About Me - Computer Scientist and Electrical Engineer

My About Me Blog Series has been going pretty well, I think. The first four posts have been some of the most fun and interesting for me to write. I have seven left to go, so it's time to pick up the pace a little and bang out some of the less interesting ones. Like this one.

According to the nicely framed degrees from the University of Saskatchewan (or Universitas Saskatchewanensis) hanging in my office, I have: a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, Electrical Engineering, with Distinction, twenty-fourth day of May, two-thousand; and a Baccalaurei Scientiae Gradum III Annorum, Magna cum Laude, bis millesimo, mensis Maii, die vicesimo tertio. Yeah, that's right, one is in English and the other is in fucking Latin. The Latin one is loosely translated as: Bachelor of Science, 3-year, with Great Distinction. I don't believe it specifies anywhere on the degree--it's in fucking Latin so I can't be sure!--that my major was in Computer Science.

Although I give these degrees prominent placement in my office, they don't really mean much anymore. Once you've been working full-time for nearly ten years (I'm at 9.5 years right now), what you took in school to get here is pretty irrelevant. The degrees got me in the door. My work performance--ha!--keeps me here.

To get these two degrees, I went to university in Saskatoon for five years, and split my time between the Engineering and Arts & Science faculties. (Really, the computer science degree is pretty laughable, being a 3-year degree. Does that make me only 3/4 a computer scientist?) The first four years were dominated by difficult engineering and computer science classes, with the fifth year being predominantly cake Arts electives. I loved fifth year!

Throughout high school, I always loved computer science and physics classes the most, so it made sense that I wanted to continue with these subjects in university. I didn't decide to go into engineering until the twelth grade, when my guidance counsilor explained the difference between an engineer's salary and a computer scientist's salary, and explained that engineering was effectively the practical application of physics. When I learned that many schools combined computer science and engineering, often naming the program Computer Engineering, I had found my discipline of choice.

Picking a school was a challenge. I don't want to spend much time bragging about high school, but I was the top student in my school in grades 10, 11, and 12, earning the bronze Governor General's academic medal. My academic average from grade 12 was 99.8%. I was pretty much good to go anywhere. When an opportunity came up to visit the University of British Columbia's campus, thanks to the Physics Olympiad program--long story!--I accepted it gladly. And it was a great place. I wanted to go there.

But there was the small issue of cost. I had received an entrance scholarship from UBC of $6,000, which sounds pretty solid, but the estimates for living expenses in BC were outrageous. I had also received an entrance scholarship for $4,200 from the UofS, and the cost of living in Saskatoon was much more reasonable. The UofS did not have a Computer Engineering program, but they did have a 5-year dual degree program, where you would earn both a 4-year Electrical Engineering degree and a 3-year Computer Science degree. I've already spoiled my decision.

As an interesting aside, the year after I graduated high school, 1996, the University of Regina began a program to offer a full scholarship to the top student in each Regina high school. I was really pissed! I had never seriously considered the UofR, because they didn't have any Computer-Engineering-like program at the time, but with an offer of a full scholarship, I certainly think I would have stayed in Regina for school. It's hard to imagine how different my life would be right now if the UofR had started this scholarship program one year earlier.

As someone used to scoring 100% on all of my high school exams, university was a shock to my system. I failed my first ever exam in second semester calculus (MATH 124)--fuck, I hate integrals! I was happy with high 70s and low 80s in many of my first year classes. Geology for Engineering (GEO E 118), at 78, was my lowest grade. I managed to pull off two 90s in first year, not coincidentally in Modern Physics (EP 128) and Introduction to Computer Science (CMPT 122). To give you a feel for my course load, I took twelve 3-credit classes in first year, six per semester, plus the pointless 1-credit Introduction to Engineering (graded only as Pass/Fail).

Although I had gone to the UofS for the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science dual degree program, you don't have to choose your specific engineering discipline until you are entering second year. I had worked all summer as a survey assistant in the area of municipal civil engineering, and I found it rather interesting--more interesting than electrical circuits. I strongly considered abandoning Electrical and entering the Civil Engineering program, but that would have also meant abandoning Computer Science. There was also the Engineering Physics option, which was similar to Electrical Engineering, just more hardcore on the physics, and could also be combined with Computer Science for the dual degree program. Obviously, I ultimately stuck with my original plans.

My second year was a huge improvement on the first, grades wise, good enough to earn me some new scholarships from the university. I scored four 90s, including my personal university best 96 in Linear Systems and Design (GE 220), and my lowest grade was a 79 in Electronics I (EE 221). Second year also had six classes per semester: ten 3-credit courses and one 6-credit course, plus a 2-credit lab class

Third and fourth years were pretty terrible by my standards. Too many classes, too much material I hated, too many professors I couldn't stand and/or understand, and too much homework. I had fifteen--yes, 15!--3-credit courses in third year and thirteen in fourth year. My Electrical Engineering focus was on digital systems and communications, and I did well enough in those classes to get by, but I was really questioning my choice of discipline at this point. My lowest university grade was a 58 in third year's Engineering Design I (EE 318); that was pretty distressing for me. I still managed to keep the majority of my classes in the 70s and 80s through the third and fourth years, but there were no 90s to speak of. My best class in third year was Electronics II (EE 321) with an 87. The best I could manage in fourth year was an 84 in Engineering Economics (GE 348). My Computer Science classes weren't really going that much better, although I managed to maintain low 80s.

I've already mentioned how much I loved fifth year. My fifth year was basically the experience of most first year Arts students, plus a huge 6-credit engineering design course (EE 438) that I put off from fourth year. The Arts classes were easy, but also interesting in the way that no engineering class ever could be. I still had a pretty heavy course load (seven 3-credit courses and three 6-credit courses) but it didn't feel nearly as heavy with all the Arts electives in the mix. My grades in the first and second year Arts electives in my fifth year went a long way towards raising my average, earning me the Magna cum Laude on my Latin degree. My best grade was a 96 in the 6-credit General Psychology (PSY 110). I still had one shitty class: a 67 in Heat Transfer in Electrical Engineering (ME 435).

The worst thing about fifth year was the job search. (The best thing about fifth year was a girl--but that's a long, long story that I would never share on this blog.) I didn't want to work in Regina. I wanted to work in Saskatoon or Calgary. That didn't turn out so well. I was only ever offered one job, it was in Regina, and I had little choice but to take it as I was running out of time to find something else. Even during my first year working in Regina, I was still constantly looking for work in Saskatoon or Calgary. Eventually I gave up.

Since I started working full-time in May 2000, I have held two engineering jobs, both in the same power utility. My first job was frankly awful, and I don't know how I tolerated it for five and a half years. I worked with a good friend, which helped, and I got paid a lot of money to sit at my desk and write songs, which also helped. I started in my second position in January 2006, and it was immediately much better. It has gone way downhill since then, but I get paid way too much money to complain too loudly. It's also still marginally better than the first job.

Very little of what I learned in university has helped me with my career. I always look at the university experience as less about learning about specific topics that are going to come in handy for the rest of your life--because they won't!--and more about proving to prospective employers that you can learn period. In my first position, I did almost no computer programming, so most of my skills in that area have been replaced with useless memorization about when to use root-3 and when not to use root-3 in a power equation. In this second position, computer programming skills are somewhat useful, but it is also pretty easy to fake it and get by. Neither of my jobs have required someone with the electrical engineering background that I have--except on paper, where it was a requirement. So, that's something, I guess.

I have to admit that I had more fun writing this post than I thought I would. The decisions that I made in pursuing this career path that I am on have easily had the most impact on where I am in my life right now. Likewise, any career decisions I make in the future will probably have a profound impact on where my life takes me. Theoretically, somewhere out there, in many parallel universes, there are a number of different Scotts that attended the UofR or UBC instead of the UofS, or decided to go into Civil Engineering, or held out for a job in Calgary--how different are their lives right now?