In life we are constantly learning and applying what we learn to certain aspects of life. However, we cannot improve our quality of work if we did not learn it first. In the missing basics there are multiple basics that have not be taught to engineering students, but are required in the work force. Out of the seven missing basics, three really jumped out at me. Inability to communicate, inability to label, and inability to visualize are the three missing basics that are my weaknesses.
Inability to communicate is a skill that I want to improve upon. I must admit that the ability to communicate is not one of my strengths and is rather one of my weaknesses. I struggled through high school trying to improve my communication skills; however, even though I have improved, I am still not great at communicating. Communication is an essential part of the work force. One has to communicate what they are working on to their manager who may not know the technical terms engineering has. In order to improve my communication skills I will improve on talking more because I do not talk much. This will help me in practicing talking with others. Practice makes perfect and if I talk more to communicate my ideas and thoughts, hopefully, my communication skills will be better.
The inability to label is also a weakness. The ability to label is a key aspect in communicating what you are doing. Many times instead of trying to learn new words for technology I fall back into comfortable terms. I stay in my comfort level in not gaining new labels for new technology. In order to be successful in a work place and in life in general, I need to extend my comfort level and learn new words and labels of technology. In order to do this I will strive to learn all I can about new technologies and labels of key aspects of engineering. I will also try to use these new labels when I communicate every day in order to integrate the new labels into my everyday life.
The inability to visualize is also a weakness I have. Again, I do not go outside my comfort level and instead when faced with a problem I fall back on solutions that are manageable. I have trouble visualizing the solutions to problems. To improve on this I will try to visualize the solutions to problems so that I will have a greater time in describing the solution to others. This also ties in with my inability to communicate and my inability to label.
The required classes that I need to take are mostly academic based (math and science) and do not have the missing basics taught in the class. I will not get as much exposure to the missing basics as I will math and science, so I need to be extra diligent on making sure that I learn the missing basics so that I am successful after college and in the work force.
