I got up early this morning and drove to Meridian Community College for their pre-professional day. I talked for about 20 minutes or so on engineering, its benefits, and told the students a little about what it takes to prepare to enter the profession. I then met with some students in the passageway and gave them more information.

Once again, I chose to go sans PowerPoint. In part because I’ve been doing this so long I don’t need to rely on the slides to tell me what to say; also in part because there is no need to put hard data up on the screen because seldom does anyone take notes in venues such as this. The talk was a little off, in part because I was feeling out of sorts. I slept fitfully and went to bed a throat that was beginning to get sore and was worse when I woke.

In spite of how I felt, I need get to meet with some good students. Some will make it to engineering, some will find other options. I ran into some students who were determined to go out of state to school because they wanted to get away. That bothered me somewhat. It has always bugged me when students say they don’t want to leave home but today I realized that wanting to “blow this joint” bothers me just as much. My advice was to not make a long-term decision based on short-term circumstances. In other words, we have an outstanding engineering college so why leave just to leave and possibly attend a lesser school? Stick it out for another 4 years and then “blow this joint” with a good education, entrance to good grad school (unless they want to stick around for that too—we have a good graduate program as well), or with a good job?

The faculty at MCC continues to impress me with the care and concern they show for their students. They do a good job.