But the energy from those cars doesn’t come out of thin air right? Or maybe it does, that’s why he built a solar company to power those cars he creates. He is a critical thinker and understands the impact of each step he makes. He understands how he can utilize his engineering skills to create technology that will help the planet and our society.
Start using that engineering talent today!
When you signed up for that engineering degree, I bet you didn’t think you were signing up for a degree that was going to give you an enormous amount of responsibility. You signed up for a degree that has vast amounts of potential for yourself and for the world. You signed up to learn something that most people will never even think about.
You signed up to learn how to tackle issues that affect each and everyone of us on this planet. We all need a roof over our heads, clean water, food to eat, and I’d pretty much throw internet in there now too haha. We all need money in the bank, and heat in the winter time, and airplanes to travel on. All of that stuff took and takes a lot of engineers to make it happen!
Invent the Future
Now I don’t want to inflate your ego, but I want you to understand your potential and your responsibility. You are learning a craft that is going to make you an inventor, and what you invent will impact the world. Your impact could be in a small way for your company or your community, or your reach could impact nearly every single person on this planet; just think about the Apple computer I’m typing this blog post on!
Do you think Mark Zuckerberg thought about this when he started coding Facebook in his dorm room at Harvard? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t; but if you ask him today, I doubt that he could have grasped at the time what a large impact his platform would have on the world (both good and bad!).
Did Steve Jobs think about what an impact the first computer would have on the world today? I’m sure he thought about it, but I doubt he would realize each of us would be carrying around several of his products forever, and that his mindset would impact almost every other technology company on the planet.
So go out today and start to think about how you can apply that engineering degree to the world today. How you can use what you are learning in your classes to make an impact on the planet today. You don’t have to wait until you graduate, let’s start Inventing the Future today!
