Professional Statement – Michael Piercy
In this world of scarce jobs, challenging designs problems, and extremely competitive peers, what are the defining qualities that make one engineer stand taller above those around him? People may have different answers to this question, and different employers may have different answers to this question. To me, the qualities needed out of today’s engineers are: a strong work ethic, strong technical knowledge, and the ability to work well in a team. I also believe I have risen above the crowd because of my experiences and work that have given me these skills in great amounts.
The first and most important quality in my mind is having a strong work ethic. Many people may have very high technical knowledge, but without the drive to push the boundaries and continue their education, they will not go very far. I spend my first three years of college at the Purdue Calumet campus. Many people have a slight disfavor against local colleges like these. I, however, have learned over my years the invaluable quality work ethic at this campus. Many students, including myself attended this university while also working and paying their way through their education. I myself typically took sixteen to eighteen credits hours and worked about twenty-five hours a week. At first, this was a very daunting task and I had no idea how to manage such a schedule. But after working through it, I believe I have come out for the better. When I left the campus, I had a gpa of nearly 3.6. I am completing my last two years of undergraduate studies here at Purdue West Lafayette. After being at this campus for over three semesters, I feel that this have given me a great advantage over my peers, there are those on this campus who work and go to school, but I feel that my experience from a local college has taught me more about work ethic than any course here at Purdue’s main campus.
The second most important quality to me is having a strong technical knowledge and the desire to do nothing but further it. As I mentioned before, I will be graduating from Purdue with a gpa of around 3.5. This is a high gpa coming from an already prestigious and well respected university. While this technical knowledge is important, I believe the desire to further your education and push yourself is far more important. One of the main things I look for in a career is the ability continue my education further while working. This only goes to help the company by making myself a stronger employee and myself by expanding my knowledge. I have even demonstrated this desire to learn more and more by my course and project selections here at Purdue. I loved programming in high school and every chance I have gotten, I have signed up for a new course to learn more and more languages. I now know: vhdl, c++, c, java, visual basic, matlab, python, kornshell, and I have even expanded into c# on my own time. My other projects have all been over topics I had chosen with no previous knowledge for. This includes an asic raid/AES encryption chip, multiple micro-controller projects from an assembly laptop cooler to a c maze solving robot, and more recently a Wi-Fi long range vehicle control project.
The final quality I believe every engineer should have is the ability to work as a team. Nearly every project I have tackled here at Purdue has been team based. My most recent project has stirred great interest among the faculty as my senior design team is working in collaboration with the Hong Kong Institute of Technology. We have had many video conference meetings over the course of the project and have had some very strong issues to tackle. The time barrier is an issue and the language barrier can also be challenging. But learning to work with engineers from other countries is a very strong and growing need in today’s career field.
I hope these experiences and qualities have helped to show why I would make for a very strong employee and a great addition to your company.
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